‘Fargo’ co-star Sam Spruell, aka ancient hitman Ole Munch, breaks down season finale

“Fargo” ended its fifth season with a cowed Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm) in prison and Dot Lyon (Juno Temple) back home in Scandia, Minn. — where she encountered monosyllabic hulking hitman Ole Munch sitting in her living room.

“The debt must be paid,” Munch (Sam Spruell), warned Dot, who, because this is the surreal universe of “Fargo,” instead talked the centuries-old Munch (pronounced “Moonk”) into forgoing the debt and making Bisquik biscuits — as we learned more about his weird backstory delivered in his gruff, toneless whisper.

“I had questions when I first read the script,” the British-born Spruell, 47, told The Post. “Munch sets Dot free in Episode 9 from her entrapment on Roy Tillman’s ranch and then leaves the scene.

“I think there’s a kind of … he’s done with her,” he said. “But there’s an itch inside his skull about the whole affair. It’s an itch he cannot scratch; he’s still left in this cycle where she owes him for that and he cannot let it go.

“And I think that provokes him into making the journey to her house to pay her a visit.”

Season 5 opened with Munch, on orders from Tillman, trying (and failing) to kidnap Dot and return her to her past life in North Dakota as Tillman’s abused wife, Nadine. 

Nadine escaped Tillman’s clutches nearly 20 years before and built a new future as Dot Lyon with her nebbishy husband Wayne (David Rysdahl) — who owns a Kia dealership courtesy of his meddling rich mother, Lorraine (Jennifer Jason Leigh) — and their young daughter, Scotty (Sienna King).

Richa Moojani (Scandia Police Deputy Indira Olmstead); Joe Kerry (Gator, Tillman’s screwup son); Lamorne Morris (North Dakota Deputy Witt Farr); and Dave Foley (Lorraine’s in-house counsel, Danish Graves) rounded out the cast.

In Episode 3, it was revealed that Munch’s life dates back to Wales in 1522 and, in the finale, Munch elaborates on his bizarre history.

Spruell said series creator Noah Hawley gave him a biographical road map of Munch’s life.

“It was as mad as Munch appears in the show,” he said. “Munch began in Wales, was maybe from Scandinavia and he journeyed to America, where he’s lived for 300 years. He hasn’t spoken for 100 years and there’s that sin-eating scene [in Episode 3] which kind of entrapped him in sin for the rest of his life.

“All of these things were firmly in Noah’s head and I just had to make them a person, a spirit and kind of entity, but primarily a person,” he said. “I kind of held all these different things that were shaped by [Munch’s] journey to America and his existence through the modern American evolution.

“It felt like a very complex arc and it was such an interesting character to play.” 

In the show’s final scenes, Munch helps Dot in the kitchen (after washing his grimy hands on her orders) and eats dinner with her, Wayne and Scotty as they make awkward small talk. (“Ever drive a Kia Mr. Munch?” Wayne asks him at one point.) 

“You gotta eat something made with love and joy and be forgiven,” Dot tells Munch.

At her urging, Munch takes a bite of a biscuit — and a broad, beatific smile illuminates his stony visage.

“In that moment, life is good,” Spruell said, “and maybe there will be other moments for him that are allowed to be good.

“I think there’s a touch of Bergman about him,” he said. “He turns up [at Dot’s] but he doesn’t know how she can repay him — he just needs to exorcise this in any way he can … the resolution is really to let Dot off and forgo the debt.

“In return, she offers him a pure and simple kindness and love and he accepts that — and I think that maybe that small, tiny gesture is something that will break his own cycle, the entrapment in the sin he has lived with for 500 years, and will introduce him to a new life where he can accept love, kindness and compassion.

“Maybe he’ll feel that his life is worth more than doing someone else’s evil bidding.”