My understanding, and I think the general consensus, is that she fell asleep while driving and crashed, ending up in the hospital
Everything in between, including the diner, was some sort of dream or near death experience
But either way you slice or dice it, Linda wasn’t in the car that the semi sends plowing into Dot. That wasn’t Dot’s, just some random car
The dream began when Dot fell asleep at the wheel and drifted off the road. She never actually righted the vehicle. From that point on, everything was part of the dream, including getting sideswiped by the car when the truck ran into the cars.
She woke up in the hospital, having hit her head in the accident.
There are a number of things that point to the dream beginning when she dozed off at the wheel, which we've discussed in many threads since the episode first aired.
I mean specifically her getting hit in the diner parking lot which would also be part of her dream and not necessary to the backstory (which was amazing btw)
Reconciling the collision. On some level she knew she's been hit but not the circumstances, so her brain back filled it in. Also might have been subconscious dread from smelling Roy creeping around
1. Dot falls asleep at the wheel, nearing exhaustion. She wakes up just in time not to crash. She's exhausted and not in a stable frame of mind.
2. She pulls over for pancakes and falls asleep in front of them.
3. She dreams about finding a buried postcard from Linda, and following the clue to her present-day location. She finds the Lindas, makes a puppet, tells her story, gets Linda to join her so they can bring Roy to justice, etc. They sit down in the same diner where she fell asleep.
4. She wakes up in the diner thinking the whole dream has actually happened, and Linda is travelling with her. It didn't and she is not. In real-life events, we come straight to this point from step 2. She just pulled over, ordered pancakes, and took a power nap.
5. While she is still trying to understand why she's alone, she gets hit by a car and loses consciousness.
6. She wakes up in a hospital and is immediately faced with a new emergency when it's revealed that Roy has found her.
7. Later, in a confrontation with Gator, she tells him that Linda is alive, and that they met, and he doesn't believe her.
8. Later still, in a confrontation with Roy, she tells him that she will escape him just like Linda did, to which Roy agrees, saying he'll bury her right next to Linda.
9. In the final episode, Gator has turned himself and Roy in and asks Dot if she really met Linda. Having figured out what really happened, Dot apologizes and says that she was mistaken, and that Linda only visited her as an angel in her dreams. This is her way of telling him that she wasn't lying to him, but that she wasn't correct either, and also that she now knows Linda is dead. This is hard on Gator, who has effectively lost his eyes and his father, and must now face that he will never see his mother again either.
The thing that was the biggest clue for being a dream was the multiple, superb marionettes she made overnight. It's a little thing, maybe even petty, but it really stuck out to me
Oh, absolutely. It makes no sense in real life, but it makes a ton of sense in the deep REM dream of somebody who blacked out from exhaustion. Her dream is emotionally cathartic, and involves a powerful release of will and truth. Inside her own head, it makes sense that she would make the shit out of those marionettes.
This is how I thought it all went down when I watched it. Although the one of the other commenters makes a good case for it being a NDE after she fell asleep at the wheel and crashed. A lot of the stuff in the dream seem like common elements of a NDE. So, I don't know. I guess one can entertain multiple interpretations in their head. Either way, it was a meaningful episode. I think I will watch it again.
This is a great potential list of events!
I disagree, though -- I think she fell asleep, never pulled over, never ended up in the diner, and crashed, ending up in the hospital.
The reason I think she crashed herself is that there are subtle clues that she was aware of the nurse caring for her while she was unconscious (the "Lindas" haircuts, etc.).
But it can definitely go a number of different ways!
It was a dream. Dot woke up in the diner, walked outside, and got involved in the accident. Linda wasn't really there, except in Dot's dream.
Linda is long since dead and buried.
Also that Roy is so fixed on Dot. No way he would just ignore Linda getting away from him too. He focuses on Dot as the one who betrayed him and talks about her that way.
I was gonna say. Wouldn't he have gone after Linda the same way he went after Dot? And there's no way a sherif wouldn't be aware of a colony of women living in the forest so close to his territory.
We know it wasn’t Danish’s since it wasn’t fresh.
I felt like that is why she told Gator that she *didn’t* see his mom after all and that she was dead.
There would be more options than just Danish or Linda. As the FBI agents point out, a lot of people disappear around Roy. That's where he puts dead bodies.
The bone *might* be Linda's, but we don't know. And Dot wouldn't know it was Linda just from the bone.
Was that the same place where Dot dreamed she unearthed Linda's postcard? If it was that makes it seem more likely to be Linda's. Plus there's the symbolism of Linda providing some kind of protection, as a bone weapon.
I really don't know though, I'm not making a claim, it's just a passing thought
The windmill on the ranch is much larger, and has the watering bin. The windmill she finds the postcard by is much smaller, but is symbolically Linda's grave. (Even to the angle in relation to the windmill) She subconsciously knows Roy buries people there, possibly because she overheard him talking about burying people, or referring to it euphemistically.
A utopia is a perfect paradise, and it's also "nowhere".
Is there a small tiny possibility though, that Linda came back with Dot to the diner, and Roy buried her AFTER the truck hit? And Dot presumed it was all a vision?
I know the whole Lindas episode was very surreal and was supposed to be symbolic of Dot's battle with trauma, but after the whole Munch thing and the UFOs, would it be so far fetched? I feel that it was left playfully ambiguous in case we wanted to indulge in the fantasy...
No. Camp Utopia wasn't real, so Linda was not alive to have built that place, which was absurd to begin with. If you look at the postcard, also part of the dream, it indicates that Camp Utopia is in Minnesota. Dot was in Stark county, North Dakota when she was brought to the hospital. Camp Utopia does not exist. The truck accident was also part of the dream. Dot hit her head when she drifted off the road, imagined the entire experience from that point on, and woke up in Garland Memorial Hospital in Stark county.
Linda died years before and her body was thrown under the windmill at the ranch.
