[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for Landman’s Season 1 finale, “The Crumbs of Hope.”]
Landman‘s first season came to a consequential end with Sunday’s (January 12) finale, which saw one major death and another attempted assassination of the show’s major players.
After the penultimate episode brought Monty’s (Jon Hamm) mysterious heart condition to the fore, the Season 1 closer begins on a grim note for the M-Tex president. His heart stops on the table during surgery, and he needs a transplant, according to Cami (Demi Moore). Worse, he might not ever get well enough to qualify for organ donation.
Tommy (Billy Bob Thornton) is the heir apparent to Monty’s job, according to his will, as well as the chosen estate executor, and he wants Cami and their lawyer to join the board and help him carry out Monty’s wishes. For her first decision, she has to choose what to do with a pending “farm-out” deal that could set the family up for life but might not be enough to make Monty’s name immortal. After learning just how severe his condition is, she asks Tommy to roll the dice one more time, even if it means putting everything she owns on the line.
From there, Tommy gets to the matter of making this happen. He teams a reluctant Rebecca (Kayla Wallace), who now has some moral concerns about promoting fracking, up with Dale (James Jordan) and an even more reluctant Nate (Colm Feore) for a crash course in the oil business before she moves on to any negotiations.
Meanwhile, Angela (Ali Larter) and Ainsley (Michelle Randolph) treat the old folks to their saucy strip club field trip, which includes her new boyfriend putting on a jockstrap for the ladies in the community, and Cooper (Jacob Lofland) comforts Ariana (Paulina Chavez) after she experiences a swell of grief from sorting through her late husband’s things.
Things get really chaotic when Tommy is suddenly kidnapped by the cartel, who blow up one of the wells as a show of force and proceed to torture him until their boss, Galino (played by the iconic Andy Garcia), shows up and offs his team to make nice with Tommy.
Tommy is freed, albeit far worse for the wear, and Monty dies in the arms of his wife. When Tommy arrives with bruises he can’t explain to her, Angela is distraught but puts on a happy face to make her family blueberry pancakes, and Tommy steps outside to take in what’s just happened to him: a promotion, a loss, and a new partnership with a drug kingpin.
So where will the show go from here when it’s inevitably renewed for a second season? TV Insider caught up with co-creator Christian Wallace to break down the episode and dig into what might happen in Season 2, if and when the show returns as part of Paramount+’s Taylor Sheridan Universe.
First, more broadly, what was your collaborative process with Taylor Sheridan like on Landman?
Christian Wallace: We talked about it for about two years before any scripts were ever written. So there were a lot of phone calls, a lot of in-person meetings, just talking about the characters, the world, where we wanted things to go. And then he asked me at one point to go off and write a spec script. I did that based on the things we’d been speaking about, and he got back in touch with me and said, “I’d like to make you the co-creator of the show.” And then we just kind of started working on the actual storyline, and Taylor would go and actually write the scripts and produce those based on stuff that we had talked about or just the ideas that he had in his head.
How did that Jerry Jones cameo come to be?
I did not pick the cameo, but I was delighted when I heard that Jerry Jones was going to be in the show. That was all Taylor. Taylor and Jerry Jones have had a relationship for some time, and so Taylor was the one that made all of that happen.
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There was kind of a slow burn with Monty’s health condition. Can you talk about kind of building that to the crescendo in this finale?
Yeah, you kind of drop these little pieces throughout the entire season. There’s Monty checking his heart rate on his watch or his wife Cami telling him no more coffee and just little things that were dropped this entire time to kind of let you know that something’s going on so that when it does finally happen, it’s not just completely out of nowhere. But you also don’t wanna be too heavy-handed about it and just telegraph that explicitly to the viewers. So it’s just kind of a matter of trying to strike that balance of letting people know that there’s an issue without making it just the only thing that they can think about.
In the finale, we also got a really great monologue from Demi Moore. It seems like you saved the best of her for last. Can you talk about that performance and then also the timing of it being just right after the Golden Globes?
Well, that was purely coincidental as far as the Golden Globes and that [speech]. Great timing, but very coincidental timing. And I think Demi’s character in this first season was kind of playing a little bit of second fiddle to Monty, at least in his role as the president of M-Tex Oil. He’s the one that’s calling the shots and has to make these big decisions, and so he’s really the one that’s thrust in the fire and is honestly kind of trying to shield his family from the stress that he’s experiencing, which ultimately plays a role in his demise. And Cami is aware but is not involved in the daily ongoings of M-Tex. And so his passing is kind of an incredible opportunity for Cami to play a bigger role in this world.
So you expect to see more of her as the show goes forward?
If the show were to go forward, I think everyone involved would love to see more of Cami and more of Demi.
Emerson Miller/Paramount+
In this episode, things come to a head between Tommy and Rebecca. Can you talk about that?
I think she definitely gets under Tommy’s skin kind of the entire time… There are a few moments where they’re on the same page working towards the same goals — obviously, that scene in the boardroom, during the deposition when Rebecca really lets the other team of attorneys have it, I think that is just like such a great moment for Rebecca. But for the most part, Tommy is deeply suspicious of Rebecca and her intentions, and so they haven’t really ever been working exactly on towards the same aims. So that has set up this antagonism between them that if the story was to continue forward, I would expect more of that.
