What Lies in Outer Range’s Future(s)?

Season two pushed the neo-western into a full-blown time-travel-epic territory, with all the perplexing paradoxes that entails.

From the beginning, Outer Range was made to confuse. This is a show about a giant hole that appears on the west pasture of a large ranch in Wyoming, but it has little to no interest in exploring its origins or the intricacies of its time-machine capabilities. Season one of the Prime Video drama featured its fair share of the sort of mind-bending twists that come with your typical time-travel show — particularly the fact that Autumn (Imogen Poots), the suspicious interloper who pushed Royal Abbott (Josh Brolin) into the hole in the very first episode, was actually a grown-up version of his granddaughter Amy (Olive Abercrombie). But the show often hinted at a more exciting version of itself that cut down on the somber monologuing and leaned into its thriller elements.

With Charles Murray taking over from creator Brian Watkins as showrunner in season two, Outer Range has become that more actualized self. This is no longer a ponderous, fitfully intriguing western with a dash of sci-fi; it’s a full-blown time-travel epic with all the perplexing paradoxes that entails. That means we get to see Sheriff Joy Hawk (Tamara Podemski) grapple with the history of her tribe when she travels back to the 1860s, Perry Abbott (Tom Pelphrey) befriend younger versions of his parents, and Royal fight to change a timeline that Autumn is deeply intent on preserving. The show can still be elliptical and withholding at times, but it’s mostly weird in a good way.

Of course, even more so than season one, season two is happy to answer a few questions while raising a whole lot more. Let’s unpack the second season’s lingering mysteries as we cross our fingers for a third.
 

When will we arrive at the future from Royal’s trip through the hole?

In some ways, the plot of this show actually revolves around Royal’s glimpse of the mysterious future way back in episode two of season one. That scene, while brief, gave us a rough idea of what the plot could be building toward: Autumn running a yellow-jumpsuit-wearing time cult, potentially in cahoots with a mining company called BY9 to exploit the Abbott ranch for all the time minerals buried beneath its fields. But while season two moved a few pieces into place to prepare us for that eventual destination, we didn’t get that much closer. Sure, Autumn picked up some manipulation tips from going to church with Cecilia, and the geologist Dr. Nia Bintu (who is involved with BY9 in some way) snuck onto the ranch to steal some samples of the mineral. But we still haven’t met any of Autumn’s followers besides Luke Tillerson, nor have we met anybody else from BY9 with designs on the ranch.

Is Royal’s premonition of dying still in play?

In that same early look at the future, Cecilia told Royal that he’d been dead for two years, and he later experienced a premonition of that moment. But the future never quite seems set in stone in this show, and enough circumstances changed in season two — especially with the introduction of alternate timelines — that it’s easy to imagine it all going down differently. It’s also hard to picture the main character of the show dying anytime soon, though that wouldn’t preclude some other version of Royal from showing up. We are dealing with time travel, after all.

Well, can the future be changed, or is it set in stone?

Here’s where things get tricky. For much of Outer Range’s run, the time-travel mechanics have seemed to follow Lost’s “whatever happened happened” rule: If the hole takes you to the past, anything you do there will end up incorporated into the original timeline. The Amy/Autumn duality is one example of this: By pushing her younger self into the hole in the finale, Autumn is intentionally closing a loop and creating the circumstances that will lead to, well, Autumn’s own existence in the present day (along with her rise to cult-leader status in the future). Another example: the roaming bison from season one with two arrows sticking out of it, explained in season two when we see two young hunters from Joy Hawk’s tribe after traveling to the 1880s. Yet another: Joy appearing in the background of an old photograph her daughter finds.

But there are exceptions to this rule, like Billy Tillerson’s (Noah Reid) visions of the future that turn out to be false (considering he dies). And season two adds a lot of complications to this dilemma: Joy’s experience of Royal killing his father to save her life differs from his memories of accidentally shooting his father while hunting. After he later compares notes with Joy, we see his memories start to shift to incorporate this apparent change in the timeline — or maybe this was always what happened and he just didn’t remember all the details until now. Does the hole have a way of ensuring that the basic events of the timeline stay intact even as the details get tweaked? Of course, that’s not even touching on the Perry of it all, which leads me to …

Did Perry just create a new timeline?

