Outer Range Episode 7 and 8 Explained- Autumn’s Identity, Season 2, How Time Works, And Where Is Joy?

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future. That should be the anthem for the incredible Outer Range Episode 7 and 8 ending.

The Season 1 finale of Outer Range left many of us stunned. Almost all the major payers are either dead, missing, lost, or broken. Some things we suspected were confirmed, while others were so out of leftfield we aren’t sure what to make of them. As slippery as the ooze under the earth that Luke finds, time and the truth are allusive in Outer Range Episode 7 and 8. Rather than shoring up the rules, it threw everything in flux, and we are left breathless and wanting more. Here’s everything you need to know about the ending of Outer Range Episode 7 and 8.

America tells you that the only things worth knowing

are those which can be known.

America is wrong.

Let’s hope Amazon Studios listens to the fans because we are desperate to know what’s going on in the Outer Range Season 1 finale and what it means for Season 2.

Perry jumped into the hole.

Throughout Outer Range, we have seen Perry be tortured. He is haunted by his wife’s disappearance and the stress of raising a child by himself. As we learn in a flashback from his childhood, he has always had an angry streak. He mercilessly beats Trevor at a skating party. We have no idea what prompted this attack, but from what Perry tells Royal, he thinks there’s something rageful in him. Royal tells him it isn’t just him because he feels it too. Royal’s pressure to keep his burdens to himself has bled off onto his whole family, and Perry is paying just one of many prices.

After confessing to Trevor’s murder, the Abbotts put up their ranch as collateral for the bond to get Perry out of jail. However, that proves to be disastrous as he later dives straight into the hole, ensuring that he won’t be back to appear in court. The Abbotts are poised to lose everything. However, what Perry says to Sheriff Joy about Rebecca is most interesting. It echoes what Autumn has been saying and what Royal says at the end of Episode 8. Perry says Rebecca isn’t gone because nothing is ever gone. The pull of time tears at all of the Abbotts and anyone near them. Coupled with what Rebecca says to Amy at the end of Episode 8, I wonder why she ran and how Perry knew she wasn’t gone.

Was he being transcendental, or did he lash out at her and hurt her nine months ago? It would be on-brand for the man who has trouble controlling his temper and the Abbotts who keep secrets in shame. Perhaps Royal kept his father’s accidental death a secret, and Perry kept his secret about hitting his wife? It is also possible that Perry knew Rebecca was mentally unstable, and that is the secret he kept and the reason she left. It would also explain what we know about Amy later in life.

Autumn is Amy

The biggest gotcha of Outer Range Episode 7 and 8 was something that many people predicted. Autumn is Amy, all grown up and definitely off her meds. There had been clues all along. Amy was the one who found Trevor’s body, she continuously drew the Abbott brand in her book, and her impossibly large eyes always seemed to see more than they should. Autumn also sported the same wide eyes and constantly drew in her journal. Now that it’s confirmed Autumn is Amy by the scar on her forehead from the fight the night before, there are even more questions that need answers?

Namely, where have she and Rebecca been this whole time, and why is she back now? How is Amy/Autumn back? Why is she so angry with Royal, and where did this massive trust find come from? The last we see of the Abbotts, they are poised to lose the ranch. Does Rebecca have family money of her own? Did she remarry? Is it possible that Billy willed his property to Autumn before being shot, which she then collects in her future? Did Autumn get adopted by someone who has oodles of money? She is from Colorado. Dare I hope Wayne’s ex-wife took her in?

The other thing that must be considered is Autumn must have lept into a hole while still a child for her to be here in our timeline. She couldn’t have someone she calls Mom in this timeline unless she went down the hole when she was young, falling back to the past. She could have been adopted by someone wealthy and grew up parallel to our Amy until they converged at the same time and place. Most time nerds, however, think this would violate a significant rule. In any case, they have talked face to face, and on the phone, so the predetermined rules appear to be obsolete in Outer Range. Bootstraps be damned.

Billy does a lot to further Autumn’s cause this week, but he ultimately gets shot by Royal. In a show where everyone says no one is ever gone, I wonder if he stays dead in Outer Range Season 2. Noah Reid has been brilliant as the singing nutjob Billy. He and Imogen Poots are so committed to their bizarre love affair it is hard not to be enthralled. They share a manic chemistry that warns of disaster, but they also share some of the wettest and wildest kisses since Greener Grass with its spit-filled closeup.