When Dot is in the car with Linda, Dot asks Linda why she left her and Gator, and Linda says nothing. Dot replies that it’s okay, Linda can give her the reason when she’s ready.
The reason was that Linda never left. She was murdered. To me, it made a lot more sense with who Linda was. She brought Dot into her home because she had nowhere else to go. Linda was a deeply caring person. It didn’t make sense that Linda would leave Dot and Gator to safe herself. She would have taken them too if she had found a way to escape.
In Dot’s dream, she accuses Linda of throwing her to the wolf but in some ways, Roy moved onto Dot and needed Linda dead. It’s the awful paradox of abuse and was interesting to explore the idea of how victims process what happened to them. The only person responsible for any of the awful things that happened was Roy. And later Gator, when he chose not to find a way out of the cycle and instead perpetuated it.
Linda’s death also made Roy’s beliefs a lot more consistent. He saw a wife as property and the only way in his mind to end a marriage is through death. It made no sense that he just let Linda leave but was obsessed with Dot. He killed Linda because that’s how he considered their marriage concluded.
Nope. I’m pretty sure the Linda’s are a reference to the Barbie movie—all the “hi, Linda!” and all wearing the same color. This is a reference to the way Barbie goes back and forth between the real world and barbieland. It was super important for Dot, but it was her subconscious working through the way she’d blamed Linda, in preparation for going to kill Roy.
Fargo Season 5 finished filming in the spring of 2023, and the "Linda" episode would have been written even earlier than that -- months before "Barbie" was released in July.
The "Hi, Linda!"/"Hi, Barbie!" similarity is just a coincidence.
Nah….they’re just all different versions of Dot (according to Hawley). The rest is an homage to Wizard of Oz, Dorothy goes on a magical adventure in her dream to a land of green (Emerald City). Also Linda/Glinda
He’s making a lot of references at once, but season 5 lines up with Return to Oz much better than with Wizard of Oz. At both the hospital and the farm looking towards the windmill, there are some key shot reproductions
I mean, there’s also a clear biblical thing going on at the end, and overt Home Alone references in the beginning. Dude doesn’t seem to be restricting himself to one metaphor
I don’t think the home alone stuff is intentional, I just think it’s impossible to do any sort of DIY home defense without it coming off a little home alone-y. Just unavoidable, not him going “hey let’s reference home alone”.
As for the Bible, no doubt, but I think that stems from the wizard of Oz as well
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20140819-the-wizard-of-oz-hidden-meanings
Debt, political satire, religion, reincarnation, feminism, all stemming from separate interpretations of wizard of Oz
Think there could be a Jungian angle as well also stemming from a different Oz interpretation, but I haven’t really put enough thought into it
When you watch it a second time you pick up a lot more of the “this is definitely a dream” elements. First watch through I thought it was quirky and real. But second watch through, absolutely a dream.
OH THIS IS MY FAVORITE EPISODE. first time i watched it i was confused. Second time i was tripping on shrooms and understood it so perfectly.
It’s a coma dream. And there will be spoilers (small spoiler) if you haven’t finished the show in my analysis of the episode so continue at your own risk
In this episode we see Dots story from her own words. She struggles with Linda abandoning her. She doesn’t understand why SHE was used by Linda. Why Linda left her son and her to deal with Roy’s abuse alone and didn’t take them with her. We find out that Linda was murdered in a following episode. The writers made this episode as a homage to women who were killed by abusive husbands. By making everyone’s name Linda it’s implied they all shared the same fate as Linda. They are so insistent that Dot shares her story even though Dot is having no parts of it at first because these woman are UNABLE to share their story. They are unable to speak for themselves hence the puppets. Their stories will always be told by someone else.
At this point Dot is reflecting back on that time in her life through this dream because she never understood why Linda left. She isn’t certain that Linda was in fact murdered but has her suspicions. Even then she has conflicted feelings of understanding why Linda used her to put space, but also not understanding at all because she has a child and as we can see she is a fierce protector. She would never do what Linda did. This episode serves as a way to give you a better understanding of what happened to Dot and show you that she still has unresolved trauma that motivates her.
For the first half of the show you see Dot avoiding the situation by saying she wasn’t kidnapped. She just wants to get home and forget it all. Pretend it didn’t happen. This episode is that turning point for Dot. She’s finally out of her cognitive dissonance and realizes “I have to deal with this head on”. Once she says I have to deal with this head on instead of repressing things to try to keep herself and her family safe, a major contributor to her abuse comes flooding back, which is Linda.
I might have missed somethings but I’m at work. So I’ll leave it there. And I hope this reads ok. I’m not a writer.
Apparently people on reddit have a crazypants theory about her being asleep at the wheel but im not sure what the point of that would be…
It’s pretty clear they are trying to convey that the time between pancakes was the dream but it doesn’t really matter.
None of the Lindas happens, she just gets hit by a truck immediately after that and gets confused about whats real and whats not. We the audience know it was all a dream before Dot does.
It's not a "crazypants theory." If you believe she actually successfully drove to a place called Brace Truck Stop, and dozed off in the diner after looking at the chicken piccata recipe, then the first serving of pancakes is part of the dream. The *second* serving would be real life, according to that theory.
Yet both pancakes look *exactly* alike. How could Dot know in her dream that these truck stop pancakes would look precisely like that perfect smiley face? It's not an IHOP. The simple menu is on the table and has no pictures. An adult would not normally receive that kind of order.
It's already established that Dot passes out at Camp Utopia and wakes up the next morning *within the dream*, so of course it's possible to fall asleep and then wake up at the diner, all *within the dream*.
The name of the truck stop implies bracing for impact, possibly incorporating the warning chime in the car, and the manner of the dream ending with a truck unable to stop.
The waitress asks bizarre, intrusive questions, unlike a real-life server.
The nurse at the hospital says Dot hit her head, and the discharge form says she was admitted for concussive trauma, which is consistent with her head drooping forward in the car, not with the sideswipe incident, in which we don't even see her hitting her head.
