Showrunner Brian Watkins created Outer Range, a sci-fi western that follows the story of Royal Abbott, a ranch owner who discovers a mysterious void in the middle of his pasture. He will do anything to protect his family and land, even cover up a murder. However, life takes a bit of a strange turn when a woman who calls herself Autumn arrives at the ranch. Amazon has recently announced Outer Range season 2. So let’s look at the TV series and what we can expect from the new season.
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Before we get into Outer Range season 2, let’s look back at the events of season 1.
The Story So Far
A woman, Autumn (played by Imogen Poots), approaches Wyoming rancher Royal Abbot (played by Josh Brolin) and asks him if she can camp on his land. He allows her to. Later he and his sons, Perry (played by Tom Pelphrey) and Rhett (played by Lewis Pullman), are approached by the gaudy owners of the neighbouring profit-driven ranch. They that their property lines need to be redrawn because a portion of the Abbott’s land belongs to the Tillerson’s, or they will take the Abbott family to court.
Royal goes out into his land and finds a mysterious Hole, which he receives a prophetic vision after sticking his hand on it. When he returns to the house, he finds Deputy Sheriff Joy Hawk (played by Tamara Podemski) waiting for him. She tells the family that the police will no longer investigate their daughter-in-law Rebecca’s disappearance (played by Kristen Connolly).
That night, while out drinking, Perry Abbott fights with Trevor Tillerson (played by Matt Lauria) after he taunts him about his missing wife and beats the man to death. Royal throws Trevor’s body into the hole to protect his family, but Autumn sees him do this and pushes him into the hole.
He is seen waking up in the middle of the field the following day and returns to the house where Cecilia Abbott (played by Lili Taylor), his wife, Rhett and Perry, are getting their stories straight about the death of Trevor Tillerson. Luke Tillerson (played by Shaun Sipos) then approaches Joy about the disappearance of his brother and tells her that she will have his family’s support in the upcoming election if she helps find him.
The Abbotts’ lawyer informs Royal that the Tillerson’s have a legit land claim and advises him to give it up. Royal visits Wayne Tillerson (played by Will Patton), the family’s patriarch, and offers him a smaller plot of land, but Wayne is insistent on the one the Tillerson’s have a claim to.
Autumn meets Amy Abbott (played by Olive Abercrombie), Perry’s daughter, and she points out a strange dotted symbol that is drawing her. Later that night, she confronts Royal about what had happened in the hole, and he explains how he’d woken up in another world where Cecilia informed him that he’d been dead for two years. He’d jumped back through the hole after Cecilia had told him to run, and Luke Tillerson started shooting at him.
Joy arrests a criminal who warns her that people around town have started to go missing while Autumn meets Perry. Cecilia sees Rebecca driving a truck while out shopping but dismisses it, thinking that she’s seeing things.
That night at the rodeo, Joy confronts Rhett Abbott with blood she’d found on Trevor’s belt buckle, claiming it was his. She interrogates him further about the matter after he is arrested for his drunken behaviour, and Rhett admits that he and Trevor got into a fight, but he tells her that there was no one else with him.
Elsewhere Royal approaches Autumn and tells her that he thinks he might have travelled through time when he’d fallen into the hole but makes her promise not to say anything about what was said. Everyone in town notice the sudden disappearance and reappearance of a mountain, and Amy comes across the corpse of Trevor Tillerson while out hiking.
Audiences are taken back a couple of months earlier, and we learn that labourers working for the Tillerson’s had come across an odd rock near the Abbott’s land before the show’s events. This discovery led to Wayne’s obsession to get his hands on the Abbott’s west pasture.
Royal hikes with Joy and the rest of the police up to Trevor’s corpse, and the deputy sheriff interrogates his nine-year-old granddaughter in the presence of himself, Cecilia and Perry. Her story ends up clearing everyone except Rhett, who is fortunately covered by Maria Olivares (played by Isabel Arraiza), the bank teller interested in Rhett.
Royal threatens Karl Cleaver (played by Kevin Chamberlin), the county assessor Wayne bribed to have part of the Abbott ranch recognised as Tillerson land. As a response, Karl moves up the hearing. Joy questions Maria, Rhett and Perry separately, and their alibis start to fall apart before Royal arrives to save them.
