Lorne Malvo is a fictional character and the main antagonist of the first season of the FX television series Fargo. He is portrayed by Billy Bob Thornton, who received critical acclaim for his performance and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, and won a Golden Globe Award and a Critics' Choice Television Award.
Character arc
2006
Lorne Malvo is a hitman for hire, based in Reno, Nevada. He is hired to kidnap and presumably murder Phil McCormick. He abducts McCormick from his workplace, strips him of his clothes, and throws him in the trunk of his car. On his way to his destination, Malvo hits a deer outside Bemidji, Minnesota, and goes off the road, injuring his head. The trunk pops open, allowing McCormick to escape, however, he freezes to death in the nearby woods.
While getting his injury checked out at the local hospital, Malvo meets Lester Nygaard, who is waiting in line to receive treatment after Sam Hess broke his nose in a public altercation. Lester tells Malvo about how Hess was his childhood bully. Lester makes a joke about killing Hess, and Malvo takes the suggestion seriously. He asks Lester for confirmation on whether he wants Hess dead or not, but Lester gives no answer. Lester's name is called and a nurse repeatedly urges Lester to move along, which makes him rise in annoyance and yell "yeah" which Malvo interprets as an approval. Later, Malvo murders Hess at a strip club by throwing a knife into the back of his head while Hess is in the middle of having sex with a stripper.
When Lester hears of Hess's death (as his insurance company handled Hess's life insurance policy), he confronts Malvo in a coffee shop, where Malvo encourages him to take matters into his own hands. Later that night, after being aggravated by his wife, Lester murders her and calls Malvo for help. Lester plans to murder Malvo with his shotgun and blame his wife's death on Malvo once he arrives, but the local police chief, Vern Thurman, arrives first, seeking to question him about Hess's murder. As Vern is preparing to arrest Lester after noticing a blood trail that leads to his wife's corpse in the basement, Malvo appears and shoots Thurman twice, retreating downstairs and slipping out as Molly Solverson arrives on the scene. Malvo steals Lester's car and is later pulled over for speeding in Duluth, Minnesota, where he threatens Officer Gus Grimly, who lets him go out of fear.
The next day, Malvo visits a local post office to get a package sent by his employer which contains his new identity: Frank Peterson, a minister and respected member of his community. Malvo then meets with his next client, supermarket "king" Stavros Milos of Phoenix Farms. Malvo is hired to track down the individual blackmailing Stavros, who he later finds out to be Don Chumph, the fitness trainer for Stavros' soon to be ex-wife. Malvo confronts Chumph and takes over the blackmail operation, using Chumph as his lackey in the endeavor. At one point, Gus, who had previously let Malvo go, spots him on the side of the road and arrests him for murder and car theft. While on the way to the police station, Malvo tells Grimly that he is making a big mistake. Malvo alters his look with a pair of stolen glasses and other alterations to his attire, after having arrived at the police station. He uses his new false identity as Frank Peterson to persuade the police to let him go. As a result of the arrest and subsequent misunderstanding, Gus is put on desk work and removed from the field.
Meanwhile, Malvo begins taunting Stavros psychologically, by killing his dog, replacing his medication with adderall, rigging his shower to spray pig's blood, and releasing hundreds of crickets into Stavros' supermarket. Malvo does this to allude to the Book of Exodus, a play on Stavros' deep religious views. While Stavros decides to take the blackmail money back to where he originally found it in 1987, Malvo rigs Chumph to an exercise machine and tapes a shotgun to his hands. Malvo fires a gun out of the window, shooting at passing pedestrians, to draw police attention, before slipping out a back door. A SWAT team is summoned and guns down Chumph as they make entry into the house, not noticing until too late that he has been tied up. Coincidentally, Stavros' son Dmitri is accidentally killed alongside Stavros' head of corporate security Wally Semenko when their car goes off the road in a freak storm of flying fish, completing Malvo's Book of Exodus plot.