Having forayed successfully into the Old West once already with Yellowstone, Paramount+ has spent the last few weeks celebrating the enormous success of Taylor Sheridan's follow-up series 1883. The first season reached its climax this weekend. It is axiomatic of sequel series that viewing figures tend to diminish. Still, audiences for the series have been numerous and loyal.
After earning a record-breaking audience of 4.9 million viewers for its premiere before Christmas, early reports suggested 1883 attracted similar numbers of viewers to Yellowstone, which was already the most successful original programming streamed on the network. Subsequent guest spots by major box office draws such as Tom Hanks, Billy Bob Thornton (tapped last week by showrunner Taylor Sheridan for a starring role in upcoming production Land Man), and Graham Greene cemented 1883's status as Paramount's newest prestige drama.
Earlier this month, the news broke that the network had already commissioned a second run of episodes. Whether they will constitute a second season has not quite been confirmed, and a premiere date has yet to be announced, though December 2022 may be likely.
So what can fans expect next from life on the trail for the Duttons in the future?
What Lies in Store for Shea Brennan?
Much of 1883's critical acclaim has centered around the performance of Sam Elliott in the lead role as former Civil War soldier Shea Brennan. An elder statesman of the Western genre - his earliest film appearances included supporting roles in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Molly and Lawless John (1972), and, most memorably, opposite Val Kilmer and Bill Paxton as Virgil Earp in Tombstone (1993) - Elliott has brought panache and a certain understated charm to the part.
In the character of Brennan, Elliott had a lot of material to work with. As the first series began, Brennan's wife and child were dead of smallpox. Heartbroken, Brennan torches his family's home with their bodies inside and contemplates his suicide when fellow Civil War veteran Thomas (played with deftness by Legends of Tomorrow actor LaMonica Garrett) convinces him of his own utility, and they head out together. Shortly after, they encounter James Dutton (Tim McGraw) fending off an attack on his wagon by bandits before all three arrive at Forth Worth, Texas.
Here Brennan finds his role, acting as the guide of a group of woefully under-prepared German settlers, headed by Berlin actor Marc Rissmann, whose transition from German television and film to high-profile English-language TV appearances such as Game of Thrones looks set to continue after a pitch-perfect performance here. But at the back of viewers' minds is the vow Brennan made early in the series -- that he wants to see the frontier one last time before the encroachment of ever-increasing numbers of settlers destroys it forever. The interplay between his growing feelings for his companions and the one-last-hurrah nature of the trip will make for an intriguing source of drama.
How Will the Duttons’ Relations With Native Americans Play Out?
Contrary to Brennan's pronouncement early in the series, the land in front of the Duttons was not a no-man's-land. The presence of many tribes of Native Americans is an integral component of 1883, although the series -- whose official synopsis refers to "untamed America," with all the connotations of "civilizing" settlement that that implies- - has been accused of reductionism by IndieWire in a closely-argued critique.
Episode 9 saw the Duttons in a dilemma with fatal consequences, as they come across the site of an atrocity. -- a destroyed Lakota camp, filled with the bodies of women and children. The remainder of the episode saw the group in a race against time to apprehend the perpetrators of the crime before being mistaken for them by the Lakota warriors, who then discover the scene of the massacre. The episode ended with the two parties at peace, though not before the source of the flash-forward involving Elsa from earlier in the series was resolved. But the tension between the settlers and the Native Americans -- who, after all, are witnessing the encroachment on their homelands -- remains an open question.
How Was Yellowstone Founded?
We got something of a feel for this in last week's episode (and without revealing too many plot points, the Duttons' reasoning for settling where they did is maudlin). But the transition from the sort of modest-looking settler house we might expect to see and the grand old ranch house of Yellowstone will be an interesting one to explore.
The series finale, titled "This Is Not Your Heaven," drops on Sunday.