The matriarch of the Tillerson’s and estranged wife of Wayne, Patricia (played by Deirdre O’Connell), arrives in town and takes over control of the family from him. Together she and Joy focus the investigation on Rhett and Perry. Unfortunately, the murder is impossible to pin on the brothers because the timelines don’t add up (the bar fight was eight days earlier, while the time of death was shown to be 10 hours before Trevor’s body was discovered. Patricia opens Trevor’s casket at the funeral and discovers that Perry is responsible for his murder because he can’t look at him.
Royal is curious about Autumn’s necklace, so he plays a game of poker against her, cheating to get his hands on it. Meanwhile, Wayne receives a sign from the odd rock and drives out into the Abbott’s land, where he discovers the hole. He and Royal get into a fight, and he knocks him out before driving back home. When he gets back into the house, he doesn’t get much out besides “found it” before he has a vision about two boys at the hole and suffers a stroke.
Autumn tries to steal her necklace back, but Royal has already left the house with it, and Cecilia is the one who confronts her. Royal finds a geologist who is very interested in the rock. She wants to examine it further, but Royal refuses when he sees a photo of her and the symbol he had seen in the other world when he was pushed into the hole. He looks it up and learns that it is a logo that belongs to a mining company.
Patricia and Luke are transferring ownership of the Tillerson estate from Wayne to Luke. Meanwhile, Maria and Rhett spend the night together, and Perry bonds with Autumn. He tells her about his wife, who vanished without an explanation one night and explained that he believes she left him.
Royal decides to take Autumn’s necklace to the barn. There he breaks it open, and a black powder shows him a vision of Cecilia holding his lifeless body in the presence of Autumn, still wearing her necklace. This Autumn addresses him directly before the vision fades to nothing.
He confronts Autumn and demands to know about her necklace. She explains that it and the odd rocks found on his land were pieces of time that had materialised into a physical form. He tells her to stay away from his family and leaves her for dead before burning her campsite down. As she tries to make her way back to her camp, she meets a bear that tells her to “show him”, so she waits for Billy Tillerson (played by Noah Reid, who fans may recognise from Schitt’s Creek) to find her and takes him to the hole.
Patricia and Luke learn that Wayne had left everything to his youngest son Billy, so she leaves to go and take care of the will, instructing Luke not to say anything about it to Billy. Joy fights with her wife, Martha (played by MorningStar Angeline), while Rhett talks to Maria about the night they had spent together. She tells him that while she loves him, she cannot be with him because he always prioritises his family. She proves this by asking about Trevor’s murder, and Rhett is quick to cover for his older brother.
Autumn finally makes it to the destroyed campsite and makes a call, demanding money from the person on the other end before she carves the strange dotted symbol into her flesh. She has become unhinged without her medication and approaches Perry, telling him about how Royal had tried to kill her and how she had seen him getting rid of Trevor’s corpse, which led her to believe that he was the one that had killed him. She asks him to go with her to the deputy sheriff and turn Royal in.
Rather than blame his father, Perry sends a letter of confession to Joy, which he tells his family about that night at dinner. Rhett starts a fight with him, and Royal quickly steps in, struggling with Rhett and slamming Perry into a glass fixture. This shatters and sends a shard of glass into Amy’s head. The police arrive just as she runs outside.
Royal and Cecilia bail Perry out of jail, putting the ranch up as collateral, and Royal takes him home. As they drive, he tells him about his past and explains that as a boy in 1886, he accidentally killed his father while out hunting. Terrified about what would happen, he came across the bottomless hole and jumped in, arriving in 1968 on the Abbott ranch. The family had taken him in and raised them as one of their own. He shows Perry the hole, and Perry, distraught by everything that has happened, jumps into the hole and disappears.
Autumn argues with Maria at the bank while waiting for her money to come through. Meanwhile, Rhett is thrown off a bull at the rodeo and injures his shoulder. However, he refuses to give up and ends up winning, and he and Maria reconcile after.
Autumn calls Amy’s phone and asks for Royal, who she says can meet her in town. He leaves to confront her, and Amy wanders into the parking lot, where she sees her mother. Rebecca calls her over, and the two leave just before Cecilia realises that Amy has gone missing.