There are a lot of reckless characters in this show, but Perry might take the cake, from murdering Trevor Tillerson (Matt Lauria) in the first episode of the show to saving Trevor and therefore completely fucking up the timeline in the season-two finale. But Perry’s carelessness has been clear from the beginning of Perry’s time in the 1980s, when he introduces himself to a younger version of his father by using the fake name “Ben Younger” before quickly coming clean about his real identity. What was Perry thinking here — did he create a new timeline as soon as he chose to actively buddy up to his dad and share tons of details about the future? If it were the same timeline, wouldn’t our Royal remember meeting his son this whole time?

If that didn’t do the trick, though, saving Trevor and inadvertently leading to the death of Perry-from-the-pilot sure did. Past-Perry’s death should result in an unresolvable paradox, but Present-Perry just keeps on existing anyway, taking Past-Perry’s place (and maybe drawing the suspicion of Royal). It’s impossible to know where this story goes from here: Will Perry’s choices have adverse effects, either in this apparent branched-off timeline or in the main timeline? Either way, altering such a major event from the beginning of the show will result in a very different reality for everyone on the Abbott and Tillerson ranches.

Is there something special about Royal?

Of everyone, it seems like Royal and Autumn/Amy have the most personal relationships with the hole, perhaps because they were both displaced in time as kids. But is there something special that gives one or both of them an unusual awareness of or control over time? Royal is the only character who has ever successfully returned to his last location in time by promptly hopping back into the hole after falling in, and he seems adept at incorporating new memories from an altered timeline. What’s the true nature of his relationship to time?
 
Why did Amy waking up in the past save Autumn from her gunshot wound?After a scuffle in the finale, young Amy falls in the hole and travels (most likely) back in time, where she wakes up with amnesia and guesses that her name might be Autumn (a classic bootstrap paradox — the event caused itself with the name “Autumn” originating from nowhere). It’s an important full-circle moment in the timeline, but it comes with an unexpected side effect: After flatlining from getting shot by Joy, Autumn manages to pull through, saved by the continued existence (albeit in another time) of her younger self. But why does Amy waking up resurrect Autumn, and how do the two events happen at the “same time” around 15 years apart?

Is there any way to make Rhett and Maria interesting?

Royal’s bull-rider son Rhett was one of the weaker characters of season one; his dry love story with bank teller Maria rarely intersected with any of the more thrilling hole-related stuff, especially with Rhett so busy thinking about rodeos and protecting his brother from jail time. Unfortunately, season two is hardly an improvement in that regard. In fact, it seems the writers’ solution has largely been to sideline Rhett instead of really folding him in.

But the finale does hint at a new direction for both Rhett and Maria’s characters, both of whom resort to increasingly desperate tactics to make money and secure their future together. While Maria steals from the bank, Rhett proposes an arrangement with Dr. Bintu: If she gives him lots and lots of money, he’ll put in a good word with his dad so that she can continue her research on Abbott land. It’s nice to see Rhett get in on all the deception. Maybe it’ll make him a more compelling character in season three.
 

What does Wayne Tillerson know?

After losing his favorite son and burning down his house, Wayne begs the hole for a sign, which seems to lead to some kind of earth-shaking epiphany. But we don’t know exactly why he jumps into the hole or where he hopes it will take him.
 
Could Billy Tillerson still be alive? Okay, this one is a long shot. We saw Luke kill his brother and their father find the body. But it’s totally possible Wayne could create a third major timeline if the hole takes him back far enough to save Billy, and the writers fooled us once already with that shootout in the season-one finale. Who knows how far they’d go to keep Noah Reid around? This will be a much less musical show without him.