9 Reasons Why Fargo Season 3 Has the Best Marketing

In the run up to tonight’s season 3 premiere, Fargo put together a heck of a marketing campaign. These nine clever trailers and graphics are our favorites.

Most of the time, movie and TV marketing is a nuisance. The trailers all look identical, whether they’re advertising a multimillion-dollar action blockbuster or a micro-budget horror flick, recycling the same music cues and editing techniques. The posters look like someone cut a bunch of actors out of random photos and pasted them onto a generic background at the last minute. There isn’t even a pretense of effort, let alone artistry.

Fargo is an exception. To drum up hype for the anthology show’s third iteration, FX released a steady stream of promotional material, from teaser trailers to animated graphics. And each one felt like a gift, a tiny bundle of creativity that never failed to brighten the day.

With the premiere airing tonight, the pre-season marketing campaign is coming to a close. We’d mourn this loss if we weren’t so excited to watch the actual show. But since the marketing was so brilliant, we want to celebrate it. Here are the nine best promos for

Here are the nine best promos for Fargo season 3:

Deflating Santa

This 11-second clip was the first teaser we received, and it might still be the funniest. A giant inflatable Santa looms over suburban houses like the Ghostbusters Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, vaguely ominous despite its cheery expression. From out of nowhere, a bullet fires and punctures the Santa, causing it to collapse with a high-pitched squeal.

“Deflating Santa” is a prototypical Fargo trailer: a miniature vignette that doubles as a silly gag and an illustration of deeper themes, such as the fragility of capitalist systems. It also introduces the Christmas-in-April motif that continues throughout the marketing campaign.

Diner

Here we get our first glimpse of the season’s three main cast members. There’s Ewan McGregor, nearly unrecognizable with layers of makeup and a beer belly, as the ne’er-do-well parole officer Ray Stussy. Sitting next to him in a fur coat that somehow looks both glamorous and tacky is Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the opportunistic parolee Nikki Swango. In the booth behind them is Carrie Coon as Eden Valley Police chief Gloria Burgle.

The clip doesn’t reveal anything about the characters, but it sums up their relationships. Ray and Nikki exchange a conspiratorial glance before leaving together, suggesting they’re accomplices, if not romantically linked. Meanwhile, the restaurant window both frames Gloria and isolates her from her son, creating an Edward Hopper-like picture of loneliness. It’s a wonderfully economic bit of visual storytelling.

At the end, the red neon “DINER” sign flickers out to spell the word “DIE”, shattering the sleepy small-town atmosphere. Could this be foreshadowing?

Stamp

Here, we see McGregor as Emmit Stussy, Ray’s more handsome, more successful brother. He licks a stamp, sticks it on an envelope, and inspects it in a magnifying glass. The best part is that Emmit’s stamps will apparently play a central role in the season; in fact, they’re the basis for the entire story.

Also, Ewan McGregor is looking good, which isn’t insignificant. The initial close-up reminds us that stamp-licking has always been weirdly suggestive.

Invisible

This joke unfolds in three parts. First, Gloria walks into an automatic door. Aside from the pure physical comedy, the moment derives its humor from an all-too-relatable situation: Gloria is so absorbed in her own mind, so oblivious to reality, that she doesn’t notice the obstacle in front of her until it literally hits her in the face. Things take a slightly sad turn as she peers through the door, into the suddenly inaccessible grocery store, before giving up. Then comes the punch line: a stray piece of paper lands on the mat, and the door opens.

Fargo, or at least whoever designs these teasers, sure knows how to pack a lot into 30 seconds.

Line-up

I don’t know why this one cracks me up exactly. Maybe it’s the juxtaposition between the jaunty music and the grim setting. Or maybe it’s just the absurdity of people wearing fur-trimmed hoods in a police line-up; after all, it defeats the point of a line-up, which is to help the witness identify the suspect. Yet, it’s treated as perfectly normal. Either way, I laugh every time I see it.

Cookie cutter

Do I even need to explain? No matter how much you (rightly) despise puns, you have to respect one that prompts laughter instead of groans. It’s darkly ironic and kind of adorable. Plus, you can extract some commentary on the home as a symbol of security – a prominent theme in both Fargo seasons so far.

Stocking

I’m a sucker for morbid Christmas imagery, which is something about myself I didn’t know before the Fargo season 3 marketing campaign. The exclamation mark in the tweet ties the joke together.

License plate

Except for the ominous music, this animated clip seems mundane at first, with two guys casually fishing on a lake. But suddenly, one of the men smacks the other with an oar, knocking him into the water. We then zoom out, and it turns out that the scene was a picture on a license plate. That alone is pretty funny, not to mention creepy.

But the license plate is full of details: the “3” indicating the season number; the premiere date squeezed into the lower left corner; the cheeky “10,000 crimes” slogan that riffs off Minnesota’s “Land of 10,000 Lakes” nickname. I could stare at it all day.

Advent calendar

FX counted down the last five days leading up to Fargo’s season premiere with a digital advent calendar. Each day, you open a box and find a brief, out-of-context clip. The clips appear to be totally random and contain no useful information, but they’re amusing. My favorite is Day 3, in which a wild-eyed David Thewlis insists he’s from America even though he is clearly British. I love this cast already.

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Fargo airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET on FX.