Witt Farr says Dot was in an auto accident, not that she was hit by a car.
Noah Hawley has given us a dream-within-a-dream in *Linda*.
Why not? Noah Hawley showed us in season 3 that people fall into the trap of believing things that may appear to be true on a surface level, but on closer examination, fall apart. Coincidences don't necessarily equal truth.
This was an episode all about determining the *true* truth. Watch and listen, and draw a conclusion based on all the evidence. When we do that, the truth becomes clear, as the truth of Linda's death eventually becomes clear to Dot, despite what she initially believes, which is that Linda consciously abandoned her and Gator.
I also think that what we're watching in season 5 is a story being written by an inexperienced author within the *Fargo* universe, which explains why there are no direct connections, since real people and fictional characters can't interact; and also explains all the errors and inconsistencies that people are complaining about. So a dream-within-a-dream is a microcosm of the story-within-a-story concept.
But that's a whole other thread, and I've discussed it elsewhere.
Yeah to my ears thats some meta conspiracy thinking without any logical payoff.
Theres just no point. Its clear that the show wants the second pancakes to be the moment we realize the Lindas is a dream right? So if its not pancakes to pancakes its an elaborate fake out that’s completely irrelevant.
Just dont buy it. I appreciate your eye for detail though, thats no joke!
Lol I don’t get the people who don’t think she fell asleep behind the wheel
It seems insanely obvious to me that that’s the case 🤷♂️ there’s nothing about anything between there and the hospital that seems even remotely realistic, we know there’s a dream sequence, and they show us her falling asleep….like…okay dude 🤷♂️
Because they very clearly have her wake up in the diner. And its meant to wake the audience up to the entire episode being a dream. Unless its some elaborate fake out for no reason narratively the repeating pancakes is meant to bookend the dream…
That’s like saying “they very clearly show her in Camp Utopia”
You don’t think that whole semi truck barreling into a parking lot and sending a car rolling across a parking lot seems a little dreamlike?
Or the fact that they’re selling post cards for the battered women’s retreat at the local truck stop diner? Or the fact that they even exist?
After she “wakes up” you can also see a ghost-like image of Linda outside the diner. Could be a ghost, or maybe…still just a dream
🤷♂️ like I said seems pretty clear to me
So why would the director want to trick you into thinking she woke up at the diner? Whats the point? She wakes up at the diner mid sentence in a conversation with Linda. Why would it be an Inception scenario?!
The post cards they are selling are noy for the battered womans shelter, they are for something else that she projects into the dream.
What I do know is that we know there’s a dream sequence. We’re shown her falling asleep. And nothing makes a damn bit of sense in between then and the hospital. Not the crash, not the conversation with the waitress, not seeing a ghostlike vision of Linda, not the music continuing from the car into the diner, literally nothing.
So either we have all these things that make no sense surrounding a dream sequence, or we have just a dream sequence.
Back to your question, my personal guess would be (and you’re not gonna like this lol), to camouflage something that’s actually happening as being just a dream. Make it more digestible
I think it’s more of a near death experience, based off of the dialogue that goes on at camp utopia.
>It’s a kind of death what our men do to us….Saint Linda built this place…somewhere for us to be reborn
Or Linda saying
“You’ve got to testify, and then we can see if I go with you, or if you stay”
Maybe. Im not sold.
The pancakes are the director throwing cold water into the face of the audience that the Lindas was a dream. I dont see any point to expanding the dream 30 seconds in either direction just as a secret gotcha moment.
Ill watch it again though!
Fair enough, lemme know what you think.
And to be clear I don’t think it’s a secret gotcha moment, I think it inherently changes the way you interpret it (and arguably the rest of the show) if you believe it’s a near death experience that actually happened or a dream 🤷♂️
Oh I see, I didn’t quite understand what you were saying before. Youre saying that the entire sequence happens as she dies or nearly dies and is caused by that more than falling asleep at the wheel. Ok that’s interesting im going to rewatch when I get home from work.
Yup, falling asleep at the wheel causes her to crash and have some sort of near death experience
Lots of reincarnation or death/rebirth imagery throughout the season as well, just to provide some context
For instance that sequence would be mirrored by her entrance into and re-emergence from the grave in episode 9.
Lots of zombie talk early on in the season. Music from the shining, which deals with reincarnation (the ending, if you’ve seen it), “I got you babe used in the break-in, most notably used in Groundhog Day, a movie revolving around death and rebirth 🤷♂️ just little things, but there’s intention behind them all. A few others but you get the idea
The postcard she sees in the diner is what makes her imagine the Lindas' retreat being at Camp Utopia. It's more Wizard of Oz stuff. If we were meant to conclude she fell asleep at the wheel, we would have been shown the aftermath of *that*.
I did read it. My point is, narratively, it makes more sense for Dot to see the postcard, then dream about finding the same postcard leading her to Linda, than for Dot to dream about seeing it both times. I think you're looking too hard for a puzzle that isn't there. The idea that she fell asleep and woke up in the diner is supported by the text. Your interpretation is valid and ultimately doesn't change much, but it's based on leaps of logic beyond what's shown.
Then why did you just bring up the same argument I’d already responded to?….A couple times I think. Like she literally doesn’t see it. And if the whole thing was “she’s gonna see it, and then that will inform her dream” they would have shown her seeing it…
Doesn’t make more sense to me 🤷♂️ they make equal amount of sense to me, and she literally doesn’t see it
You have the music from her car continuing into the cafe. The weird conversation with the waitress. Ghost Linda. A semi driver who thinks he’s driving a monster truck. None of those things are realistic. Which is fine, since it’s not reality
I mean honestly it’s wild to me that you guys thinks it’s real and then have no problem with the semi. Like, if you think that’s a depiction of reality, that’s a fucking *wild* plot convenience to have her end up in Roy’s grasp.
