Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
In 1979, young Lou Solverson investigates a triple murder at the Waffle Hut, where Rye Gerhardt’s confrontation with a judge leaves three people dead. Rye escapes, but Peggy Blumquist hits him with her car and brings his injured body home. Her husband Ed kills Rye when he attacks them, and the couple hide the body in their freezer. That small cover-up draws them into the Gerhardt family’s war with the Kansas City mob, while Lou and Sheriff Hank Larsson try to keep the violence from spreading.
Gerhardt matriarch Floyd tries to hold her sons together as Kansas City’s Mike Milligan pushes for control of the family’s territory. Dodd’s cruelty and appetite for war deepen the split, while Peggy and Ed make increasingly desperate choices to protect their secret. Hanzee Dent, the Gerhardts’ skilled enforcer, grows tired of being used and turns the family’s trust into a weapon. When he kills Dodd and lies about where he is, he sends the Gerhardts into a trap at the Motor Motel, where a shootout leaves the family and many police officers dead. A flying saucer briefly interrupts the massacre.
Ed and Peggy escape the motel and flee from Hanzee. Lou follows their trail as Betsy, still facing cancer, rests at home with young Molly. Hanzee corners the Blumquists at a supermarket, where Ed dies in a walk-in freezer and Peggy is arrested. Milligan returns to Kansas City expecting a parade for defeating the Gerhardts, but his reward is a small office and a routine corporate desk job. Hanzee secures a new identity as Moses Tripoli, setting up his future as a Fargo crime boss.