1923 Season 2 Episode 1 Recap
While Yellowstone fans await news of the franchise’s future, Paramount plans to fill in the gaps of the Dutton clan’s past. 1923—the prequel starring Brandon Sklenar, Harrison Ford, and Helen Mirren—finally returned for season 2 this Sunday morning.
It’s been a little over two years since the streaming hub for Taylor Sheridan’s cavalcade of ideas debuted its second Yellowstone spin-off. When season 2 begins, the picturesque Montana cattle ranch is now covered in blankets of snow. Just as the temperature drops, the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch faces death once again. It’s up to Spencer Dutton (Sklenar) to save them.
“I’ve been waiting for this for a couple years now,” Sklenar told me over Zoom earlier this week. “I’m just excited to get it out there. I’m really proud of it and I know people are going to love it. It’s well worth the wait. [Sheridan] wrote something really special, and everyone involved was at the top of their game. We all care deeply about it, and I’m sure you can feel that in it.”
You can read our full interview here. Now, let’s run down 1923 season 1 for a moment, before discussing the season 2 premiere—which I think is Sheridan’s darkest work yet.
What Happened in 1923 Season 1 Again?
Sklenar plays Spencer Dutton, the estranged nephew of the 1920s-era Dutton patriarch, Jacob (Ford). He was hunting big game in Africa like Kraven the Hunter before Jacob Dutton (Ford) and his wife Cara (Mirren) wrote a letter asking him to book it back home. An evil mining magnate, Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton), partnered with a rowdy group of Scottish shepherds led by Banner Creighton (Jerome Flynn). The goal? Turn the Dutton family ranch into a tourist destination. It’s what the villain always wants on Yellowstone, right? Pave paradise and put up a parking lot.
In an early-season shocker, Creighton’s men killed John Dutton Sr. (James Badge Dale) and badly wounded Jacob. The murder complicated all chance of the grown-up Dutton Sr. from 1883 having a direct lineage to Yellowstone‘s John Dutton (Kevin Costner). If another Dutton in 1923 is his grandfather, it’s either Jack Dutton (Darren Mann), John Sr.’s only son, or Spencer. (More on that later.)
Elsewhere, 1923’s first season also focused on Teonna Rainwater (Aminah Nieves). Most likely the ancestor of Yellowstone’s Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham), Teonna spends the first season is a near-constant state of torture. She’s on the run from a tyrannical school for girls on the Indiana reservation that seeks to assimilate Native Americans into American society. The sadistic Father Renaud (Sebastian Roché) runs the boarding school, which strips the young women of their heritage and treats them with intense cruelty. Though Teonna was able to escape in season 1, she’s still far from safe.
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