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| “ | I'm a winner. I'm a winner! I'M A WINNER!!! | „ |
| ~ Gator hyping himself up/compensating for his insecurities. |
Gator Tillman is the secondary antagonist of the fifth season of the FX television series Fargo.
He is the dimwitted, crude, and insecure son of corrupt North Dakota county Sheriff Roy Tillman. Like his father, he abuses his badge to do whatever he likes. However, unlike his father he is not very good at it.
He was portrayed by Joe Keery, who also played Kurt Kunkle in the movie Spree.
Biography[]
Gator grew up in an abusive household, witnessing his father beat his mother non-stop, and subject to the abuse himself. Eventually he lost his mother at a young age. While he believed she left him, she was actually murdered by his father. Her replacement was his second wife Nadine (who already lived with him a bit prior to his mother's disappearance), a girl young enough to be Gator's sister. While she would comfort him through the hard times, eventually she had to run away, leaving Gator all alone. With nobody left but his father, Gator would eventually strive to become his perfect lackey.
Years later, after his father hired a thug named Ole Munch to kidnap his mother, Gator was put in charge of leading the man to his execution after he failed. However, Munch managed to gain the upper hand, and broke Gator's arm, alongside partially deafening him while firing on Roy's other troops. This event would make Gator even more insecure than he was before, and inspire him to prove himself.
Gator was harassed by Munch shortly after, as a man on the police force would be killed and his body left where Gator could find it. As the tension from Munch's demands to be paid what he was owed were rising, Gator was also tasked with kidnapping Nadine himself. Despite being assigned several partners to accomplish the job with, Gator would fail at his mission, and only burn down Nadine's house midst the chaos. After this he also failed to kidnap her husband Wayne, and would grab a completely unrelated stranger instead.
With the failures piling up, Roy decided to eliminate one loose end and pay Munch what he was owed. However, Gator was unsatisfied with that result, and more desperate than ever to prove himself, he planted a tracker on Munch's vehicle. Stalking Munch to his current residence, he used a sniper to shoot him through a window, blowing the brains out of a corpse Munch was using as a decoy. Believing he had won, Gator also tried to take back Munch's cash from his vehicle, only to alert the attention of the woman Munch was living with named Irma. Trying to stop Gator from stealing from Munch's car, Irma struggled with the boy, leading to him pushing her onto the sidewalk, where she's smash her head against the pavement and die. Gator fled the scene afterward.
Later on Munch would catch up with Gator and kidnap him. Taking him to an isolated shack on the river, Munch proceeded to cut his eyes out. Leading the now blinded Gator by a leash, he delivered him back to his father Roy. Breaking down into a sobbing mess, Gator tried to find comfort from his father, only to be rejected, called useless, and ultimately abandoned. After this Gator wandered off on his own, unable to navigate properly, until he was discovered by FBI agents currently in the process of raiding Roy's compound. Gator would proceed to reveal his father's crimes to them, in a last minute plea for redemption. After his father was arrested, he had a conversation with Nadine, who chose to forgive him, and even promised to bring him cookies in prison.
Personality[]
Gator poorly attempts a tough guy persona, only to constantly show his true colors as a screw up. Gator's true calling was clearly elsewhere, but his abusive upbringing prevented him from trying to be anything other than his father's henchman. After being blinded as a punishment for his mistakes, Gator's facade is destroyed forever, and he becomes like an innocent child, simply desperate for love and acceptance.
Trivia[]
- Gator is one of the few major Fargo villains to be redeemed (the other ironically being the man who blinds him: Ole Munch).
- During the home invasion sequence, Gator wields a spiked baseball bat. While this is seemingly a reference to his Stranger Things character Steve Harrington, it was apparently an unintentional coincidence.
 Villains
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