Fargo Year 5 Killing Witt Farr Was ‘Necessary,’ Says Creator

Fargo viewers mourned a heartbreaking death during Year 5, and creator Noah Hawley fully backs the “necessary” decision.

Deputy Witt Farr (Lamorne Morris) saw his untimely demise at the hands of Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm) during the fifth season of the FX show.

“I feel in telling stories that I’m saying are true, the good guy doesn’t always win and the bad guy doesn’t always get punished,” Hawley told TV Insider during an interview published on Wednesday, August 21.

Witt had become a key ally to Dot Lyon (Juno Temple) after feeling indebted to her when she saved his life during a gas station shootout. However, when Dot is confronted by her past abuser Roy, she unsuccessfully tries to kill him and he gets away. Witt goes after a fleeing Roy, only to get stabbed to death.

“It felt like as we reached this end game in which you had a literal siege where a shootout was going to take place, and the idea that the law enforcement officers would emerge unscathed wasn’t realistic,” Hawley continued. “I suppose the choice could have been one of our two FBI agents, but the audience wasn’t as invested in them. And Witt is the guy when you talk about death, who felt like he owed his life because Dot saved him in that first hour and he was going to do whatever he could to pay her back.”

Witt’s death kept the plot grounded and gave viewers a sense of “real danger.”

“I always talk about Fargo as a tragedy with a happy ending, but the tragedy has to be real. And that moment where Dot shoots Roy but doesn’t finish him, the audience knows if you don’t finish that guy, something awful is going to happen,” Hawley said. “And so it’s played as a tragedy from that point on. I didn’t choose suspense. I chose this feeling of dread of like, “OK, he’s out there, he’s dangerous, and here goes Witt after him.’”

That’s not to say Hawley didn’t dream up a separate scenario that would have given Witt his hero moment.

“Probably what Witt should have done the moment he turned around and saw Roy there with a knife, is just to put a couple of bullets in him and call it self-defense, but he believed in justice and law and punishment,” Hawley said. “And the problem is that Roy doesn’t believe in any of those rules. And if you’re trying to follow the rules and you’re going up against someone who doesn’t, there’s a real danger that you’re going to get yourself killed. So it was a hard thing to do, but in the end, it felt necessary.”

Morris admitted he was “heartbroken” while watching his character die on-screen, despite the ample time spent planning his demise.

“It’s different reading it than it is shooting it, and even shooting it from when you see it,” Morris told Entertainment Weekly in January about Witt’s death. “When you’re watching it, you’re feeling for the characters, and I definitely felt for my character … I hope people cry a lot. I really want them to cry a lot.”

Year 5 saw another star-studded cast, and fans have anxiously been awaiting an update on if the series will see a sixth season. While Hawley agrees, “ I definitely think there should be another one,” it could be a long wait. FX chairman John Landgraf told Variety the network “hopes” Hawley can write “at least” two seasons of his new sci-fi prequel series Alien: Earth, which wrapped production for season 1 in July, “before returning to a possible sixth season of Fargo.”