Outer Range’s first season felt initially like a Yellowstone riff. But as the Prime Video series progressed, it became extremely clear that this Western—starring Josh Brolin, Lili Taylor, Imogen Poots, and an ominous giant hole—was heading in a much freakier direction. It sounds like season two will be leaning even more into that weirdness… but a bit less confusingly so.
Vanity Fair has some gorgeous but enigmatic first-look images of season two, as well as the reveal that all seven episodes will hit Prime Video May 16. It also reports that Outer Range had some behind-the-scenes shifts in the break between seasons, with Charles Murray (Luke Cage, Sons of Anarchy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars) stepping in as showrunner and executive producer. He replaced series creator Brian Watkins—a playwright who’d had no previous TV experience. Vanity Fair notes the parting was amicable, but Brolin told the magazine he thinks the change in command will help the series, which was almost too enigmatic in its first season. “With Brian, I think that he was given a responsibility that was irresponsible given his experience … It makes perfect sense to me why we were meandering at times,” Brolin said. “We had some people involved that were like, ‘You need to just trust’… and I was like, Yeah, bullshit. We need to know. We’re the storytellers and we create the mystery.”
The central mysteries of Outer Range surround that giant hole, which materializes on property owned by Brolin’s Wyoming rancher character and is eventually established to be a time portal. Along the way, various characters go missing, are revealed to have been born in different centuries, notice odd happenings that seem anachronistic, or are unmasked as characters we’ve already met who happen to be several years older than they should be. In season two, we’ll all take a time leap; the action begins in 1984 with a younger version of Brolin’s character, and Vanity Fair describes the narrative structure as “gamely hopping between different decades (and centuries) with newfound propulsion.”
An astrophysicist called in to help the time-travel stuff make sense—but according to new showrunner Murray, “The biggest part of what time travel meant to me and the writers was: How can this help us expose something that a character’s going through?” We’re very intrigued to see where this wild trail heads next.
Outer Range season one is now streaming on Prime Video; season two, which runs seven episodes (including one directed by Brolin), arrives May 16.
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