Warning, spoilers ahead for Outer Range season 1.
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Westerns are back in a big way thanks to shows like Yellowstone and for fans looking for more, Outer Range is definitely worth the watch. It's got all kinds of juicy drama, beautiful ranches, and some interesting mystery thrown in the mix. Josh Brolin leads the series as the cowboy Royal Abbott, struggling literally and figuratively, to fill a void in his life. You'll be immediately hooked, but the good news is Prime Video will be adding two new episodes each week instead of the typical one. Exciting if you're as impatient as I am to find out what happens next with the Abbott family.
Episode 1 of the first season, "The Void," first introduces the mysterious black hole that Royal finds out in one of his pastures. In Episode 2, "The Land," we get to actually see what was in there. Here are the six biggest takeaways from each of the first two episodes of Outer Range.
Episode 1
Richard Foreman/Prime Video
- We establish who exactly comprises the Abbott family. We have Royal, who inherited his Wyoming ranch after marrying his wife Cecilia. They have two children together. Their oldest son is Perry, who is taking care of his daughter Amy after the disappearance of his wife Rebecca 9 months prior. Their younger son Rhett is an aspiring bull rider like his dad was. Royal doesn't actually know who his real family is, he walked onto the Abbott Farm at the age of 9 and they adopted him with no memory of those first 9 years of life.
- Royal's neighbor Wayne Tillerson wants his land. He sends his three sons Luke, Billy and Trevor to let him know the county has given the Abbots 30 days to move back their fences because they are partially on his land.
- A strange hippie named Autumn from Boulder comes to camp on Royal's land. She pays him for the trouble and claims she's a poet needing inspiration. There's clearly more to her than meets the eye.
- Royal goes looking for some missing cattle around his property when he stumbles on a strange dark void. He throws things in it, nothing comes back out. He sticks his arm in it and sees a conversation he has in his house later that day when they find out the FBI will stop their investigation into Rebecca's disappearance.
- Perry and Rhett get into a fight with Trevor Tillerson at a bar and Perry, reacting to something Trevor said about his missing wife, beats him (most likely) to death. The boys get his body and quickly drive off, headed home unsure of what to do. Royal gets involved to help them cover this up and Luke and Billy come pounding on their front door for answers.
- At the very beginning of the episode, we saw a shirtless Royal tossing a body into a big black hole in the middle of the night. Then a flashlight shines on his face. We now know that Royal was throwing Trevor's body into the black hole but gets caught by Autumn. She tries to explain (very vaguely) that the origin of the pit is connected to the Greek God of Time, Chronos. We end with Autumn pushing Royal into the void.
Episode 2
Richard Foreman/Prime Video
- Royal wakes up in his pasture after the bizarre events of the night before. He returns home to see that his sons have already told his wife about Trevor's death and they decide to keep it a secret, though his brothers have already alerted his disappearance to the authorities.
- Royal decides to talk to Wayne about the issue of their land. If he gives him the portion he's wanting, that means he'd give him the black void. So he offers him 200 acres in a different area. Wayne only wants that one area, hinting at the fact that perhaps he knows what's there, or maybe he's feeling drawn to the void for some reason. Regardless, Royal decides to go to court to fight him.
- Perry's daughter Amy runs into Autumn who is surprised to hear that Royal is still alive. At the same time, Royal peeks through her tent and finds some bizarre items including a quantum mechanics book that makes him feel uneasy about her presence on their land.
- Royal gets all of his family members together to move all of the cattle from the west pasture to the east pasture to get them as far away from the void as possible. They don't understand the urgency, but he does; one of them could just walk right in, right?
- Autumn confronts Royal in the barn that night to hear what happened to him in the pit. She reveals that she too is missing memories of her life and somehow knows to ask him about the missing years from his childhood.
- We get to see what actually happened to Royal after he was thrown into the void. He finds himself in some sort of (maybe future) timeline where there is a large construction site built up around the hole. His wife and son are visible, as are Autumn and Luke Tillerson. Cecilia walks up to tell him he died two years prior and that this area is no longer their land. She tells him to run just in time because Luke runs out shooting his gun which results in a foot injury for Royal. He leaps back into the void and, apparently, back to his own timeline.
