Everything to Know About Outer Range Season 2

One of the most fascinating shows to spawn from the neo-Western craze inspired by the success of Yellowstone is Amazon Prime Video's Outer Range. The series stars Josh Brolin as Royal Abbott, a rancher whose land is threatened by rivals — sounds like Yellowstone so far, right? But once Royal discovers a mysterious hole in one of his pastures, Outer Range pivots into a science-fiction mystery wearing a cowboy hat, mashing up genres for an adventure involving time travel, Indigenous mysticism, and, quite possibly, the thin divide between Heaven and Hell. (It's a wild one!)

Season 1 of Outer Range debuted in 2022, and after a long break, Outer Range Season 2 finally has a release date. We've been keeping track of everything happening between the Abbotts, the rival Tillersons, and the vast unknown of the Wyoming wilderness, and will try to answer all your questions about Season 2 below.

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Outer Range Season 2 release date

We're going back in the hole soon! Prime Video announced that Outer Range Season 2 will be released on May 16. If it seems like it's been a while since we hung out with Royal, Autumn, the Abbotts, the Tillersons, and herds of stampeding bison, it's because it has. Season 1 premiered on April 15, 2022.

How many episodes will be in Outer Range Season 2?

Outer Range Season 2 will consist of seven episodes. That's one fewer than Season 1, which had eight episodes. All seven episodes will be available on May 16. The all-at-once drop is different from the rollout of Season 1, which released episodes two at a time weekly. 

Outer Range Season 2 crew changes

Outer Range may feel different in Season 2 because there's a new person running things. Brian Watkins, who wrote the first season and served as showrunner, has been replaced as showrunner by TV veteran Charles Murray. Brolin will also direct an episode this season.

What is Outer Range about?

A better question might be "What ISN'T Outer Range about?" Though Outer Range is a Western on the surface, the Prime Video series starts off as a murder mystery and family drama before quickly revealing its true self as a time-traveling science-fiction show. The fun begins when Wyoming rancher Royal Abbott (Josh Brolin) finds a massive, perfectly round hole in the ground in one of his pastures, which disrupts the life of his family — wife Cecilia (Lili Taylor), elder son Perry (Tom Pelphrey), and youngest son Rhett (Lewis Pullman). Things get more complicated when his rival neighbors, the Tillersons — patriarch Wayne (Will Patton), middle son Luke (Shaun Sipos), and youngest son Billy (Noah Reid) — suspect the Abbotts are responsible for the murder of Trevor Tillerson, the eldest son of Wayne (they're right). But all that drifts away as a stranger named Autumn (Imogen Poots) shows up just as secrets of the hole are starting to be revealed, mountains begin to disappear, and odd anachronistic events happen.   

Outer Range Season 2 plot

We don't know a whole lot about what's going to happen in Season 2 — heck, we can barely understand what happened in Season 1. But Prime Video did give this minor description of Season 2: "Building on Season 1's thoughtfully laid foundation that set the central mystery in motion, comes an invigorating sophomore season full of payoffs, grounded twists, and liberated character journeys." What strikes me there is "season full of payoffs," which may be a reaction to Season 1 keeping most of its secrets close to its chest.

Apparently even Brolin was frustrated with the lack of answers in Season 1. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Brolin said, "We had some people involved that were like, 'You need to just trust'… and I was like, Yeah, bullsh--. We need to know. We're the storytellers and we create the mystery." Expect a more accelerated season in Season 2.

We'd guess that Season 2 is going to be monumental as the characters begin to learn the secrets of Royal's mysterious hole in the ground, the black ooze that is bubbling up from the earth and the "time" crystals it produces, and the huge revelation that Autumn is actually Amy, Royal's granddaughter. As the time travel aspect begins to come into focus, Season 2 has the potential to really get wacky, with possibilities of different versions of characters (young and old Amy/Autumn, for example) and visits to both the past and the future. We'll also hopefully get answers to what happened to Perry after he jumped in the hole in the penultimate episode, why Rebecca (Kristen Connolly), Perry's wife and Amy's mother, returned at the end of the season, and what exactly all these new animals are doing running around the plains.    

