The new season is solid, but so far doesn't hold a cancel to the first season (which was still often too beholden to the movie) and the superb second season. Even after episode 3 I still don't find the characters especially likable, interesting, or darkly comic (maybe with the exception of the antagonist on that last point). While it's cool that they fleshed out Ennis's backstory, I don't know that I needed a whole episode focused solely on that when I'm still craving so much else from the story at this point. Carrie Coons's characters is laudable for how dedicated she is to the job, but beyond that I don't have an opinion one way or another about her personality.
It also kept bugging me in the last episode that they cast Thomas Mann to play young Ennis, who was born in 1991 and looks even younger than that in real life. Even if we wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt about Ennis, I could believe - at the very oldest - he's 30 during the 1975 flashback, which would mean that when he gets killed in 2010 he was 65, yet he looks no less than 80 at the start of the show. His producer has a good 30 years on him in the flash back, yet looks no more than 10-15 years older than him in "present day." It just bugged me. I also don't buy Carrie's character discovering "Ennis" on the toilet. It's too coincidental, even for Fargo.
The most interesting part of season 3 so far for me was the East Germany opener. It summed up the intrigue, tragedy, and dark comedy that seasons 1 and 2 did so well. Everything that has come since has failed to live up to that.
I'm really hoping the last 7 episodes change my mind on this. None of the characters holds a candle to what came in previous seasons, so far. With Noah Hawley having worked on Legion, too, I'm wondering whether pulling double duty affected the quality on this somewhat.