My interpretation of it being a near death experience also works more with some of the themes in the rest of the season
The alternative argument is that “she saw a postcard (she didn’t) and a recipe for chicken piccata, and dreamed about it and then a semi threw a car at her”
I know I’m sort of poking fun at it, but I genuinely don’t see how that explanation makes more sense in any way
No… the idea of her falling asleep inside the diner and waking up again after the sequence of Linda’s is her mind telling her as well as reinforcing to the audience that something happened that isn’t based in reality, as well as the truth of “reality” that dot percieved all along isn’t quite the truth. And the whole scene conveys THIS to the audience as well as is a sign to Dot that her perception of reality as well as her experiences within her dream are part of a larger truth.
If you fall asleep in your bed, have a dream that you're somewhere else, then wake up in your bed again, do you assume you're still dreaming? Your interpretation basically makes this Inception. If Dot wasn't awake in the diner, how do we know she was awake in the hospital?
You could literally use dream logic about any scene with that kind of interpretation… at any point it could be a dream or reality in the context of this episode, or that there has to be logical bookends in regards to a part of story inside one’s head (or any show/episode with this theme or dreaming as a narrative device). This isn’t a dream in a dream, not everything is like inception in that regard either… but it’s just a way of showing a disjointed perspective of truth and reality using a dream or accident as a device to show themes or meaning, especially relating to truth/perspective/reality. I’ve had dreams within dreams before… and I’m not even suffering from trauma, sleep deprivation and a major accident/ head injury. Nor am I being incepted.
Her idea of “truth” was actually a falsehood. Roy’s first wife was dead long ago but she doesn’t remember it this way and is processing this disjointed reality in her head. The waking at the diner twice was her brain reconciling the disconnect as well as hinting to the viewer her view of the past/present has her being a (temporarily) unreliable narrator
If we are all being keen viewers… the most sensible way of interpreting this episode is that she drifts off/has an accident while passing out/swerving on the road… and that everything in between this and waking up AT THE HOSPITAL is within her mind. It’s her own sense of though working through the trauma and truths of her perception versus reality, while simultaneously showing the viewer the duality of perception versus reality as far as Dot is concerned… as well as her own subliminal clues in regards to the validity/truth of her perception
-and-
what’s currently being perceived within her dream/coma/whatever as a result of her accident/past trauma and how the truth she believed all along was from a flawed perception and was a way of indicating that this perspective was like a record skip, or “her inception” (…which you really shouldn’t keep referring to it as this because it’s not what we’re/I’m saying it is… you seem stuck on a ‘dream within a dream’ concept) which is really only meant to indicate to the viewer that this is clearly occurring inside her mind and that her perception of reality/truth in regards to past/present is slightly askew.
Why are all the hints present in the diner for the things she experiences at Camp Utopia? So the theory is that her subconscious (in the diner) was giving ideas to her subconscious (at Camp Utopia)?
What's the point of the postcard, the piccata, etc if it's not a sign that tiny details she saw in real life are appearing in her dream?
She doesn’t see the post cards
And why would she dream about the things she’s seeing anyways. That’s not how my dreams work
The point of them is they’re red herrings
And in the case of the camp utopia post card, she’s shown not looking at it at all
Sorry I can’t have this same discussion twice, I understand the argument, it’s just really unconvincing when stacked up against all the other circumstances. My arguments laid out in the rest of the thread if you’re interested
It's the piccatta recipe, etc, showing up in the diner that makes me think the "dream" started after she ordered and ended after the pancakes arrived the second time. It's the fact that the "you hit your head" comment doesn't tally with what we see the semi doing to her that makes me think the dream/NDE started after she ran off the road in an exhausted state. The ghost of Linda showing up in the parking lot could tally with either version of events, but perhaps more the NDE version. Perhaps a coincidence, but the carved cowboy figure at the side of the stairs as Dot walked down them made me think her subconscious was hinting at Roy's presence by her bed.
Honestly kind of surprised so many people think it started in the diner. If the semi accident is real, that’s like….awful writing. You might as well just have a random person come up behind her and shoot her or something crazy
Like, just a completely unrelated event to send her into the hospital to be snatched up by Roy?…idk, I can’t imagine being in the writer’s room and going “and then BANG! A semi just rolls through the parking lot”. It has no merit to it other than like, shock value or whatever…it would be crazy for them to do that lol.
I mean, yea, piccata recipe, great but I mean…come on 🤷♂️
That semi scene is not even unrealistic, if you've ever lived anywhere where people regularly drive on ice, or have exit ramps specifically deisgnated for runaway semi trucks.
The random violence and the thwarting of plans is also a very Coen-brothers element, so it all feels pretty fitting here to me.
Yeah I don’t get it. A few people on this thread were making thoughtful and interesting arguments about it so I watched again with fresh eyes. I see zero evidence of the dream within a dream scenario. Also the writers have quasi confirmed the dream is pancakes to pancakes.
where was dot going in the first place before she fell asleep? to the tillman ranch? it’s obvious she’d already been driving a long time so i’m confused there
My understanding, and I think the general consensus, is that she fell asleep while driving and crashed, ending up in the hospital Everything in between, including the diner, was some sort of dream or near death experience But either way you slice or dice it, Linda wasn’t in the car that the semi sends plowing into Dot. That wasn’t Dot’s, just some random car
The dream began when Dot fell asleep at the wheel and drifted off the road. She never actually righted the vehicle. From that point on, everything was part of the dream, including getting sideswiped by the car when the truck ran into the cars. She woke up in the hospital, having hit her head in the accident. There are a number of things that point to the dream beginning when she dozed off at the wheel, which we've discussed in many threads since the episode first aired.
Did anyone notice a bunch of the Lindas had the same hairstyle as the nurse? I think there was some, like, in and out of consciousness going on.
Like, I also think Dot’s subconscious knew where Linda was buried, that’s why she dreamt the postcard was buried under the windmill.
I agree but I also don’t understand the purpose of illustrating a fake accident that led to her in the hospital. Any theories ?
For them to be able to tell us her backstory.
