[If you haven’t watched the season two finale of FX’s Fargo, this post has some spoilers. Consider this your warning.]

“Some roads you shouldn’t go down. Because maps used to say, “there be dragons here.” Now they don’t. But that don’t mean the dragons aren’t there. – Lorne Malvo

All things considered, there aren’t a lot of people killed in the movie Fargo. Sure, seven people meet their untimely demise during the 1996 Coen Brothers film. However, considering what’s come after that (or before that, chronologically-speaking) on the anthology television series of the same name, it seems downright quaint.

Monday night, season two of Fargo came to its expectedly bloody conclusion, ending what has to be considered one of the best seasons of U.S. television this year. It also finished one of the bloodiest seasons on TV we’ve had this side of HBO. The show has built up a reputation for great writing, inventive direction, gorgeous cinematography, fantastic (often career-advancing) performances and, of course, blood. Lots and lots of blood.

But was season two truly bloodier than season one? Billy Bob Thornton’s Lorne Malvo certainly racked up an impressive body count. Could we count on Hanzee Dent and The Kitchen Brothers to up the ante? Let’s take at look at the numbers to find out.





From a straight-up aggregate point of view, the series has upped its killing game with every iteration. Of course, this is a little unfair to the movie given its noticeably less amount of time involved. So let’s break it down to something more even: Kills Per Minute.



Season one actually kept the same pace as the movie while season two took all that murderin’ to a new level. But let’s get down to why you’re really here. You want to know if Hanzee Dent was able to catch Lorne Malvo, aren’t you? Well, sorry to disappoint but it wasn’t even close…

For those keeping score, Malvo is your clubhouse leader with 34 kills. Hanzee picked up a solid 17, but that’s a distant second place. Third place so far goes to a sneaky MVP performance by Gale Kitchen, the surviving Kitchen brother, with seven. Credit where credit is due to Gaear Grimsrud for five kills to keep the original movie in the mix. We gave Bear Gerhardt 4.5 kills because it was hard to tell who got who when he and Ricky took out some Kansas City folks with the old “pretend to be window-washers” tricker.

A couple folks came in lower than we thought they would, including Mike Milligan (three) and Dodd Gerhardt (three, only two as an adult).

Finally, we made sure to break down the means by which one character dispatched another to find out how often certain techniques were being used throughout the series.

If you’re wondering, that’s five shooting deaths in the movie, 30 in season one and 55 in season two.

Other kinds of deaths included Death By Axe (once in movie), Death By Hammer (once in S1), Death By Ice-Hole (twice in S1), Death By Strangulation (once in S1, once in S2), Death By Falling (once in S1), Death By Car Accident (twice in S1), Death By Being Buried Alive (once in S2), Death By Drowning (once in S2) and Death By Sink (once in S2).

Finally, there’s one very specific breakdown that is probably unique to this series. At least we hope it is…

See you back here to resume the count and update these charts when season three is over in 2017.

[Fargo Wiki]