Episode two's, "The Land," opens with Autumn standing by the strange giant hole in the remote western area of the Abbot Ranch. What comes next are spoilers for episode one's, "The Void."
After the town sheriff brings news to the Abbot household that the FBI have stopped searching for Royal's eldest son Rhett's missing wife, Rhett and his younger brother Perry go out drinking. Perry fails to talk to an old flame back in town and while taking a drunk piss outside, one of the Tillerson sons, Trevor, makes a joke about stealing the Abbot's family land from them.
A confrontation ensues.
Despite finally talking to his old flame, Maria, a girlfriend from high school, Perry sees his brother and Trevor outside and leaves to intervene.
Perry ends up fighting the much drunker Trevor, beating him and losing his belt buckle. He tells Rhett to wait while he brings the truck around to take them home and asks his old flame to go back inside, warning her that the men she came in with--the Tillerson boys--are not to be trusted.
While Perry and Maria are gone, Trevor a seemingly poor loser tells the also drunk Rhett that Rhett's wife isn't drunk but probably ran away to find a better life away from him. Rhett snaps and knocks Trevor to the ground, hitting him repeatedly until hearing a sickening crunch. Perry arrives and in a panic they load Trevor in the truck and drive. They stop once on the road, Perry yelling at Rhett to tell him what to do--he is the younger brother and so understandably looks to his older brother for guidance but Rhett is drunk and now shocked by what he's done. A strange bison crosses the road, seemingly the same one their father Royal saw at the strange hole on the western reaches of their family's land.
The two brothers get home and Royal stumbles upon them in the barn, and tells Rhett to go to the house and clean himself up so him and Perry and handle the situation.
After Rhett cleans himself, Trevor's brothers, the other Tillerson boys arrive at the house demanding to know if he's seen Perry or their brother Trevor. Rhett lies and says he hasn't while flicking a switch by the door that flips the inside barn lights off and on to warn his father and brother. The Tillerson boys try to step inside but Rhett's daughter Amanda comes down the stairs asking for water. Ashamed of their behavior, the two men allow Rhett to fetch Amanda water and wait for him outside.
When Rhett returns and goes outside, the Tiller boy's break into the barn and see his brother Perry's truck. Rhett back-peddles, saying he did see his brother and that he was resting in the barn and didn't want anyone to disturb him. Due to boxes of hay stacked in the truck's bed, the two cannot see Trevor's blood. One of the Tillerson boys notices fresh horse droppings and tells his brother that someone's recently taken a horse and rode off into the night. Ignoring Rhett's protests for them to not drive out wildly into their family land, the Tillerson boys speed out in a truck and ATV toward the western reaches of the Abbot land.
Seeing the incoming lights in the distance, Rhett and Perry's father Abbot tries to ride his horse faster toward the hole but his horse spooks. Trevor's body falls and the horse flees into the dark, leaving Royal to carry the body the rest of the way. While crossing a wire fence, Royal scratches his back and loses his shirt but continues taking the body to the hole where he drops it in. Ambushed by a bright light, he slowly turns around and sees the hippy camper Autumn who asks him about the strange hole and the body. He tells her he doesn't know anything about the hole, that it just showed up one day. She approaches him and promises to not tell anyone about what she's seen and then pushes Royal into the hole.
Back to the opener of Outer Range's episode two, "The Land." Autumn, whose just pushed Royal into the hole stares into its depths and leaves. Unable to find Royal, the Tillerson boys return and demand to enter the Abbot house but some quick talking from Royal's wife Cecilia calms them down and commands them to leave in shame having broken down their property gate.
Royal wakes up on his property early the next morning and his horse returns to him. We see the scratches on his back and a new wound on his leg. He returns home and his sons and wife are surprised to see him, especially shirtless. They all try to pretend like nothing's happened and focus on the Tillerson ploy to take the western reaches of their land.