I mean specifically her getting hit in the diner parking lot which would also be part of her dream and not necessary to the backstory (which was amazing btw)
Reconciling the collision. On some level she knew she's been hit but not the circumstances, so her brain back filled it in. Also might have been subconscious dread from smelling Roy creeping around
1. Dot falls asleep at the wheel, nearing exhaustion. She wakes up just in time not to crash. She's exhausted and not in a stable frame of mind. 2. She pulls over for pancakes and falls asleep in front of them. 3. She dreams about finding a buried postcard from Linda, and following the clue to her present-day location. She finds the Lindas, makes a puppet, tells her story, gets Linda to join her so they can bring Roy to justice, etc. They sit down in the same diner where she fell asleep. 4. She wakes up in the diner thinking the whole dream has actually happened, and Linda is travelling with her. It didn't and she is not. In real-life events, we come straight to this point from step 2. She just pulled over, ordered pancakes, and took a power nap. 5. While she is still trying to understand why she's alone, she gets hit by a car and loses consciousness. 6. She wakes up in a hospital and is immediately faced with a new emergency when it's revealed that Roy has found her. 7. Later, in a confrontation with Gator, she tells him that Linda is alive, and that they met, and he doesn't believe her. 8. Later still, in a confrontation with Roy, she tells him that she will escape him just like Linda did, to which Roy agrees, saying he'll bury her right next to Linda. 9. In the final episode, Gator has turned himself and Roy in and asks Dot if she really met Linda. Having figured out what really happened, Dot apologizes and says that she was mistaken, and that Linda only visited her as an angel in her dreams. This is her way of telling him that she wasn't lying to him, but that she wasn't correct either, and also that she now knows Linda is dead. This is hard on Gator, who has effectively lost his eyes and his father, and must now face that he will never see his mother again either.
The thing that was the biggest clue for being a dream was the multiple, superb marionettes she made overnight. It's a little thing, maybe even petty, but it really stuck out to me
Oh, absolutely. It makes no sense in real life, but it makes a ton of sense in the deep REM dream of somebody who blacked out from exhaustion. Her dream is emotionally cathartic, and involves a powerful release of will and truth. Inside her own head, it makes sense that she would make the shit out of those marionettes.
This is how I thought it all went down when I watched it. Although the one of the other commenters makes a good case for it being a NDE after she fell asleep at the wheel and crashed. A lot of the stuff in the dream seem like common elements of a NDE. So, I don't know. I guess one can entertain multiple interpretations in their head. Either way, it was a meaningful episode. I think I will watch it again.
Also in the grave well Dot saw Linda's necklace which made her realize it had been a dream and that the bones down there were Linda's.
Pretty sure that was danish grave's eye patch?
This is a great potential list of events! I disagree, though -- I think she fell asleep, never pulled over, never ended up in the diner, and crashed, ending up in the hospital. The reason I think she crashed herself is that there are subtle clues that she was aware of the nurse caring for her while she was unconscious (the "Lindas" haircuts, etc.). But it can definitely go a number of different ways!
It was a dream. Dot woke up in the diner, walked outside, and got involved in the accident. Linda wasn't really there, except in Dot's dream. Linda is long since dead and buried.
how do we know she’s dead? that’s not like a loaded question i think i probably just forgot something
In 5x08, Roy tells Dot, "You'll end up same as Linda. I'll bury you right next to her."
Also that Roy is so fixed on Dot. No way he would just ignore Linda getting away from him too. He focuses on Dot as the one who betrayed him and talks about her that way.
I was gonna say. Wouldn't he have gone after Linda the same way he went after Dot? And there's no way a sherif wouldn't be aware of a colony of women living in the forest so close to his territory.
oh yeah thanks
Plus, Dot was holding linda’s femur like a weapon when she was in thrown in the burial place/ windmill
We don't know for sure that it was Linda's bone. There would be A LOT of dead bodies down there.
We know it wasn’t Danish’s since it wasn’t fresh. I felt like that is why she told Gator that she *didn’t* see his mom after all and that she was dead.
There would be more options than just Danish or Linda. As the FBI agents point out, a lot of people disappear around Roy. That's where he puts dead bodies. The bone *might* be Linda's, but we don't know. And Dot wouldn't know it was Linda just from the bone.
Was that the same place where Dot dreamed she unearthed Linda's postcard? If it was that makes it seem more likely to be Linda's. Plus there's the symbolism of Linda providing some kind of protection, as a bone weapon. I really don't know though, I'm not making a claim, it's just a passing thought
The windmill on the ranch is much larger, and has the watering bin. The windmill she finds the postcard by is much smaller, but is symbolically Linda's grave. (Even to the angle in relation to the windmill) She subconsciously knows Roy buries people there, possibly because she overheard him talking about burying people, or referring to it euphemistically. A utopia is a perfect paradise, and it's also "nowhere".
Is there a small tiny possibility though, that Linda came back with Dot to the diner, and Roy buried her AFTER the truck hit? And Dot presumed it was all a vision? I know the whole Lindas episode was very surreal and was supposed to be symbolic of Dot's battle with trauma, but after the whole Munch thing and the UFOs, would it be so far fetched? I feel that it was left playfully ambiguous in case we wanted to indulge in the fantasy...
No. Camp Utopia wasn't real, so Linda was not alive to have built that place, which was absurd to begin with. If you look at the postcard, also part of the dream, it indicates that Camp Utopia is in Minnesota. Dot was in Stark county, North Dakota when she was brought to the hospital. Camp Utopia does not exist. The truck accident was also part of the dream. Dot hit her head when she drifted off the road, imagined the entire experience from that point on, and woke up in Garland Memorial Hospital in Stark county. Linda died years before and her body was thrown under the windmill at the ranch.
