Lorne Malvo is a fictional character and the main antagonist of the first season of the FX television series Fargo.

While getting his injury checked out at the local hospital, Malvo meets Lester Nygaard, who is waiting to receive treatment after his nose was broken during a public altercation with Sam Hess.

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.

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 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.

Malvo later deliberately cuts the top of his hand and leaves a trail of blood in the snow as bait, which Mr.

Numbers follows and is subsequently caught and stabbed repeatedly until he answers Malvo's question about who hired the two hitmen.

When Rundle fails to provide the information he wants, Malvo knocks him unconscious and eventually traces the source of the attack to the Fargo Crime Syndicate.

With this new information, Malvo enters the crime syndicate's main base of operations and massacres 22 people within a matter of minutes by himself.

When he arrives, Gus Grimly, who was waiting after spotting him leaving the cabin earlier in the day, confronts Malvo and shoots him, killing him.

Malvo is an enigmatic, manipulative character whose actions are largely based on his belief that human beings are similar in nature to primal beasts.

[6][7] Though he appears to follow a personal code, he does not abide by societal ideas of right and wrong or decency, his actions ranging from defecating in front of an adversary to committing murder.

"[16] Maureen Ryan of The Huffington Post also praised Thornton's performance, writing that it "is fascinating from his first moment on the show and steals the entire miniseries out from under everyone.

Like Los Pollos Hermanos proprietor Gus Fring, Malvo is a man who knows exactly who he is and what he wants to do, and Thornton displays a similar level of coiled yet casual mastery.