Netflix’s latest Western series The Abandons has just dropped, with all seven of the show’s seven episodes so far available to stream on the platform worldwide. This period drama about a frontier feud between rival families at the end of the Oregon trail ends in incendiary fashion, with a cliffhanger designed to set up a prospective second season.
As the trailer for The Abandons suggests, the show centers on a fierce rivalry between Lena Headey’s Fiona Nolan and Gillian Anderson’s Constance Van Ness, who are locked in a violent conflict over the land Fiona and her family occupy. Constance lays claim to this land, which she wants to mine for silver.
If Landman season 2’s third episode hasn’t sated the appetites of Western fans for an action-packed TV thriller this week, then The Abandons should do the trick. This Netflix series is full of deadly vengeance, spectacular gun battles and suspenseful interfamilial intrigue. It ends where it begins, too, with a family homestead razed to the ground.
Only 1 Of Fiona & Constance Walks Out Of The Fire In The Abandons’ Ending
In the climactic ending of The Abandons’ seventh episode, “This Was Meant to be My Peace”, Fiona Dolan and her fellow Jasper Hollow residents set fire to the Van Ness mansion with matriarch Constance inside it. The moment Quentin Serra and Fiona’s son Elias Teller roll a cart of burning barrels into the house, its wooden structures burst into flames.
Not content with watching her rival’s home burn, however, Fiona goes into the building herself to seek Constance out. The two of them grapple inside Constance’s bedroom, until the fire and smoke appears to overcome them. We last see Constance lying on her back, choking on fumes. Meanwhile, Fiona appears to have had the upper hand in their fight.
Seconds later, after a first floor window is smashed, a solitary figure stumbles down the stairs amid the blaze, and out through the front door. The identity of the figure is impossible to make out, although her long hair seems to be hanging loosely to one side, and she looks as though she’s wearing a long dress or coat.
The screen cuts to black before we’re able to identify the figure, purposely leaving us wondering whether it’s Fiona or Constance who’s escaped. If The Abandons showrunner Chris Keyser is to be believed, he and his writing team haven’t actually decided yet which character it is who walks out of the fire alive (via Tudum).
The writer of this final episode, Kurt Sutter, is no longer involved in making the show. The original creator and showrunner of The Abandons exited the series a few weeks before production wrapped due to creative differences with Netflix, perhaps taking his own preferred resolution to its cliffhanger ending with him.
All we can do is speculate as to who’s more likely to have come out of the fire alive. There is one clue in the last seconds of the episode, though, which could allow us to make an educated guess.
Whereas there’s a brief shot of Constance still in her bedroom almost immediately before the figure appears at the top of the stairs, we don’t see Fiona in that moment. On the balance of probabilities, then, it’s Fiona who manages to escape the fire.
Beyond this detail, it’s difficult to tell which of the two characters features in the final shot of the episode. Both have tightly tied or braided hair which would have had to have been pulled loose during their fight, while Constance is wearing a long dress, and Fiona is wearing a long coat.
Why The Tellers & The Other Families Set Fire To The Van Ness Mansion
It’s been theorized that The Abandons is effectively a Sons of Anarchy prequel, given that the two shows share a creator in Kurt Sutter, and are both set in the Pacific Northwest. In fact, two of Fiona Dolan’s adopted children in the series bear the surname Teller, which is also the name of the main family in Sons of Anarchy.
As well as Fiona, Elias Teller is instrumental to the arson attack on the Van Ness mansion at the end of The Abandons, alongside fellow Jasper Hollow homesteaders Quentin Serra and Miles Alderton. The families jointly launch this attack in order to stop the Van Nesses from attempting to take their land in the Hollow, once and for all.
Fiona and Elias have an additional motive for carrying out the attack, because the Van Ness family is holding Dahlia Teller – Fiona’s daughter and Elias’ sister – captive. In the moments before the Jasper Hollow residents ambush the Van Ness mansion, Constance looks poised to kill Dahlia in front of Fiona.