After Royal and Rhett visit their lawyer, they learn the Tillerson patriarch Wayne has most likely paid off people so that he can steal their western reaches. Royal tries to talk to Wayne himself but we learn the man is not only physically sick but malicious and bears a personal grudge toward Royal originating from when they first met as kids. Royal steals a business card he finds at the Tillerson house for a mining consultant which points to a possible reason for Wayne's interest in the western parts of the Abbot land.
I'm just going to cover the rest of episode two's The Land since it's rather strange and I don't want to recap in my next post lol.
Perry meets up with his old flame, Maria, and asks her not to say anything about his fight with Trevor.
Autumn wanders the Abbot land and find a strange marking on a cliffside. The youngest Abbot member, Amanda, Rhett's daughter, finds her and asks what she's up to. Autumn reveals that she's drawn the same symbol on the cliff all her life without knowing what it is and Amanda says that it looks a lot like the Abbot family crest except sideways. Autumn learns that Royal is still alive and looks relieved.
We later see Royal alone in the Abbot barn, looking at an old desk drawer, parts of which he removes to pull out a hidden piece of paper -- an old photo of a couple, maybe at least a hundred years old.
Source
Autumn sneaks up on him in the barn again, asks him how he's alive and what did he see. It looks like he doesn't want to answer but she then asks him if he can remember anything past the age of nine because she can't either. The expression on his face hints that he may have a similar memory issue and then we get a flashback to what happened to Royal after Autumn pushed him in the hole: he awakens in a purple-tinted version of the area around the hole. Two types of new infrastructures surround the hole, oiling rigs for deep mineral extraction and a bunch of armed spot-light towers full of soldiers with guns. They point their weapons at him and Royal sees a crowd in the distance around the hole--his son Perry, Autumn and some other blank-eyed looking people dressed in cultish uniforms, the eldest Tillerson boy Luke, and Royal's wife Cecilia. She goes to meet him with a sorrowful look on her face. He asks her what the hell happened to their land but his wife sadly replies that it's not their land anymore. She hugs him tight and then looks him in the eye, telling him that he's been dead for two years. Terror strikes Royal's eyes, it sounds impossible since he's alive and well right there. Cecilia then whispers into his ear for him to run and leaves him just as the oldest Tillerson boy pulls out a gun and tries to shoot Royal. The bullet nicks Royal's leg and he turns around to jump back in the hole.
Holy hell, but also not as outlandish as I expected. Episode two's "The Land," ends with the reveal that when Autumn pushed Royal into the strange hole he emerged back at the hole two years in the future. It makes immediate sense why Luke Tillerson would shoot Royal since he'd just dumped the man's brother Trevor's dead body in the hole -- which means in the future, Trevor's body is found by the hole, probably after the Tillerson's have acquired the western reaches of the Abbot land and begun drilling for minerals. But how did Royal die? Why can't he and Autumn remember their lives before the age of nine? And why has she been drawing an altered version of the Abbot family crest since before she can remember? Who the hell knows is what I say. I was expecting aliens, alien abduction, maybe even some werewolves or strange subterranean creatures but for now what we got is -- a hole that acts as a two way, two year door between the future and the past. This latest development does peak my interest but at the same time I wasn't as entirely intrigued or shocked as I would've hoped. Time travel is a tricky thing to do well and most shows and TV shows can use as a rather silly device but I have faith that Amazon and Outer Range's cast and crew will do it well. We don't know how the time-travel hole got there, and who or what made it. There's still room for aliens or whatever other supernatural element is responsible. It's a show about strange stuff that happens on a remote ranch in the country so some funny business with the cows is to be expected. The purple version of the future was a little hokey-looking, which made me wonder if "Outer Range" has the potential to get a little campy but it's good to be positive about these kinds of things.
Hope you enjoyed this review. A lot of it was summary with a final commentary conclusion. I didn't want to include too many distracting personal thoughts in the recap but I'll add more next time.