Outer Range – Season 2 Episode 2 Recap & Review

Traces to Somewhere

Episode 2 of Outer Range season 2 starts with Royal out in the pasture. While examining the land, he notices holes in the ground. He also finds what looks to be a tent peg in the ground, with “Property of UW” written on the side.

As for Cece, she’s lost her faith and tries to bring that back at the church. She shows up with flyers and wants to spread the word about Amy’s disappearance. Autumn speaks up when others are whispering about Cece and her tragedy, calling them out for being “sanctimonious pieces of shit”.

When the pair leave, Autumn opens up a bit to Cece in the car. She brings up how her head has been hurting since she was 10 and her mother never gave any straight answers. She was adopted and doesn’t know her origins.

Elsewhere, Wayne continues to sing to Billy, who’s comatose. Luke though is spiralling and he’s struggling to hold it together. Shouting outside announces the arrival of Patricia. It’s not Patricia that awakens him though but actually a song, which Billy sings to Autumn inside his mind. When he finally awakens, he shows off the brand on his chest. Seeing that it’s the mark of Abbott’s ranch, Wayne is shocked and decides he’s going to deal with Royal “Old Testament” style.

By the cat motel, it appears like the owner has the hots for Rhett. There’s a brief scene here that feels reminiscent of the humorous scene with the truck driver car wash in Dodgeball but whether intentional or not, it’s still quite a bizarrely surreal thing to put in this part of the show. Anyway, while he works to fix their car, Maria shows and decides they should head out to Montana when they hit the road again. Whitefish to be precise.

Royal shows up at UW and speaks to Dr Nia. He shows off what’s he’s found in the wilderness and wants answers. Apparently she wants something from the land and can’t make heads or tails of what’s there. The elemental components don’t make sense and she has a theory. She believes that “time” is stuck under the ground. “Science doesn’t make sense until it does,” She says, and believes that someone – preferably her – figure out what all of this means.

When Royal leaves, he drops off a bullet on the table; a reminder that this is his land and he ain’t giving it up without a fight.

Rhett and Maria stop by the bar to say goodbye, but Rhett is shocked when he finds out Amy is missing. He can’t leave now and although Maria is a bit disappointed, she knows why this can’t happen right now.

Royal is there and the pair talk at the bar. Royal knows that the Tillersons are coming for his ranch – and now there’s also Nia to contend with too.

In the past, Perry (now adopting the name of Ben) shows up at the bar, in a scene that runs parallel to the one we saw in the present. He finds Royal there, and tells him to stop pestering for work. Perry is straight up, and cuts the BS. He brings up how Royal is his dad and that he came through the same hole. Given we know Royal’s backstory, it makes sense that he’ll believe him.

As they talk about the future – Perry’s past – there’s a question around whether this is going to disrupt causality. I mean, after all if you tell someone how they’re going to die and they actively avoid that happening, would that mess up the timeline? Anyway, we don’t get that far, as Royal questions what’s going to happen if Perry is stuck in the past. For now, Royal brings Perry into the house, and although Cece isn’t particularly happy about it, it turns out Wayne Tillerson is here too. He’s romantically involved with Cece, which throws everything Perry knew into question.

Elsewhere, Martha is brought out into the wilderness with a whole bunch of others to try and find Joy. Of course, we know that she’s not going to be found, given she’s way back in 1882. Now, one of the women in this tribe happens to be “just like her” as she too travelled back through a hole. Her name in this time period translates to Falling Star.

Falling Star is from 1972 to be precise, and when she showed, a hunting party found her. She was saved by a vision from someone inside the camp, who believed she was sent to negotiate and help. That much is actually true as, despite being a nurse, her ability to speak Shoshone and English makes her a powerful negotiator.

The pair head out together on horses to sort out their rent. However, Joy is shocked when she faces the most unlikely little boy with his family… Royal Abbott. Apparently the hole is gone in this time period, so there’s no way for Joy to return, and she’s just got to accept that this is the new reality now.

Joy cradles her phone when they return to camp and looks at old photos before her phone dies. And of course, with no way to charge it up, this feels like the proverbial end for her old life.

As the episode closes out, we cut back to the present timeline. Cece speaks to Royal and reveals what he’s missing. He also brings up Amy, and how Rebecca is back after taking her. She was having an affair with Lewis Mays (which we know from the parts of episode 1) but her whereabouts are still unknown.

So what of Autumn? Well, she happens to be upstairs cycling through her bible. She comes across some passages about how to treat others, and we also see a few menacing signs that all is not right with her. But what is her part to play in this puzzle? We’ll have to wait and see.

The Episode Review

Outer Range continues to twist the knife and deepen the mystery, especially with the multiple time periods that all seem to be running parallel but building up to a larger picture of how the past and present tie together. We haven’t seen the future timeline yet though, which I’m guessing we’re building up to, but similarly we don’t know all the rules of this time travel either.

This is somewhat contentious because we don’t know if time can be manipulated and changed, or whether everything happened as it was supposed to and all of this is preordained. Getting into this territory is a slippery slope, and aside from Dark and 12 Monkeys (the TV show) few other series have managed to pull this off without leaving big plot holes and gaps.

Still, it’s early days yet and we’ll have to wait and see if Outer Range can keep it up or not.