Outer Range: Amazon Prime's Strange Sci-Fi Western, Explained

If you remember hearing rumblings about a neo-Western sci-fi series on Prime Video a few years back, then you've probably heard of "Outer Range." This Josh Brolin-led streaming drama followed the Abbott family, multi-generation Wyoming ranchers, as they stumbled upon strange happenings in their small town. But just because the town is tiny doesn't mean that the events are insignificant. Time is the essence here, and as family patriarch Royal (Brolin) fights to keep his secrets, everything begins to fall apart around him. Created by Brian Watkins, the series ran for two seasons on Amazon's streaming platform before it was unceremoniously canceled in 2024, and we're still not over it.

What some viewers might have written off as Prime Video just trying to recapture the success of "Yellowstone" (which, ironically, Brolin's own daughter played a part on) ended up more akin to cult favorites like "Twin Peaks." The show's thrilling, multi-layered mythology was incredibly engaging, and the rural American West backdrop only added to the mystery. Season 2 was especially profound, emphasizing the time travel elements introduced in Season 1 and allowing the show to engage in traditional Western flare. But what is "Outer Range"? Well, allow us to break it down for you.

At its core, "Outer Range" is about a family who discovers a black hole in their backyard. Of course, this is no ordinary hole, but is actually a portal through time itself. Throughout the first season, we learn that Royal has his own experience with this hole, and, because of this history, he chooses to keep it a secret from his family for the majority of the season. As this is happening, his elder son, Perry (Tom Pelphrey, who loved working alongside Josh Brolin on the series), kills the son of rival rancher Wayne Tillerson (Will Patton) in a drunken rage after Tillerson insults his missing wife. This prompts Wayne to come at the Abbotts in full force, threatening to take their land (and thus their entire legacy) away from them.

But that's not the only major factor at play. Drifter Autumn Rivers (Imogen Poots) arrives on the Abbott Ranch looking for a place to camp, but it turns out she's been drawn there by some otherworldly force — presumably the hole itself. Throughout the whole season, Royal and Autumn find themselves at odds as they each attempt to secure the west pasture for themselves, all while Wayne is also closing in. Fighting over what they don't understand, everything comes to a head in the Season 1 finale, which reveals a startling truth.

As Royal and Autumn battle one another, the latter recruits Wayne's son Billy (Noah Reid) to her cause. Billy ingests some of the black dust that comes from the hole, which gives him strange visions of the future. And he's not the only one; Royal's contact with the material gives him a vision of the future as well, specifically, his death in his wife Cecilia's (Lili Taylor) arms. The way Autumn explains the black dust is that it's a physical manifestation of time itself. When properly manipulated, one can control the past and the future.

But Royal already knows what the hole can do. Not only had he been pushed by Autumn into the hole, sending him to the near future at the beginning of the series, but he himself was already a time traveler beforehand. As Perry struggles to pay for his crimes, Royal reveals that he was born in the classic Western time period of the late 1800s and, after accidentally killing his own father, ended up traveling through time and was raised by the Abbotts. Realizing that time travel is what he needs to escape the law, Perry jumps into the hole, and it closes, seemingly vanishing forever.

It doesn't stay closed for too long, though, as Billy Tillerson's brother, Luke (Shaun Sipos), manages to open it again on his own, and Sheriff Joy Hawk (Tamara Podemski) finds herself accidentally traveling back to the very past that Royal came from. But perhaps the biggest revelation of the Season 1 finale, "The West," is that Autumn is actually an older version of Royal's granddaughter/Perry's daughter Amy (Olive Elise Abercrombie), who has no memory of her childhood. Feeling compassion for her, Royal brings her home, hoping to rebuild his fractured family.

Season 2 picks up where Season 1 left off, and a lot happens in seven episodes. Highlights include Joy living in the 1880s until she returns to the present, Billy and Luke's murderous feud that ends with the latter brother killing the other, and Royal and Cecilia's other son, Rhett (Lewis Pullman), aids a group called BY9, who aims to synthesize the time mineral for their own use. If Season 1 was a bit of a mind-trip, then Season 2 dials everything up to 11. But things get especially out of hand in the final episode, "The End of Innocence." 

After being trapped in the '60s with a younger Royal (Christian James) all season, Perry jumps back in the hole to travel to the events of the first episode, stopping himself from killing Trevor Tillerson (Matt Lauria). Unfortunately, his slightly younger self is killed instead, and he takes his now-deceased self's place in the timeline. Meanwhile, Autumn throws away any shot at redemption by convincing Luke to help her kidnap Amy, who she then throws into the hole to ensure her own existence. Afterward, Royal has a stroke and receives a vision in which the whole cast ominously chants, "Time is a river, Royal. This is your destiny."

If all of that sounds bonkers, let's not forget that a grief-stricken Wayne also traveled back to an unknown time, Joy was saved in the past by nine-year-old Royal (Teaguen Arbogast), who actually killed his father to protect her, and Amy woke up in the past with no memory of anything but the name "Autumn." The show ends with Autumn, in Royal's vision, telling him that "this is only the beginning." Unfortunately, though we wish it was an accurate prediction, that didn't prove quite true.