Fargo's critically-acclaimed second season wrapped up last night, and the show's braintrust — FX president John Landgraf and executive producers Noah Hawley, Warren Littlefield, and John Cameron — revealed new details about the dark comedy's next batch of episodes in an associated conference call this morning. According to showrunner Noah Hawley, the show's third season is set in 2010 — four years after its first season — and focuses on what he calls "selfie-oriented culture."
"I like the idea what we're now living in a very selfie-oriented culture... it feels like a social dynamic that is very antithetical to the Lutheran pragmatism of the region," said Hawley. "So many of our crime stories are based on the difficulty that people have expressing themselves and communicating... I like the idea of setting up these pragmatic and humble people against the culture of narcissism and [seeing] what that generates for us, story-wise."
Hawley also noted that Fargo won't be back on the air until 2017, a necessary consequence of the series' winter setting. "It's a winter show, for better or worse, and... there isn't time to shoot another year before this winter is over,' said Hawley. "I've written the first hour and we're about halfway through breaking the season, and we'll be writing over the next few months... we'll be shooting in November and hopefully back on the air in the spring of 2017."
The gap between seasons two and three might seem more like a chasm at first glance, but the space between the first season and second season premieres spanned roughly a year and a half. If Fargo's third season premieres in April 2017, it'll be consistent with the show's practice. And even though Fargo's taking a year off, Hawley's still going to have a ton on his plate: he's also working on a show within the X-Men universe, a Cat's Cradle adaptation, and other projects, all for FX.