What’s more, burning down the mansion is a form of revenge against the Van Nesses which brings the series full circle. In the opening minutes of The Abandons, Jasper Hollow is ransacked by Van Ness henchmen, led by Constance’s sons Willem and Garrett, who set fire to trees around the titular ranch, and run the Hollow’s cattle off a cliff.
Who Else Dies At The End Of The Abandons
It isn’t just Constance Van Ness and Fiona Nolan who are placed in mortal danger at the end of the show. The Abandons itself to be a fitting Yellowstone replacement on Netflix by killing off several characters in the episode 7 climax.
As they launch their attack, the Jasper Hollow families kill Van Hess enforcer Claven, plus at least four other Van Ness henchmen. The only one of those holding Dahlia captive to survive the initial assault on the mansion is Roache, a formidable antagonist who murders multiple other characters during the course of the show.
However, Roache appears to get his comeuppance in the end, as he’s caught by a shot from Miles Alderton and falls to the ground, moments after shooting Quentin Serra in the abdomen. While Quentin is shown to have survived at the very end of the episode, we don’t see Roache again.
It’s also unclear as to whether Dahlia Teller can survive being stabbed repeatedly in the thigh and abdomen by Constance Van Ness. Although she’s still alive at the end of the episode, she may have been dealt a mortal wound that kills her off before any potential second season of The Abandons.
Why The Van Nesses Take Dahlia Teller Captive
Dahlia is taken captive by Roache and his fellow heavies after she stabs Garrett Van Ness in the stomach with a shard of broken glass, after he has own sister, Trisha, violently kidnapped in the street. Constance later reveals her mistaken belief that it was Dahlia who killed her son Willem in the first episode of The Abandons.
She rightly assumes that Dahlia’s capture will lure Fiona to her. Constance apparently intends to murder Dahlia slowly and cruely in front of her adoptive mother, to avenge the role that the two of them had in Willem’s death.
How Garrett Van Ness Finds Out Who Killed Willem
It’s earlier in the seventh episode of The Abandons that Constance finds out it was Fiona and the Tellers who were behind the death of Willem, when her other son Garrett uncovers the truth. The Van Nesses had previously assumed that Willem was killed by mountain wolves, after a body alleged to be his was discovered, ravaged by bite wounds.
But Garrett, who’s played by Luke Till, star of The X-Men franchise as well as 2023 movie The Collective, stumbles upon Miles Alderton digging up his dog’s grave. Alderton is preparing to up sticks and leave Jasper Hollow before the Van Nesses turn it into a silver mine.
Yet, his actions accidentally reveal to Garrett what really happened to his brother. Willem Van Ness was murdered by Fiona Dolan, as revenge for his rape of her adoptive daughter, Dahlia. Several after Dahlia stabbed Willem in the back with a pitchfork in the aftermath of the sexual assault, Fiona finished him off in cold blood.
The Jasper Hollow residents then collectively decided to bury Willem’s body underneath the remains of Miles’ dog, Sweetie, who’d been killed by the Van Hesses. They pretended Willem was instead killed by wolves, using the body of a dead soldier as a double, and the Van Nesses are none the wiser until Garrett discovers the truth about Sweetie’s grave.
The Abandons Ending Sets Up A Possible Season 2
With its suspenseful final cliffhanger, The Abandons perfectly sets up a follow-up season, in which we’ll learn who’s survived Constance and Fiona’s fight to the death. Regardless of who comes out on top in their head-to-head, Garrett Van Ness is still very much alive, and his arrival on the scene in the closing moments of episode 7 spells trouble.
In addition to Garrett, Fiona’s adoptive children, Elias and Dahlia Teller, Albert Mason, and Lilla Belle, live to fight another day, too. So does Trisha Van Ness, whose romance with Elias remains unresolved. Provided the show’s initial viewing figures meet expectations, a second season of The Abandons could cement Netflix’s rivalry with Taylor Sheridan in the sphere of TV Westerns.
It might have its detractors among those who decry the sensationalism of some recent Western releases, but the show has all the ingredients to compete with the likes of Landman and the Yellowstone franchise for years to come. While The Abandons harks back to the Wild West of the past, but it may well have a bright future on Netflix.
Source: Tudum
