Noah Hawley Drew Inspiration From A Different Coen Brothers Movie For ‘Fargo’ Season 4

Every season of Fargo is different than the one before it. Season one was set in Minnesota and North Dakota during 2006; season two took place in the 1970s; and season three followed Nikki Swango and Gloria Burgle and less-gloriously named characters in 2010. For season four, which premieres on April 19, Noah Hawley’s FX series is heading back to the 1950s, where “we’re really looking at the origins of the American capital crime, which is the exploitation of cheap labor,” he said. That means this installment takes place around the events of The Hudsucker Proxy, and between Barton Fink (1940s) and Inside Llewyn Davis (1960s), but Hawley wasn’t inspired by those Coen brothers movies while writing the new episodes. It wasn’t Fargo, either.

“I started to think about Raising Arizona because I had a lot of information and history and backstory to get in before the story started,” Hawley told SlashFilm. “The opening 15 minutes of that movie is a master class in the comic delivery of information, and so it seemed like a great way to have personality and still tell you what you needed to know.”

That explains the spin on the “son, you got a panty on your head” line in the season four trailer, which you can watch below. Fargo season four stars Chris Rock, Timothy Olyphant, Ben Whishaw, Jack Huston, and Wild Rose dynamo Jessie Buckley.