Saddle up, cowpokes: We’re headed for darker pastures. Outer Range, the sci-fi neo-Western, just debuted its second season on Amazon’s Prime Video this week, and unsurprisingly for one of TV’s most puzzling shows, it’s left many viewers puzzle.
Created by Brian Watkins and helmed by Charles Murray during its second season, Outer Range is on one level the story of two rival ranching families: the hardscrabble Abbotts, led by grandparents Royal (Josh Brolin) and Cecilia (Lili Taylor), and the ultra-wealthy Tillersons, commanded by certified wacko Wayne Tillerson (Will Patton). But there’s more to this family feud beneath the surface, literally. Thanks to the time-warping, mind-altering properties of a mysterious mineral found beneath the ground on Royal’s land, a big black round hole in spacetime occasionally appears in his west pasture. Both bison and people, alive or dead, can pass through, emerging in a completely different place or time on the other side.
In this year’s season finale, Royal tries to stop his frenemy Autumn (Imogen Poots) — who is actually his time-displaced granddaughter Amy (Olive Abercrombie) all grown up — from dropping her younger self through the hole and thus ensuring she grows into the weirdo she was destined to become. Who succeeds? Who fails? And which of the show’s many, many Big Questions get the Answers they need? The answer to that last one in particular may surprise you.
Here’s everything you need to know about the ending of Outer Range Season 2. Warning: major spoilers ahead!
What happens in the ending of Outer Range Season 2?
That’s a pretty broad question! Care to narrow it down?
Sure! Here’s an easy one. What is the hole?
It’s time.
Yeah, we know, they said so in Season One.
Well, it’s connected to that black mineral in the Abbott’s land, too.
Yes, we know. They said that in Season One as well.
So if you jump into the hole it functions as a time portal, but if you just dip part of yourself in it or eat chunks of the mineral you get these crazy powers and visions and —
We know! All of this was covered already last season!
Right, yeah. Um, so anyway, there’s this researcher named Dr. Bintu who’s interested in the land and the time portal and —
Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Dr. Bintu tells them what the hole is?
No, she asks if she can have the exclusive rights to study it.
But didn’t she ask the exact same thing in Season One?
Yes.
And they said no?
Yes.
And nothing happened for a full season afterwards?
Other than her sneaking onto the land offscreen and Royal warning her not to do it anymore, no.
So what’s the difference between her asking now and her asking then?
Well, this time she asks Rhett to help her, and bribes him to sell out his dad and —
Hold up. Rhett, the rodeo cowboy whose childhood dream was to live up to his dad’s rodeo cowboy career, and whose wildest fantasy for his life is living in a different town in Wyoming with a bank teller he met in high school, is willing to accept money to manipulate his dad on behalf of a university researcher he’s met once so she can secure control of the fabric of spacetime itself?
Apparently.
Remind me what Rhett was up to this season?
He was trying to leave town.
Did he get anywhere?
No.
Did he do anything?
Other than come back home after trying and failing to leave? No.
So that was basically covered in Season One as well.
Yeah. It’s kind of a pattern.
Okay. Deep breath. What about Perry, Rhett’s older brother?
Ah, good question! After spending the season stuck in the past before his parents got together, Perry gets dumped back into the hole by that era’s version of his father, Royal. Perry arrives not at the present, but a few weeks before the present — specifically the timeframe of the series’ first episode. Recognizing the date and time, he races to stop his younger self from fighting and accidentally killing Trevor Tillerson and creating the whole mess in the first place. Instead, the distraction he creates allows Trevor to accidentally kill Perry.
Tillerson flees, leaving current Perry (who is not erased from the timeline, Back to the Future style, when his earlier self dies) to dispose of his own corpse, then take his own place as the Perry of that timeframe. He seems to have everyone fooled but his fellow time traveler Royal, who looks at him suspiciously.
That’s pretty juicy.
Yeah! Other than the issue of creating a new timeline so close in proximity to the “real” one, it’s a pretty compelling development.
And the other pair of brothers, Luke and Billy Tillerson — what happened with them?
They both fall in love with Autumn, the weird cult-leader wannabe who’s also Royal’s time-displaced daughter Amy. When they have it out over her while both hopped up on time minerals, Luke kills Billy in the ensuing quarrel.
Wow, the singing one killed the boring one? Damn!
No, the singing one, Billy, is the one who got killed.
But—
I know.