Obviously, the cartel storyline also comes into play in the finale. Was Tommy right that Jimenez overstepped by blowing up the wells? Was that torture just desperation?
Yeah, at that point, I think we can safely say that Jimenez is grasping at straws. He’s kind of at his wits’ end to try to stop what has been happening to his supply chain, his particular part of the cartel’s region. And when Andy Garcia’s character steps in, that’s confirmation that Tommy’s suspicion that Jimenez was acting out and didn’t have permission to go that far. Jimenez plays the ultimate price there at the very end, so Tommy was right.
Yes, that was a really cool character introduction and left us wanting more. What are your hopes for this character going forward if the show continues?
Yeah, I would be excited to see Andy and Billy continue acting together because they’re just such an incredible duo — both obviously just great actors and so fun to watch. As far as Andy’s storyline, what I would hope to see is just what it looks like to have in the cartel a very savvy, smart businessman who happens to be in an illegal business, working alongside Tommy in this legitimate business, and both the rewards and the complications that could bring to both men. I think that would be a fascinating thing to watch play out.
Lauren Smith / Paramount+
With Monty’s death, I would imagine that would loom large, too. Is Tommy the right person to take his spot?
I think that that is to be seen. He’s very good at being this managerial person and kind of a mid-level tier out in the field working closely with the rig hands and the roustabouts and the guys in the patch. We haven’t really seen him in the boardroom that much and at the fancy dinners. There is a difference between Monty and Tommy. And so that is, again, a fascinating space for Tommy to have to navigate, especially since he’s been out kind of scraping by Midland and Odessa for the last decade-plus.
Can you talk about what Jon Hamm brought to the show with his performance of the role?
He’s just this lovely, charming person with an incredible amount of gravitas, and so he really anchors that role. He’s believable as someone who is sitting at a table full of oil titans, all these CEOs of these large companies. He’s absolutely believable in that character and so he just brought so much. I mean, as an actor and as a person, he was fun to be around, so yeah, I’m grateful he stepped up into that role.
The characters Angela and Ainsley provide not necessarily comic relief, but levity to the show, especially in the last half. But there’s a moment in the last episode when Angela has kind of a cry before she goes to make pancakes and puts on her smiley face again. Are we gonna explore more about her putting on that front?
I think that there’s so much depth to Angela that maybe isn’t like what she presents. I think that that cry right before, like what you mentioned, is part of that tough exterior kind of cracking a little bit. She cares so deeply for Tommy and for her family, and she sees the danger and the chaos and turmoil that this industry brings to the family and to their lives, and yet she knows she signed up for it. This is the world that Tommy exists in, and it’s the one that he was made for, and so it’s tough. But seeing Angela finding this outlet for her care, for her love, honestly, for her sense of fun at the nursing home is just such a positive development for her and for Ainsley that I think it’ll be fun to see other outlets, other ways that she can kind of let that tough exterior drop just a little bit while still being the badass that she is.
Emerson Miller/Paramount+
With Cooper and Ainsley, there’s a lot of animosity between them. Do you expect to explore why they don’t get along more?
I think the thing about these siblings is they’re just so very different. Ainsley takes more after her mom, and Cooper takes a lot more after his dad, and everyone in this family is kind of a powder keg, and so it’s just that. There is a level of care there, but they’re just so oil and water right now. So, again, if the story were to move forward, I think it would be really fun to see just how these two might be more alike than we think but also just how volatile and explosive their relationship can also be.
Speaking of a volatile relationship, with Angela and Tommy, there’s obviously a lot of chemistry between them physically. But it seems like towards the end, the situation with Monty maybe made him more serious about her. Am I reading that right?
Yeah, I think that sense of mortality and really that scene at the hospital where Billy calls Angela, and she’s not necessarily in the same headspace as him whenever he calls, but he’s really feeling the weight of his friend’s death and is thinking about his life, and that was one of those scenes that when Billy gave the performance that day on set, I cried at the monitor, and I wasn’t the only one, ’cause Billy was just so arresting in that scene. And yeah, I think Tommy knows by the end of this first season just how much he actually does care for Angela. I mean, they drive each other insane, but — It’s cliche, but it’s the closest thing he’s ever known to a soul mate, and that carries a lot of weight. It’s just that these two have a lot of trouble getting along day to day.
Can you talk about a little bit of what Cooper is trying to do now? It’s a little hard to understand.
Yeah, it is a little complicated, but Cooper is basically trying to strike out on his own and start building his own oil company, slowly but surely, and it starts with the landman, procuring leases, and that’s what Cooper is kind of stepping into, the role that his father has played for all these years — one of the roles his father has played at M-Tex. And so he’s trying to figure things out for himself without being in the shadow of his father or M-Tex, and it’s a challenging thing to do, but, as we see at the end of this first season, he’s starting to have some early successes with it.
What is the significance of that last line from Tommy where he’s going to the fence and he says, “You better run, buddy. They kill coyotes around here”?
I think that speaks to just the brutality of the Permian Basin. It’s a hard place to live. It’s a rough place to live in many ways. The oil and gas industry, for those who work in the patch day in and day out, it’s tough. And so I think that’s just kind of a metaphor about just, “Even for coyotes, this is a tough place to make it, buddy.”
I was wondering if he was comparing Monty to the coyote — or even himself maybe.
I guess that is open for interpretation!
Landman, Season 1, Streaming Now, Paramount+
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