Royal confronts Autumn, but she and Billy attack and try to kill him. They get into a gunfight while they drive. Meanwhile, Luke has decided to dig a hole, thinking he’ll find something to make him rich. Instead, he finds oil that turns into a stampede of buffalo.
Royal manages to kill Billy, and the truck crashes, which sends Autumn flying out of it. He goes to finish her off, but the stampede tramples her before he reaches her. Walking over to check on her, he finds a scar on her head in the same place Amy got hit with a shard of glass and comes to a sudden realisation: this is Amy from the future.
He takes her back to the Abbot family ranch and tells Cecilia he wants his family back. His wife starts naming every member of the family that’s gone, but when she reaches, Amy Royal tells her that she’s not gone and asks Cecilia to follow him.
Audiences are left on the rudest cliffhanger since Avengers: Infinity War. That said, it’s the perfect setup for Outer Range season 2.
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What Will Happen In Outer Range Season 2
There were a lot of loose ends left untied at the end of the first season, so there’s still plenty that the writers can work with. In addition, there’s bound to be several more murders in Outer Range season 2 and plenty more mystery surrounding the oddity that is time in the sci-fi world.
The Origin and Function of the Hole
One of the biggest mysteries of Outer Range is the hole that allows a person to travel forward and back in time, depending on which side you jump through. How it works and where it came from is never explained, though audiences see it used several times throughout the first season. Unfortunately, Luke Tillerson also seems to have created a second hole in his obsessive need to dig and find something of value that ended with his death.
Fans are also wondering what happened to Perry. After hearing about his father’s origin and how he ran away, he jumped through the hole, and viewers don’t get any further explanation. Is he alive? Where did he end up when he jumped through? Will we see him again?
Hopefully, the writers decide to explain the mysteries of the hole moving forward in Outer Range season 2 and don’t leave viewers clueless about how time works in this universe.
Where Did Rebecca Take Amy?
Rebecca is another mystery on the show. Amy’s mother disappeared a couple of months before the show’s events, seemingly having run away from her husband. She makes a very brief appearance and is mentioned occasionally throughout the show before she arrives to take Amy.
Amy insinuates that she’s following her mother’s plan, which isn’t explained further to the audience. Hence, something bigger is at play here that might have something to do with the people disappearing in town. Hopefully all of this is explored in Outer Range season 2.
What’s with the Talking Bear?
Amy travelled back in time for a reason, and there is a good chance it has something to do with Royal, the rancher living his life in the wrong time. On the other hand, it is possible that, like Wayne Tillerson, Autumn’s actions were driven by the odd time rocks, specifically by the one she was wearing as a necklace.
There’s also the question of how Amy travelled back in time in the first place. She doesn’t seem to know much about the hole or how it works. So, on the one hand, it could be a straightforward explanation of her jumping through the hole without really thinking about where she would end up.
On the other hand, it could be a lot more complicated (as time travel always is). What time is this Amy even from?
None of this explains the bear and how it could talk, though. Again, this could be explored in Outer Range season 2.
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Cast and Crew for Outer Range Season 2
Josh Brolin is definitely coming back to play Royal Abbott in the second season of Outer Range if his Instagram poetry is anything to go by. There’s still plenty of the time travelling mystery left for him to unravel. A lot of the main cast should be returning with him, including Lili Taylor, Imogen Poots, Tamara Podemski, Lewis Pullman and Olive Abercrombie.
The only person we’re unsure will be making a return is Tom Pelphrey as Perry, who disappeared into the unknown when he jumped through the hole. We know that he’s not gone, but will he be coming back?
Brian Watkins will not be returning as the showrunner for Outer Range season 2. He will instead be replaced by Charles Murray, who has previously on Sons of Anarchy and Luke Cage.
Zev Borow is an executive producer who worked on the first season of Outer Ranger. He will return for the second season alongside Brad Pitt, Heather Rae, Lawrence Trilling, Tony Krantz, Jeremy Kleiner and Dede Gardner.
When Can We Expect From Outer Range Season 2?
While Amazon has confirmed that the series will be returned, an official release date has yet to be announced. Unfortunately, fans of the neo-western sci-fi thriller will probably have to wait until early 2024 before we get any news on the release date. Still, we’re super excited for more of Outer Range season 2.
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