Entertainment
Prime Video’s 2-Part Sci-Fi Western Series Is One of the Best on Any Streaming Platform
For a Western that is more than just your standard soapy drama fare like Yellowstone, one of the very best modern depictions of the American West doubles as a mysterious sci-fi drama on par with Lost in the way it presents its mysterious world. The show? None other than Prime Video’s Outer Range, which continues to bend minds even after it was prematurely canceled. We miss the neo-Western sci-fi series greatly, but even though it was axed before its time, it more than deserves a revisit.
What Is ‘Outer Range’ About?
Created by Brian Watkins, Outer Range is not what you expect when you sit down to watch the first episode. When rancher Royal Abbott (Josh Brolin) discovers a strange black hole on his Wyoming property — around the same time that his oldest son, Perry (Tom Pelphrey), kills a man — things for the Abbott family begin to shift beneath them. Between their financial troubles and the usual day-to-day struggles of the cowboy way of life, pressure mounts as a drifter named Autumn (Imogen Poots) waltzes into town, onto their property, and pries into their family business. What begins as a familial conflict between the Abbotts and the rival Tillersons turns into far more than a simple Western range war. Instead, the show takes a strange, supernatural turn by introducing time travel into the equation — and dark family secrets come to light.
Over the course of Outer Range‘s two seasons and 15 episodes, the thrilling time-travel drama pushes the limits of what the audience can handle, as characters begin to unravel at the realization that time can be altered. Brolin’s Royal and Lili Taylor‘s Cecilia are really the breakout stars here, who try to carry the family through such an unforeseen crisis, only to find that a wedge has been driven between them. Of course, the family’s dynamics prove more complicated than that, as the Abbotts’ youngest son, Rhett (Lewis Pullman), finds himself torn between his loyalties to his family and his lost love Maria (Isabel Arraiza), who continues to pull him away from them. We’re not even diving into all the weirdness of the Tillerson family, whose patriarch, Wayne (Will Patton, doing his best to both frighten and fascinate us), is completely off his rocker — and only gets more psychologically strange in the second season.
Even better, Outer Range begins as a metaphysical neo-Western set in the contemporary era that quickly falls into straight-up “Weird Western” territory, but it doesn’t stay there. In the show’s sophomore season, Deputy Sheriff Joy Hawk (Tamara Podemski) — who had been investigating the strange happenings around their town of Wabang — finds herself thrust into the Old West in the 1880s, and it’s with that shocking turn that the series starts to double as a classic Western. Pulling some of the most compelling genre elements of both period and contemporary tales of the American West, Outer Range goes to strange places, leading to countless fan theories that felt similar to how audiences responded to the island in Lost.
‘Outer Range’ Was Canceled Before Its Time, but the Ride Is Worth It
The only downside to a show like Outer Range is that you will get profoundly invested in the series and its complex mythology, only for Prime Video to pull the rug out from under you. Tragically, the sci-fi neo-Western was cancelled before its time (which is a bit crazy given the buzz around this highly rated show), but when each episode costs around $6 million to make, we can understand the steep cost.
Still, the streamer ought to have given Outer Range another season, if only to close the loop it (and that black hole) opened in the west pasture, or at the very least a feature conclusion that gave viewers more closure after all those cliffhangers. Regardless, Outer Range is one powerful ride that will keep you guessing until the very end, wondering how in the world you got so invested in a science fiction drama with Western trappings. Even with the expectation that not all of your questions will be answered, we can’t help but recommend this brilliant take on the genre.
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