How does Autumn end up in her past?

Now that we know Autumn is Amy, we need to know how she ended up in our current timeline, which is her past. The last we see of Amy in Outer Range Episode 7 and 8, she is with Rebecca, who convinces her to go with her. Did Rebecca also come through a hole? Was she lost in time until just recently, or more realistically, was she hiding? She claims she has been hiding, but it is hard to take anyone at face value. In any case, Autumn has someone she is getting money from now and someone she calls Mom. This person thinks she is unstable when she talks with her on the phone.

Unless Autumn is talking to a delusion(always a possibility) and only the trust fund lawyer is real, there is a mother figure out there. If it is Rebecca, she understands how the holes work, but considering this person called Autumn “crazy,” I think it is an adopted parent who knows nothing about the Abbotts and thinks Autumn is making everything up. It would also explain the name change. The only way Rebecca is her mother in the current timeline is if Rebecca and Amy both went into a hole together and came out at the same time and place.

Royal and his secrets

Royal was a child in 1886 when he accidentally shot his father on a hunting trip. He was so ashamed of what he had done he threw himself into a void rather than face his mother and sister. When he emerged from the other side, he was in our current timeline, and a young Wayne Tillerson found him. Royal was the boy who grabbed Wayne as he crawled out of the hole. Autumn knows all of his secrets because she saw it all play out in her own timeline. She’s not omniscient; she just saw it before. That is how she also knows Rebecca wasn’t gone. I am curious if she doesn’t refer to Rebecca as Mom because she is hiding that information or because she has a different Mom.

Luke and the ooze

Luke is convinced there is something valuable in the ground of the Abbott’s west pasture. With them preoccupied and Billy busy with Autumn, he has nothing but time on his hands and starts digging. After digging multiple holes, he finally finds a black liquid that coats his hand, and a stampede of buffalo comes pouring out of the hole. Presumably, this is the substance that we see being drilled for in the future when Royal is told to run and jumps back into the hole. Assuming this substance is also what is making the ground shake and allowing some to see the future or being transported into different times, it would be extremely valuable. But, does the land belong to the Abbotts, the Tillerson’s, or someone else altogether by then?

Joy finds herself in the past.

The most interesting storyline is also the one that got the latest start. Joy’s culture has always been sidelined to the Abbotts drama. In Outer Range Episode 7 and 8, she finds herself lost in time when her ancestors still had their land. When she visited Frank, who insisted that mastodons were on his land, she followed a line of black sediment that somehow transported her back in time. Joy will get to see the beautiful cultural traditions so important to her in the present in the past. How she will get home remains to be seen, but I am most excited about this storyline. If she can’t get home right away, I wonder how her modern ways will clash with the harmonious behaviors of the past.

Was the black line Joy was following the residue from a crack in the earth that spit out the prairie Joy looks down on? Will she return to her own time if she follows it back and crosses over? It appears that time is bleeding into each other at this point because those buffalos we see run past Rhett, Maria, Autumn, and Royal probably came from whenever Joy is.

Rhett and Maria

For now, things look better for Rhett than for the rest of the Abbotts. Even with a dislocated shoulder, he won the bull riding championship, and he promised Maria they would ride off into the sunset together. That was before his brother and niece went missing, though. It is also important to remember that Rebecca asked him if he would stay at the ranch his whole life. Maybe there is more to this question than a child’s need for reassurance? It’s hard to imagine him choosing his family over Maria after they abandoned him at the competition, but he also didn’t know what was happening behind the scenes. The last we see them, they are in their wrecked truck with a massive herd of buffalos. At least until the truck is fixed, they aren’t going anywhere.

The Mother of Undying Time has some explaining to do. It looks like the two combatants will now become allies, though. Royal loves his granddaughter regardless of her tendency to try to kill him. Royal has clearly extended grace to her, but Cecilia has none to give. Her world has literally come crashing down around her. As the mama bear of the family, the kitchen table was scared. With one kick, she upends the place as religious to her as any church.

Now that Royal has told her his secrets, can anything be repaired, and where are Perry, Rebecca, and Amy? Will the Abbotts lose their ranch? How mad will Autumn be when she wakes up? There’s a lot of story left in Outer Range Season 2. I hope we get the chance to hear it. The world needs this bonkers series with its inventive characters. Find all our Outer Range coverage here.