Outer Range Review: The Unknown / The West (Season 1 Episodes 7 and 8)
I’m not sure what I expected. But it wasn’t this.
Let’s start with Outer Range Season 1 Episode 7, “The Unknown.” The Abbott family is dealing with the aftermath of Perry’s confession, the Tillersons are a house divided, and the Sheriff knows there’s more going on than what everyone is telling her.
In many ways, the show is consistent. Consistently confusing, but still consistent. We’ve been given the news that the hole is all about time, which… okay, we sort of knew already. Beyond that, we’re just not learning much about what’s going on.
We don’t even get another glimpse inside the hole or to the other side of it. Autumn claims she knows all about the hole, and Billy eats the hole dust and says it gives him visions.
But how does Autumn know all this? Does she actually know? And are they visions Billy’s having, or are they just the results of a whole lot of dirt eating?
The other thing we have to consider about Autumn is that she’s unmedicated and has just gone through a whole lot of trauma (or should I say, a hole lot of trauma). What she’s dealing with is serious, and it’s possible that some or most of what she’s saying just isn’t true.
As far as Billy goes, well. What is there to say? He is at times unsettling, other times, endearing. He’s soft-spoken and kind of a creep, but for some reason, I’m drawn to him.
Billy, played by Noah Reid, is a prime example of the duality of all the characters on Outer Range. At some point or another, we all find ourselves rooting for each one of them. Then it seems that only moments later, we’re disturbed by some action of theirs.
And since I’m using Billy as an example, I’ll just say that I was rooting for him when his brother and mother discovered he was the sole heir of the Tillerson estate. And then I found myself looking away from the screen every time he and Autumn kissed.
Seriously. Did we need the closeups?
Cecelia Abbott is another character that shows herself to be complex and pitiful. She holds strong to her faith, then loses it almost immediately as her family falls apart. She puts up the family ranch for bail to get Perry home for a little while. She makes bad decisions, and yet we can all feel the motivation behind each and every one.
This is why it angers me that Perry just decided to chuck himself into the hole so that he could escape the consequences of his actions.
At the start of Outer Range Season 1 Episode 8, “The West,” things are further complicated by the closing of the hole. We still haven’t gotten any answers about how it got there, so it follows that we would get no answers as to why it decided to close.
I have theories, of course. The hole and the mineral or substance or whatever it is that activated the time portal seems to be a sort of part of the Abbott ranch. This is why the land is so valuable to Wayne Tillerson, and my guess is that he knows all about the origins of the hole.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I wasn’t wrong about my last theory. Autumn and Amy are the same person, and even though we don’t exactly know how it happened, we know that Amy, at some point, lost her memories about her childhood and changed her name.
It feels like we got a lot of new information with these last two episodes. We discovered that Royal shot his father when he was a kid in the 1880s, slipped down the hole to get away from it all, and then climbed back out in the 1960s.
We also learned that the hole dirt gives strength or life or something of that nature, as demonstrated by Billy feeding it to his father to keep him alive.
We learned that Luke isn’t above murdering his own dad to get the land he thinks he deserves. And I learned that I’m okay with that, even though it didn’t end up panning out.
Amy’s mother and Perry’s estranged, presumed dead wife shows up and takes Amy away, though we’re not sure where to or if it’s in the same timeline.
And yet despite all of this information, we are no closer to learning why the holes are showing up or what purpose they serve. Because while they’re clearly time portals, they also appear to be transportation from one side of the ranch to another. Or else the buffalo are roaming in the same place in both timelines.
But the most devastating moment for me was when Billy died, shot dead through his windshield by Royal Abbott during a car chase. Billy, though at times terrifying and unsettling, was also endearing and something of a sweetheart.
I was hoping we would see more of him, especially since he seemed motivated more by the manipulative tactics of others rather than his own free will. In my opinion, the Tillerson boys were still more upstanding than the Abbotts.
Is Luke dead? Did he get trampled by the buffalo that shot out of that hole he dug? What about Autumn? I was certain she was dead until Royal carried her home. Will Billy stay dead given the pervasive theme about nothing ever really being gone?
The only way to know for sure will be if we get a season two. Until that happens, if it does happen, we can spend our free time trying to figure out what we just spent four weeks watching.
Whatever this series is, I’m into it.
What did you think of these episodes of Outer Range? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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All eight episodes of Outer Range are now streaming on Prime Video.
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