‘Fargo’ Star Explains Why Ole Munch Sets a Tiger Free

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Fargo Year 5, Episode 9, “The Useless Hand.”]

Fargo‘s Year 5 end is near, and just as circumstances began to appear as bleak as possible for protagonist Dot Lyon (Juno Temple) in Episode 9’s final moments, she had an unlikely savior in Sam Spruell‘s sin eater, Ole Munch.

Kicking off the installment, “The Useless Hand,” with a little punishment for hot-shot deputy Gator Tillman (Joe Keery), Munch seeks revenge for the accidental killing of his “mama,” but he doesn’t kill. “Ole Munch… is quite Old Testament,” Spruell tells TV Insider. Ultimately, the mysterious figure presumably pokes Gator’s eyes out with a burning hot knife, which, thankfully, viewers’ eyes were saved from having to see.

“[It’s] an eye for an eye is in terms of a debt paid, which is a theme the show has taken to its most extreme,” Spruell clarifies. “Also [it’s] not allowing Jon Hamm‘s character, Roy Tillman, off the hook.” In other words, his disappointment of a son is tarnished even further by this injury, as the episode notes, a “useless hand.”

Sam Spruell as Ole Munch in 'Fargo' Year 5

(Credit: FX)

“He is left with a son who’s even more of a drain on his resources than he was before,” Spruell continues. “It’s also an implicit punishment towards Roy Tillman… very kind of performative. You can’t say that Ole Munch lacks a kind of theatricality.” You certainly cannot.

While much of Munch’s time is spent dragging Gator around by a rope, Dot’s fighting for her freedom after having seen lawyer Danish Graves (Dave Foley) murdered in the previous episode. Managing to break loose of her restraints in the shed Roy locked her in, she searches for resources.

Momentarily thwarted by Roy’s current wife in a scuffle over a phone after infiltrating the main house, Dot manages to sneak away with the cell in tow. Ducking around corners on the property, Dot makes a call to former cop Indira Olmstead (Richa Moorjani), during which she is told by mother-in-law Lorraine (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who happens to now be Indira’s employer that an army is on the way, federal and state. When Dot asks her chilly in-law why she’s going all-out to save her now, Lorraine says, “No daughter of mine is going out on the one-yard line.”

Those words inspire a little more hope in the woman who is instructed to find a hiding spot until the authorities can rescue her. Picking the pit where Roy’s men buried Danish, Dot makes her way to the windmill marking the spot. Lowering herself in, she is made to stand among Danish’s disintegrating salt-covered corpse with bated breath.

(Credit: FX)

Above ground, Munch and Gator’s trek across snowy plains finally converges on Roy, who is unhelpful and unsympathetic to his son’s predicament when the sin eater throws the boy in his direction. As Gator pleads for help and tells his father he’s scared, Roy gets up disgusted and distracted by the law enforcement closing in on Tillman Ranch.

Telling Gator that whatever point to him there was before is gone, Roy leaves the now-blinded boy to fend for himself. Meanwhile, Munch seemingly vanishes, but only seemingly. “One great thing about Munch is, he really stands outside the madness of life,” Spruell points out. “He’s kind of a watcher from the edges, and I think he could stand somewhere and almost be invisible in his stillness…”

“It is very strange because he’s got quite an elaborate costume; he ends up stealing the old lady’s coat and wearing that, and he’s quite a visual presence, but at the same time, you don’t notice him.” Spruell continues. In that invisibility, he’s able to sneak up on Roy’s men, who are sent to search for Dot and manages to take them out just as they’ve discovered her in the windmill burial pit.

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Armed with what appears to be one of Danish’s femurs (as an only weapon of choice), Dot jumps when her former would-be captor Munch announces that she can come out now, noting that fighting a tiger in a cage is not a fair fight.

“That fits with him knowing where she is,” Spruell acknowledges. “Him being in amongst the madness of that episode, him quietly locating the tiger.” As to why Munch chooses to set Dot free as she runs with a gun slung over her shoulder, the actor says, “I think it’s him recognizing another victim. He’s trapped in sin, not of his own making, and she is trapped in this cycle of violence, also not of her own making. And so he recognizes that, I think, and that’s why he sets her free.”

Whether or not this is the last viewers will see of Munch will be determined when Year 5’s final episode arrives on January 16. Until then, viewers should anticipate big things if the Tillman Ranch’s current surroundings are any indication.

Fargo, Year 5, Tuesdays, 10/9c, FX (next day on Hulu)