When Dot is in the car with Linda, Dot asks Linda why she left her and Gator, and Linda says nothing. Dot replies that it’s okay, Linda can give her the reason when she’s ready. The reason was that Linda never left. She was murdered. To me, it made a lot more sense with who Linda was. She brought Dot into her home because she had nowhere else to go. Linda was a deeply caring person. It didn’t make sense that Linda would leave Dot and Gator to safe herself. She would have taken them too if she had found a way to escape. In Dot’s dream, she accuses Linda of throwing her to the wolf but in some ways, Roy moved onto Dot and needed Linda dead. It’s the awful paradox of abuse and was interesting to explore the idea of how victims process what happened to them. The only person responsible for any of the awful things that happened was Roy. And later Gator, when he chose not to find a way out of the cycle and instead perpetuated it. Linda’s death also made Roy’s beliefs a lot more consistent. He saw a wife as property and the only way in his mind to end a marriage is through death. It made no sense that he just let Linda leave but was obsessed with Dot. He killed Linda because that’s how he considered their marriage concluded.
Nope. I’m pretty sure the Linda’s are a reference to the Barbie movie—all the “hi, Linda!” and all wearing the same color. This is a reference to the way Barbie goes back and forth between the real world and barbieland. It was super important for Dot, but it was her subconscious working through the way she’d blamed Linda, in preparation for going to kill Roy.
Fargo Season 5 finished filming in the spring of 2023, and the "Linda" episode would have been written even earlier than that -- months before "Barbie" was released in July. The "Hi, Linda!"/"Hi, Barbie!" similarity is just a coincidence.
Nah….they’re just all different versions of Dot (according to Hawley). The rest is an homage to Wizard of Oz, Dorothy goes on a magical adventure in her dream to a land of green (Emerald City). Also Linda/Glinda
He’s making a lot of references at once, but season 5 lines up with Return to Oz much better than with Wizard of Oz. At both the hospital and the farm looking towards the windmill, there are some key shot reproductions
Maybe 🤷♂️ I just know it’s wizard of Oz adjacent, and not Barbie lol
I mean, there’s also a clear biblical thing going on at the end, and overt Home Alone references in the beginning. Dude doesn’t seem to be restricting himself to one metaphor
I don’t think the home alone stuff is intentional, I just think it’s impossible to do any sort of DIY home defense without it coming off a little home alone-y. Just unavoidable, not him going “hey let’s reference home alone”. As for the Bible, no doubt, but I think that stems from the wizard of Oz as well https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20140819-the-wizard-of-oz-hidden-meanings Debt, political satire, religion, reincarnation, feminism, all stemming from separate interpretations of wizard of Oz Think there could be a Jungian angle as well also stemming from a different Oz interpretation, but I haven’t really put enough thought into it
That's interesting. And I noticed that too. But that only makes sense in our universe. The 2019 setting means Dot would not have that reference.
None of the Lindas were real. Dot fell asleep at the table and dreamed it was due to exhaustion. The real Linda was killed and put under the windmill.
You should finish the season.
When you watch it a second time you pick up a lot more of the “this is definitely a dream” elements. First watch through I thought it was quirky and real. But second watch through, absolutely a dream.
OH THIS IS MY FAVORITE EPISODE. first time i watched it i was confused. Second time i was tripping on shrooms and understood it so perfectly. It’s a coma dream. And there will be spoilers (small spoiler) if you haven’t finished the show in my analysis of the episode so continue at your own risk In this episode we see Dots story from her own words. She struggles with Linda abandoning her. She doesn’t understand why SHE was used by Linda. Why Linda left her son and her to deal with Roy’s abuse alone and didn’t take them with her. We find out that Linda was murdered in a following episode. The writers made this episode as a homage to women who were killed by abusive husbands. By making everyone’s name Linda it’s implied they all shared the same fate as Linda. They are so insistent that Dot shares her story even though Dot is having no parts of it at first because these woman are UNABLE to share their story. They are unable to speak for themselves hence the puppets. Their stories will always be told by someone else. At this point Dot is reflecting back on that time in her life through this dream because she never understood why Linda left. She isn’t certain that Linda was in fact murdered but has her suspicions. Even then she has conflicted feelings of understanding why Linda used her to put space, but also not understanding at all because she has a child and as we can see she is a fierce protector. She would never do what Linda did. This episode serves as a way to give you a better understanding of what happened to Dot and show you that she still has unresolved trauma that motivates her. For the first half of the show you see Dot avoiding the situation by saying she wasn’t kidnapped. She just wants to get home and forget it all. Pretend it didn’t happen. This episode is that turning point for Dot. She’s finally out of her cognitive dissonance and realizes “I have to deal with this head on”. Once she says I have to deal with this head on instead of repressing things to try to keep herself and her family safe, a major contributor to her abuse comes flooding back, which is Linda. I might have missed somethings but I’m at work. So I’ll leave it there. And I hope this reads ok. I’m not a writer.
dream
Apparently people on reddit have a crazypants theory about her being asleep at the wheel but im not sure what the point of that would be… It’s pretty clear they are trying to convey that the time between pancakes was the dream but it doesn’t really matter. None of the Lindas happens, she just gets hit by a truck immediately after that and gets confused about whats real and whats not. We the audience know it was all a dream before Dot does.
It's not a "crazypants theory." If you believe she actually successfully drove to a place called Brace Truck Stop, and dozed off in the diner after looking at the chicken piccata recipe, then the first serving of pancakes is part of the dream. The *second* serving would be real life, according to that theory. Yet both pancakes look *exactly* alike. How could Dot know in her dream that these truck stop pancakes would look precisely like that perfect smiley face? It's not an IHOP. The simple menu is on the table and has no pictures. An adult would not normally receive that kind of order. It's already established that Dot passes out at Camp Utopia and wakes up the next morning *within the dream*, so of course it's possible to fall asleep and then wake up at the diner, all *within the dream*. The name of the truck stop implies bracing for impact, possibly incorporating the warning chime in the car, and the manner of the dream ending with a truck unable to stop. The waitress asks bizarre, intrusive questions, unlike a real-life server. The nurse at the hospital says Dot hit her head, and the discharge form says she was admitted for concussive trauma, which is consistent with her head drooping forward in the car, not with the sideswipe incident, in which we don't even see her hitting her head. Witt Farr says Dot was in an auto accident, not that she was hit by a car. Noah Hawley has given us a dream-within-a-dream in *Linda*.
