I don't think there's any way to know, but I'm going to rewatch that last scene in a bit and look closely at that clock on the wall to see if the minute hand moves 5 minutes or more.
That may be our only clue. Think about it.
The ending is Schrödinger's cat!
It's a paradox. Like all the philosophy bits woven through the series.
They each tell a story of what happens, two outcomes, which are mutually exclusive. Then until the 5 minutes are up, in that time when they are staring at the door, both stories are simultaneously true and simultaneously false. The cat is both dead and alive as long as the box is not opened. So the last scene ends before the 5 minutes are up, that means both endings are true!
tl;dr mindfuck!
Hahahaha. I'll go with Occam's Razor.
I don't think both are true and false before or after the end. Either a high powered lawyer is going to show up and spring Varga or he's going to get tossed in Rikers. The time before either outcome occurs is just that; time.
Seasons 1 and 2 are linked. If next (or a later season of) Fargo has a story line involving Gloria or Varga, we will find out then. Let's hope Fargo has a long life.
I want to believe Gloria and her son are eating deep fried snickers bars at the fair.
OMG. Just as I was typing that sentence, while watching a replay of the finale, a commercial came on for Snickers. This episode was brought to you by Snickers.
hahahahahhaha
That has to be a clue, right?
Oh, no doubt Gloria and her son ate deep fried Snickers at the fair. Unless Varga's gangster lawyer gets instructions to have her taken out.
The only thing in question is whether Varga serves time.
I just rewatched that final scene and the minute hand did not traverse 5 minutes, even adding in the minute between when Varga makes his boast and the episode ends.
They deliberately ended it before the 5 minutes was up, to make it a paradox.
shareI don’t think it’s a ‘paradox’, it’s just a moment of waiting for an outcome.
We never see the outcome and the whole thing is fictional so we’re left to muse on what it might be. It’s open ended but not paradoxical.
Knowing Varga, I have no reason to doubt that he will in fact be released. It's not as if he has been hiding those five years. He has just adopted a new outfit and is continuing business as usual.
shareVarga in my opinion; got away.
Some points:
1. He got away in that elevator
2. He kept getting away all those years until Gloria happened to notice him
3. Since he got away all those years. His power only would have kept growing and growing
4. A shadow was cast upon him on the last scene; symbolizing his success in hiding in the shadows as a top figure and in that sense of "poof, he's gone"
So yeah thats my rationale for believing that. So more than just the clock clue haha
While not as big a disappointment of ambiguity as the Sopranos ending, this one was a bit too unsatisfying to me. Though the choice is narrowed down to two, we are still being denied closure by the narrator.
And Varga was so unerringly arrogant and evil that we CRAVED his downfall.
It would have been nice to have a happy ending(Varga goes to jail, or gets killed somehow.) It was have been bitter but closure to get an unhappy ending(the lawyer shows up and Varga skips -- the Chinatown ending.)
But to leave it "up in the air," I feel, was as much a worn cliché as anything else. It'll be one or the other. You decide.
Varga was an evil man. Seeing evil defeated is always satisifying. Even if in real life...evil often wins.
I loved Varga's line(paraphrased) "It is not evil people that disrupt the world, it is good people..for they are the only ones who force the situation to make a difference."
I can understand that angle and that opinion. Isn't that the hallmark of a good show though if the bad guy was SO BAD that you craved his downfall but didn't see it.
It wasn't as satisfying, I get that. But to have it to the point of craving is a hallmark sign of a great character with outstanding acting.
If you like that guys acting, he plays a huge villain in either the 2nd or 3rd Prime Suspect series with Helen Miram. He's fantastic in that as well
I'm with you on Varga - I loathed him and wanted the smile to fade from his face when the three agents walked into the room. End scene.
With criminals this disgusting, I want justice. At least in Season 2, Hanzee is somewhat sympathetic, the wretched Gerhardt clan is wiped out, and Mike Milligan is sentenced to the prison of bureaucracy. And in Season 1, Lorne Malvo was so horrible that he HAD to die.
I think there are several clues scattered throughout the season that strongly imply that Varga went to jail:
A major theme of Season 3 is what is solid and enduring vs. what is fleeting and impermanent. The importance of authentic human connection is emphasized even moreso than in the previous seasons, e.g between Gloria and her son, or between Gloria and the other cop. Even the seemingly strange plot point of female bodily functions - two scenes involving tampons - mean something about solidity in the world - fertility.
Varga has lost what fragile human connections he once had, and at this point is apparently a rootless international wanderer. And what bodily function do we see him perform? Vomiting. He's bulimic, which is generally a sign of self-loathing. He even hates himself. At the end, the shadows close around him, while Gloria remains brightly lit, and a smile begins to creep across her face. This could be seen as Varga's immateriality as a person about to literally come true, as he will be taken to prison and disappear forever.
Of course, as another poster noted, the shadows closing in could just as easily be taken to mean that Varga will disappear back out into the world. The ambiguity is still there, of course.
Finally, in the Peter and the Wolf comparison narrated by Billy Bob Thornton, Gloria is Peter, and Varga is the wolf. In the fairy tale, the wolf is caught :)
Either way, we can find satisfaction in the fact that Varga will remain a friendless, rootless, self-loathing man, and Gloria will go back to her happy life.
I believe he escaped for no other reason than his assurance someone was coming. It would be odd for him to make that claim unless he knew as fact that an ally was coming for his rescue.
shareVarga got sent to jail. He was arrested by DHS at a border crossing, I assume this means the Feds (likely IRS) have a line on him from the paper trail provided to the IRS plus more investigation. They don't usually do that unless they have their shit together on a solid case that can be charged and get a conviction. The Feds either send you to prison forever, make you take a shitty plea bargain deal or they just don't bother at all.
Plus, how does Varga get someone coming in 5 minutes who outranks the Gloria or an outside lawyer, timed so well? They were in a holding room at JFK?
The one idea I had that let Varga escape was that he was an intelligence agency asset. His "job" was to raise money for black ops, either as a full-timer for a three letter agency or as an authorized independent contractor.
It explains a couple of things:
1) The crazy high tech trailer
2) Varga seems to know a lot -- he has info beyond the typical white collar crook
3) His hit men/enforcers and their paramilitary skills
4) His ability to get away from the US to Europe and the identity to return
So if that was true, he was an intelligence asset, some three letter agency telling DHS to kick him loose right away makes complete sense. He gets off because of that.