How did Outer Range Season 1 end?

Oh boy, strap in to your saddle, because this is a wild ride. For reasons not entirely clear, Autumn (and her new boo Billy) tried to kill Royal, but Royal shot Billy, likely fatally (nooooo!), sending their truck flipping off the road. Before Royal could finish Autumn off, a stampede of bison, which probably emerged from another time period via the hole, stopped him. Upon inspecting Autumn closer, Royal discovered she had the same scar on her forehead as his granddaughter Amy, revealing that Autumn is actually the older version of Amy. At the rodeo, Rhett won first place after a shoulder injury, and young Amy (Olive Abercrombie) found her mom, Rebecca, who had been missing. Rebecca then took Amy somewhere, but we don't know where. Luke found a vein of the black ooze under his family's ranch, but his joyous celebration was cut short by the bison stampede, and it's possible he was trampled. Deputy Sheriff Joy (Tamara Podemski) witnessed the herd of bison traveling through the valley, which would have been weird already, but she also saw tribes of Native Americans — presumably from another time period — hunting them down. In the final scene, as Royal brings Autumn/Amy back to his house, Cecilia — now broken over her family's dismantling — bemoans the fact that her family is gone, including Amy, to which Royal responds, "No she's not."

Outer Range Season 2 cast

Outer Range is one of those shows where dead doesn't mean gone, which is good news for some of our favorite characters from the show. Obviously, lead Josh Brolin will be back, and we can be sure that Lili Taylor, Imogen Poots, Tamara Podemski, and Lewis Pullman will return. Based on how their characters fared toward the end of last season, we're less certain that Tom Pelphrey, Noah Reid, Shaun Sipos, and Will Patton will return as series regulars. However, we have seen all of them in promotional images for Season 2, so they appear to be back at least in some capacity. New cast members have also been added, but some details of their characters are being kept secret.

Outer Range main cast:

• Josh Brolin as Royal Abbott, the Abbott patriarch who finds a hole in the ground. He is actually from the 1800s and jumped into the void hole as a boy after he killed his father, arriving in the 1960s and living with the Abbott family.
• Lili Taylor as Cecilia Abbott, Royal's wife and the mother of Perry and Rhett.
• Imogen Poots as Autumn, an educated drifter who knows more about the hole than she initially lets on. In the Season 1 finale, it's revealed she is actually the older version of Amy, Royal's granddaughter, and must have used the hole to travel back in time to present day.
• Tom Pelphrey as Perry Abbott, the eldest son of Royal and Cecilia, husband of Rebecca, and father of Amy. He murdered Trevor Tillerson, further sparking the Tillerson-Abbott rivalry and eventually jumped into the hole in the penultimate episode of Season 1. His whereabouts — and whenabouts — are unknown.
• Lewis Pullman as Rhett Abbott, the youngest son of Royal and Cecilia and a rodeo star. At the end of Season 1, he is in a car with his girlfriend Maria and crashes into a billboard during a bison stampede.
• Tamara Podemski as Deputy Sheriff Joy Hawk, the law enforcement agent investigating Trevor's death, who is suspicious of the Abbotts. 
• Shaun Sipos as Luke Tillerson, the middle son of Wayne and older brother of Billy. He was last seen getting trampled by bison in the Season 1 finale. 
• Noah Reid as Billy Tillerson, the youngest son of Wayne and new boyfriend/follower of Autumn. Great singer. He looked pretty dead after he was shot by Royal in the Season 1 finale, but in this show, anything can happen.
• Will Patton as Wayne Tillerson, the patriarch of the Tillersons. He fell ill in Season 1 and wasn't doing well.

New cast members (some character descriptions not available):

• Christian James as young Royal
• Megan West as young Cecilia
• Daniel Abeles
• Kimberly Guerrero
• Monette Moio

Outer Range Season 1 review

Here's our review of the first season of Outer Range, which we called "a thrill, even if it's not always clear-headed." We also named it one of the best shows of 2022, and one of the best shows on Prime Video in 2022. 

Where can I watch Outer Range?

Outer Range can be streamed on Prime Video.