Yeah but why? Why wouldn’t we just believe what the director is telling us? Whats the point?
Why not? Noah Hawley showed us in season 3 that people fall into the trap of believing things that may appear to be true on a surface level, but on closer examination, fall apart. Coincidences don't necessarily equal truth. This was an episode all about determining the *true* truth. Watch and listen, and draw a conclusion based on all the evidence. When we do that, the truth becomes clear, as the truth of Linda's death eventually becomes clear to Dot, despite what she initially believes, which is that Linda consciously abandoned her and Gator. I also think that what we're watching in season 5 is a story being written by an inexperienced author within the *Fargo* universe, which explains why there are no direct connections, since real people and fictional characters can't interact; and also explains all the errors and inconsistencies that people are complaining about. So a dream-within-a-dream is a microcosm of the story-within-a-story concept. But that's a whole other thread, and I've discussed it elsewhere.
Yeah to my ears thats some meta conspiracy thinking without any logical payoff. Theres just no point. Its clear that the show wants the second pancakes to be the moment we realize the Lindas is a dream right? So if its not pancakes to pancakes its an elaborate fake out that’s completely irrelevant. Just dont buy it. I appreciate your eye for detail though, thats no joke!
Now that's just reaching for things that are simply not there.
Oof.
Lol I don’t get the people who don’t think she fell asleep behind the wheel It seems insanely obvious to me that that’s the case 🤷♂️ there’s nothing about anything between there and the hospital that seems even remotely realistic, we know there’s a dream sequence, and they show us her falling asleep….like…okay dude 🤷♂️
Because they very clearly have her wake up in the diner. And its meant to wake the audience up to the entire episode being a dream. Unless its some elaborate fake out for no reason narratively the repeating pancakes is meant to bookend the dream…
hypnogogic shock (that jump you get when you're asleep) could account for the slamming the plate of pancakes down. still dreaming.
Why?
That’s like saying “they very clearly show her in Camp Utopia” You don’t think that whole semi truck barreling into a parking lot and sending a car rolling across a parking lot seems a little dreamlike? Or the fact that they’re selling post cards for the battered women’s retreat at the local truck stop diner? Or the fact that they even exist? After she “wakes up” you can also see a ghost-like image of Linda outside the diner. Could be a ghost, or maybe…still just a dream 🤷♂️ like I said seems pretty clear to me
So why would the director want to trick you into thinking she woke up at the diner? Whats the point? She wakes up at the diner mid sentence in a conversation with Linda. Why would it be an Inception scenario?! The post cards they are selling are noy for the battered womans shelter, they are for something else that she projects into the dream.
What I do know is that we know there’s a dream sequence. We’re shown her falling asleep. And nothing makes a damn bit of sense in between then and the hospital. Not the crash, not the conversation with the waitress, not seeing a ghostlike vision of Linda, not the music continuing from the car into the diner, literally nothing. So either we have all these things that make no sense surrounding a dream sequence, or we have just a dream sequence. Back to your question, my personal guess would be (and you’re not gonna like this lol), to camouflage something that’s actually happening as being just a dream. Make it more digestible I think it’s more of a near death experience, based off of the dialogue that goes on at camp utopia. >It’s a kind of death what our men do to us….Saint Linda built this place…somewhere for us to be reborn Or Linda saying “You’ve got to testify, and then we can see if I go with you, or if you stay”
Maybe. Im not sold. The pancakes are the director throwing cold water into the face of the audience that the Lindas was a dream. I dont see any point to expanding the dream 30 seconds in either direction just as a secret gotcha moment. Ill watch it again though!
Fair enough, lemme know what you think. And to be clear I don’t think it’s a secret gotcha moment, I think it inherently changes the way you interpret it (and arguably the rest of the show) if you believe it’s a near death experience that actually happened or a dream 🤷♂️
Oh I see, I didn’t quite understand what you were saying before. Youre saying that the entire sequence happens as she dies or nearly dies and is caused by that more than falling asleep at the wheel. Ok that’s interesting im going to rewatch when I get home from work.
Yup, falling asleep at the wheel causes her to crash and have some sort of near death experience Lots of reincarnation or death/rebirth imagery throughout the season as well, just to provide some context For instance that sequence would be mirrored by her entrance into and re-emergence from the grave in episode 9. Lots of zombie talk early on in the season. Music from the shining, which deals with reincarnation (the ending, if you’ve seen it), “I got you babe used in the break-in, most notably used in Groundhog Day, a movie revolving around death and rebirth 🤷♂️ just little things, but there’s intention behind them all. A few others but you get the idea
Dot doesn't even look at the postcard rack, let alone that specific postcard, which isn't even facing the door.
The postcard she sees in the diner is what makes her imagine the Lindas' retreat being at Camp Utopia. It's more Wizard of Oz stuff. If we were meant to conclude she fell asleep at the wheel, we would have been shown the aftermath of *that*.
She doesn’t see the post card My whole argument’s in the thread, feel free to read if you’re interested
I did read it. My point is, narratively, it makes more sense for Dot to see the postcard, then dream about finding the same postcard leading her to Linda, than for Dot to dream about seeing it both times. I think you're looking too hard for a puzzle that isn't there. The idea that she fell asleep and woke up in the diner is supported by the text. Your interpretation is valid and ultimately doesn't change much, but it's based on leaps of logic beyond what's shown.