That means—
I know.
Shouldn’t they have—
Kept the more interesting of the two characters alive and made him Autumn’s right-hand man and love interest? Yes they should have! Preserved the sibling rivalry dynamic? Yes, they should have done that too! That said, Autumn herself points out that death is impermanent in Outer Range’s world. so I’m not kissing Billy, or the marvelous actor Noah Reid, goodbye just yet.
Ah, Autumn. What’s Autumn’s deal now?
She’s Amy, Royal and Cece’s granddaughter.
Look man, we hate to sound like a broken record here, but wasn’t that established in Season One too?
Yes it was.
…Okay.
But now we know for sure because we watch Amy get knocked into the portal thanks to the machinations of Autumn, even if it was ultimately Sheriff Joy opening fire at Autumn to stop her from throwing the little girl in herself that triggered Amy’s fall. We also see that Autumn kidnapped Amy from the women’s shelter where her mom Rebecca was hiding by threatening to expose Rebecca’s unspoken misdeeds, and that Amy wakes up in the middle of nowhere, finding she has total amnesia when questioned by concerned hikers passing by. So that’s something.
That it is. Let’s see, who’s left. Wayne Tillerson?
He goes nuts, burns his mansion down, and dumps himself down the hole following Luke’s murder of Billy.
So it’s the Perry cliffhanger from Season One, only now it’s Wayne rather than Perry.
That is correct.
Do I need to say it?
No you don’t.
Cecilia Abbott?
Cece, uh, wants to save the family and the ranch and stay right with God.
We meant during Season Two.
So did I.
Goddammit.
You haven’t asked about Royal or Joy yet.
Should we?
What have you got to lose?
So be it. What’s up with Royal and Joy?
Young Royal pushes Perry into the time hole as mentioned above. Royal the Elder has a seizure or cardiac episode of some kind when Amy goes into the hole and winds up in the hospital near Autumn. Autumn’s there recovering from the bullet that Royal’s fellow time-traveler Joy put into Autumn while trying and failing to save Amy at Royal’s request. Rather than blame Joy, Royal instead teams up with her to stop the dystopian future shown him by the hole, one ruled by Autumn and her yellow-clad cult, from coming to pass.
Oh right, the cult! What did we learn about them this season?
I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.
Goddammit!
I feel you, man.
Fine, fine. Tell us how it ends, anyway.
Autumn turns to Royal in a vision and says “This is just the beginning.”
She says this as the last line?
Yeah.
At the very end of the finale of the second season?
Mmhm.
That’s the beginning? Two full seasons of this show are “just the beginning”?
So we’ve now been told!
That doesn’t seem right!
Doesn’t it? Look at how much of our conversation has come down to “Yes, like in Season One.” Character after character and storyline after storyline effectively went nowhere this season. It might as well be just the beginning.
What does the ending of Outer Range Season 2 mean? Outer Range Season 2 ending explained:
The sci-fi element of this story isn’t a black hole that warps time for nothing, you know? The most generous read that one can give Outer Range is that it’s a story about the inescapability of small towns — small town people, small town living, small town thinking. Royal, Cece, Wayne, and their children are all effectively trapped in Wabang: Royal and Cece by family ties and poverty, Wayne by mania and greed. Rhett and Maria try to run away but chart a course that runs right back through town at the first obstacle. (Granted, the first obstacle was a herd of time-traveling bison, but still.) Perry has now fallen through the time portal twice and still winds up back on the Abbott family ranch each time. Even Autumn, the wildest and most widely traveled of the characters, is ultimately a refugee who comes back to the only place where she can truly find herself: home. They all get sucked in as surely as spacetime itself.
The challenge facing the show is the one you and I discussed above: A lot of things take place on Outer Range, but not enough happens. With a few exceptions, most of them Perry-related, Season 2 didn’t advance any of its major mysteries nor answer any of its big questions. This is an extremely dangerous game for a mystery-box show to play with its viewers. At a certain point, if all you find in the box is either more boxes or nothing, you’re just gonna put that box down and catch an NBA game or rewatch Shōgun instead.
Will there be a Season 3 of Outer Range?
Finally, a question not already answered in Season 1! As of right now, Amazon has announced any future plans for Outer Range, positive or negative. That said, Season 2’s final line really is “This is just the beginning,” which is an almost perverse thing to put on the air if you have no plans on continuing the story.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.
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