What Was At The Root Of Ronald Reagan’s Obsession With Alien Invasion?

If you’ve been following Season Two of Fargo on FX, you’re probably aware of two overarching themes that seem bigger than the snowy towns of Luverne, Minnesota and Sioux Falls, South Dakota: aliens and Ronald Reagan. What you may not have realized, however, is that the two were related long before Noah Hawley adapted the Coen Brothers’ film of the same name to the small screen.

Before we delve into a Reagan-era mystery that has remained under the radar for the last 35 years, it might be worth noting Hawley’s accidental timeliness regarding discussion of extraterrestrial life. It’s as if the showrunner had an inkling UFOs would come zooming back into the zeitgeist upon his series’ Season Two return. Since Fargo‘s October 12, UFO-filled premiere, researchers have discovered a mysterious star emitting a bizarre light pattern — potentially caused by an alien structure — between constellations Cygnus and Lyra, while just this past Saturday, a strange, flying object was spotted over Southern California, Nevada, and Arizona. Authorities concluded it was a naval test missile, but photos and video taken by local citizens across all three states show a definitive blue light emitting from the object’s tail, like something you’d see out of a movie (or in Fargo‘s case, on TV). But in addition to receiving endless praise as a “masterpiece” that’s “even better than Season One,” Hawley’s Coen-inspired anthology crime drama has also led some to wonder what the heck outer space has to do with the endless expanses of late ’70s era Midwest.

Hawley gave some hints about his inspiration for this season in a recent interview with Variety; he referenced how the country’s paranoia in the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam era led to both Reagan’s heroic election and America’s collective obsession with UFOs in the 1970’s. (Maybe it had something to do with the moon landing in ’69?) Other Coen followers, myself included, believe Hawley’s use of extraterrestrial motifs fit like glove with Coen-themed existentialism: that we are all just specs on an infinite map of existence.

Hawley also specifically mentions two films in the Coen canon, A Serious Man and The Man Who Wasn’t There —both of which contain mysterious, otherworldly themes— that he felt gave him license to explore this territory in his show. While we can’t wait to see how Hawley brings together the Gipper and the Green Men, what we want to explore a bit today does not take place in this fictional universe; rather, this is about how extraterrestrial life affected the policies of the 40th President of the United States.

While Reagan is perhaps best remembered as a God-fearing conservative, he was, in many ways, just as paranoid as the rest of us when it came to foreign invaders — and I’m not just talking about the Soviet Union. In fact, despite Cold War tensions between the United States and the USSR, Reagan made a point to meet with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to discuss more than just the banning of nuclear arms.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJt6KHIX0-Q]

At a Geneva, Switzerland summit in 1985, President Reagan, who was an avid consumer of science fiction, asked Gorbachev if he were willing to put their countries’ differences aside in the wake of an alien invasion. Determined to have the world’s two superpowers ban together against mysterious extraterrestrials was as — if not more — important to Reagan as reaching an agreement that could end the Cold War. The history books even date Reagan’s alien-themed agenda as taking place before the Reykjavîk Summit in 1986, where the president and Gorbachev struggled to come to a decision to eliminate nuclear missiles. Thus, the vague characterization of Reagan in Fargo (portrayed in future episodes by Bruce Campbell), juxtaposed against even vaguer elements of UFOs can’t simply be narrative coincidence.

Even before Reagan flew to Geneva to talk turkey with Gorbachev about outer space, he was said to have been obsessed with the work of Steven Spielberg, particularly 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 1982’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The commander-in-chief even went so far as to host a private screening of E.T. at the White House where he allegedly made a comment to Spielberg about how “realistic” the director made his depiction of alien life. Conspiracy theorists even tout Spielberg’s confirmation that, after viewing the film, the former president stood up and looked around the room before thanking the director and stating, “There are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true.”

Whether or not you believe “This is a true story,” there’s no definitive way to conclude whether or not Reagan was onto something. One thing seems certain, though: the president wasn’t just trying to protect his country against nuclear threats, he was also trying to protect the world from foreign invaders. Perhaps sometime during the remaining episodes of Fargo this season, Noah Hawley will give us a taste of a young Reagan’s paranoia toward alien life, or maybe he’ll simply have his presidential character remain mystified by the eye in the sky, much like the rest of us.