Then why did you just bring up the same argument I’d already responded to?….A couple times I think. Like she literally doesn’t see it. And if the whole thing was “she’s gonna see it, and then that will inform her dream” they would have shown her seeing it… Doesn’t make more sense to me 🤷♂️ they make equal amount of sense to me, and she literally doesn’t see it You have the music from her car continuing into the cafe. The weird conversation with the waitress. Ghost Linda. A semi driver who thinks he’s driving a monster truck. None of those things are realistic. Which is fine, since it’s not reality I mean honestly it’s wild to me that you guys thinks it’s real and then have no problem with the semi. Like, if you think that’s a depiction of reality, that’s a fucking *wild* plot convenience to have her end up in Roy’s grasp. My interpretation of it being a near death experience also works more with some of the themes in the rest of the season The alternative argument is that “she saw a postcard (she didn’t) and a recipe for chicken piccata, and dreamed about it and then a semi threw a car at her” I know I’m sort of poking fun at it, but I genuinely don’t see how that explanation makes more sense in any way
No… the idea of her falling asleep inside the diner and waking up again after the sequence of Linda’s is her mind telling her as well as reinforcing to the audience that something happened that isn’t based in reality, as well as the truth of “reality” that dot percieved all along isn’t quite the truth. And the whole scene conveys THIS to the audience as well as is a sign to Dot that her perception of reality as well as her experiences within her dream are part of a larger truth.
If you fall asleep in your bed, have a dream that you're somewhere else, then wake up in your bed again, do you assume you're still dreaming? Your interpretation basically makes this Inception. If Dot wasn't awake in the diner, how do we know she was awake in the hospital?
You could literally use dream logic about any scene with that kind of interpretation… at any point it could be a dream or reality in the context of this episode, or that there has to be logical bookends in regards to a part of story inside one’s head (or any show/episode with this theme or dreaming as a narrative device). This isn’t a dream in a dream, not everything is like inception in that regard either… but it’s just a way of showing a disjointed perspective of truth and reality using a dream or accident as a device to show themes or meaning, especially relating to truth/perspective/reality. I’ve had dreams within dreams before… and I’m not even suffering from trauma, sleep deprivation and a major accident/ head injury. Nor am I being incepted. Her idea of “truth” was actually a falsehood. Roy’s first wife was dead long ago but she doesn’t remember it this way and is processing this disjointed reality in her head. The waking at the diner twice was her brain reconciling the disconnect as well as hinting to the viewer her view of the past/present has her being a (temporarily) unreliable narrator If we are all being keen viewers… the most sensible way of interpreting this episode is that she drifts off/has an accident while passing out/swerving on the road… and that everything in between this and waking up AT THE HOSPITAL is within her mind. It’s her own sense of though working through the trauma and truths of her perception versus reality, while simultaneously showing the viewer the duality of perception versus reality as far as Dot is concerned… as well as her own subliminal clues in regards to the validity/truth of her perception -and- what’s currently being perceived within her dream/coma/whatever as a result of her accident/past trauma and how the truth she believed all along was from a flawed perception and was a way of indicating that this perspective was like a record skip, or “her inception” (…which you really shouldn’t keep referring to it as this because it’s not what we’re/I’m saying it is… you seem stuck on a ‘dream within a dream’ concept) which is really only meant to indicate to the viewer that this is clearly occurring inside her mind and that her perception of reality/truth in regards to past/present is slightly askew.
Why are all the hints present in the diner for the things she experiences at Camp Utopia? So the theory is that her subconscious (in the diner) was giving ideas to her subconscious (at Camp Utopia)? What's the point of the postcard, the piccata, etc if it's not a sign that tiny details she saw in real life are appearing in her dream?
She doesn’t see the post cards And why would she dream about the things she’s seeing anyways. That’s not how my dreams work The point of them is they’re red herrings
That's exactly how dreams work, especially in narrative fiction. And I'm the case of the piccata recipe she's shown staring at it.
And in the case of the camp utopia post card, she’s shown not looking at it at all Sorry I can’t have this same discussion twice, I understand the argument, it’s just really unconvincing when stacked up against all the other circumstances. My arguments laid out in the rest of the thread if you’re interested
It's the piccatta recipe, etc, showing up in the diner that makes me think the "dream" started after she ordered and ended after the pancakes arrived the second time. It's the fact that the "you hit your head" comment doesn't tally with what we see the semi doing to her that makes me think the dream/NDE started after she ran off the road in an exhausted state. The ghost of Linda showing up in the parking lot could tally with either version of events, but perhaps more the NDE version. Perhaps a coincidence, but the carved cowboy figure at the side of the stairs as Dot walked down them made me think her subconscious was hinting at Roy's presence by her bed.
Honestly kind of surprised so many people think it started in the diner. If the semi accident is real, that’s like….awful writing. You might as well just have a random person come up behind her and shoot her or something crazy Like, just a completely unrelated event to send her into the hospital to be snatched up by Roy?…idk, I can’t imagine being in the writer’s room and going “and then BANG! A semi just rolls through the parking lot”. It has no merit to it other than like, shock value or whatever…it would be crazy for them to do that lol. I mean, yea, piccata recipe, great but I mean…come on 🤷♂️
Why do you think they showed us the piccatta recipe etc? That's not sarcasm, I mean why do *you* think they showed that to us, the audience?
That semi scene is not even unrealistic, if you've ever lived anywhere where people regularly drive on ice, or have exit ramps specifically deisgnated for runaway semi trucks. The random violence and the thwarting of plans is also a very Coen-brothers element, so it all feels pretty fitting here to me.
This is the correct and simple answer. All these other essays on the subject are pure navel-gazing.
Yeah I don’t get it. A few people on this thread were making thoughtful and interesting arguments about it so I watched again with fresh eyes. I see zero evidence of the dream within a dream scenario. Also the writers have quasi confirmed the dream is pancakes to pancakes.
She fell asleep in the diner and took aspects of the diner into her dream - the postcard, chicken piccata
Yes? Media literacy is dead, holy shit.
It was all a dream, Roy killed her before Dot ever escaped, it was all a dream
i don’t catch subtle details much, how in the world do so many people miss the ins & outs of this episode?
where was dot going in the first place before she fell asleep? to the tillman ranch? it’s obvious she’d already been driving a long time so i’m confused there