Prime Video's Best Sci-Fi Western Coming Back with 'Bonkers' Season 2

Summary

• In 2022, Prime Video released one of the wildest takes on the Western genre.
• Due to its unconventional nature, the series sent many viewers into a complete frenzy.
• Almost two years later, Prime Video released the trailer for the second season.

In recent years, there have been a number of films and television shows that have attempted to deconstruct the foundations of the Western genre in order to create something fundamentally new.

Some directors and screenwriters are attempting to reexamine the romanticization of the genre itself by presenting a darker, more realistic portrait of the period. Some pose questions about the erased history of people of color in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And some, on the contrary, offer a crazy mashup of genres by inserting cowboys into fantasy settings, as was the case with the Wynonna Earp series, for example.

Probably one of the best modern westerns is Yellowstone. It's certainly not as wild as Wynonna Earp, but Taylor Sheridan manages to convey a deep contemplation on the idea that no matter what era, people are always driven by greed and cynicism.

But give Yellowstone a sci-fi twist that not only figuratively but literally crosses the timelines of the Old West and the New West, and the result may be the most original genre fusion to date: Prime's Outer Range, starring Josh Brolin.

The first season ended in the spring of 2022, and while news of a renewal broke in October of that year, we haven't seen any details in nearly two years. But that was until recently, when Prime Video released a trailer for the upcoming season, and from the looks of it, it promises to be even more bonkers than the previous one.

High Scores of the First Season

Outer Range is a show whose genre is impossible to define. On the one hand, the plot revolves around a modern-day dispute between two ranching families over land in Wyoming, which brings the series incredibly close to the aforementioned Yellowstone and thus makes Outer Range something of a neo-Western.

On the other hand, the series quickly turns into a mystery-thriller, as the plot is driven by the murder of a member of a rival ranching family and the subsequent investigation.

But most importantly, the series has a surreal sci-fi framework, as a mysterious giant hole appears on the land of the Josh Brolin's family, resulting from the convergence of the very matter of space and time, placing the Old West and the New West on the same temporal axis.

While the family drama at the heart of the story isn't the most original (comparisons to Yellowstone only confirm this), such a witty and novel fusion of genres has impressed critics and audiences alike. With a 79% approval score from critics and a 60% approval score from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, it's a dark, bizarre and mysterious show that, by most accounts, offers profound themes of faith and redemption.

New Trailer Wows Fans

And now, a year and a half after the second season of Outer Range was announced, Prime Video has finally released the trailer on April 15, 2024, and the plot promises to be even crazier.

Judging by the trailer, the plot will continue the theme of finding the suddenly missing Amy (Olive Abercrombie), and at the center of all the Wyoming mayhem will once again be Royal (Brolin) and Autumn (Imogen Poots), who are hiding the fact that they are both unwitting time travelers.

Despite its bizarre nature, many fans consider Outer Range to be just about the best project produced under the auspices of Amazon, which is due to the unconventional story and great performances led by Josh Brolin. By the way, Brolin will direct six episodes of the new season. The total number of episodes will be seven.

Outer Range Season 2 will be released on Prime Video exactly one month from now, on May 16, 2024.