SPOILER ALERT: This season contains spoilers for Season 2 of Netflix‘s Ransom Canyon, now streaming.
Showrunner April Blair didn’t learn the news of Tejada’s pregnancy until the Netflix series was renewed for a second season. In the first episode, specific camera angles and clothing conceal that Ellie is pregnant with Yancy’s baby, something that doesn’t become apparent until over halfway through. Viewers find out at the same moment that Yancy’s ex-wife Sidney (Heidi Engerman) does, just as she intends to make good on her promise to leave. The news hooks her further into wanting something out of a vulnerable situation.
Season 2 of Ransom Canyon was significantly impacted by Marianly Tejada’s real-life pregnancy, which informed the plotline for her character Ellie Estevez’s relationship with Yancy Grey (Jack Schumacher) after his ex-wife’s arrival in town at the end of Season 1 sent the Gracie’s bartender spinning.
“We couldn’t draw it out too much, by the way, because Marianly, who plays Ellie, was really pregnant. She called a few months before we started filming, and it was like ‘Oh I’m this far along,’ still early in her pregnancy, but by the time we were shooting and filming it, we realized her due date was almost exactly the day we wrapped,” Blair told Deadline. “So she was pretty pregnant, and so it was a challenge to hide it for an episode or two because she popped and was carrying a giant baby boy. And actually it was not the story we were going to tell this season at all.”
The season starts out with Yancy lying to Sid about the status of his and Ellie’s relationship. He acts like it’s over, but he still wants his ex-wife out of his hair. Their marriage was part of a con, and he and Sid largely bonded over grifting, but Yancy wanted to leave that dark past behind when he met Ellie, though he did operate in the shadows a bit early on in Season 1 when it came to Davis Collins (Eoin Macken) and Austin Water & Power.
“We were planning to do much more of a love triangle thing with the girl from the past and the girl in the future and him being torn. But you know, once we were like, ‘Oh, Ellie’s gonna be pregnant, we had to kind of rebreak the season pretty quickly and do that,” Blair added. “At first that’s scary, but it ended up being like a gift. I think it was like a really great story for them, and it raised the stakes for them, and made everything a little juicier and made her decision and the pulling apart of them at the end more heartbreaking. It deepened them and their relationship, and it was a good writing challenge.”
This shift also made way for Season 2’s “plot spine” as Blair calls it, which in turn took the onus off of the three people alone as a source of tension.
“It was also protecting Yancy as a character because you don’t want him being torn about another woman when you have a pregnant girlfriend. He’s very likeable. It really was the genesis of the whole grift story,” she said. “The grift was a fun plot spine like where Season 1 was a little darker, and the plot was figuring out Randall’s death. This season, we got to do something that was a little lighter and more fun, and it was this grift. It gave it a different kind of energy that was made for a very fun ride.”
Below, Blair unpacks how things leave off with Yancy and Ellie following the grift, that “messy” love triangle between Lauren Brigman (Lizzy Greene) and the two brothers Lucas (Garrett Wareing) and Kit Russel (Casey W. Johnson), the status of Staten Kirkland (Josh Duhamel) and Quinn O’Grady (Minka Kelly) as “endgame” and which characters she envisions coming back should the show get renewed for a third season.
There is a writers’ room for the next installment, but Netflix has not yet officially renewed the show for Season 3.
Viewers may or may not recall that Cap Fuller (James Brolin) turned out to be Yancy’s father, so the former con man inherited Fuller Ranch and a dusty stretch of land that didn’t seem to have any value in it, according to even Staten’s appraisal. But the mystery purchase yields a different kind of opportunity.
“Cap [Fuller] bought this mystery land, and Yancy’s like ‘It’s worthless.’ And then he’s like, ‘What am I gonna do?’ And he needs to get rid of Sidney, and he sees an opportunity,” Blair said. “She’s saying ‘Don’t you miss grifting?’ And he’s like, ‘Alright, I’m gonna give you what you want. I’m gonna do this last grift with you, but then you gotta go.’”
What first seems like a pretty straightforward con, with former Senator Sam Kirkland (Brett Cullen) chosen as the big fish target, Yancy and Sidney plan to trick Staten’s father — who has bulldozed his son out of the seat of authority at the Double K Ranch — into buying a huge plot of land that is not worth the sum of money they are going for. Then, the pair will divorce and split the profits, with Sid going her separate way after one last grift. Even Ellie gets in on it, because she is a familiar face to Sam Kirkland, and peppering in the drama of her pregnancy with Sid still in town helps the politician fall for it.
“They start to grift him, and then I think Yancy via Ellie starts to grow a conscience about it, and old Yancy probably would have just gone through with the whole thing and taken money and run, but he’s a different person,” Blair said. “She’s like the angel on his shoulder, Ellie, and Sid’s the devil [saying] ‘Let’s do it,’ and he makes the right decision. So it’s midway through. What they do is they switch the con and they turn it on her. It’s a way to frame her and save Sam from making a huge mistake. Get her to sign the divorce papers and all of that. It’s a con on a con. You just go for the emotional [parts]. We’re not a heavy mystery plot.”
Sid is spotted leaving Ransom Canyon, but she turns around to warn Yancy, thinking Kai Flores (Justin Johnson Cortez) is going to use information she gave him against Yancy and throw him in jail. As she pulls up to the Thomas Rhett and Jordan Davis concert, she witnesses Sam, Kai, Staten and Ellie toast drinks to celebrate the successful turning of tables. Staten provided the missing link between his father and Yancy, who told the Double K rancher about the plan to trick his father.
Unfortunately, this sends Sidney into revenge mode. She goes back to Ellie and Yancy’s home and scares Yancy’s pregnant girlfriend so bad that she falls backwards off the porch and is forced into an early labor to save the baby. Luckily Ellie and her daughter, Isabella, are both fine, but it sends Ellie into a spiral questioning if this will become a pattern with Yancy’s past skeletons/ghosts chasing him into the present. More on that in a bit.
As for whether the red-clad swindler will return in a hopeful Season 3, Blair didn’t completely rule it out.
“In my mind, she is on a beach with some really rich guy somewhere and conning the hell out of him. I’s still a threat in Ellie’s mind, I think we keep her out there and a mystery and elusive, so that there’s this motivation where Ellie’s like, oh, you know. And but you know, she may make another appearance.”
Following Yancy’s rush to the hospital to eventually find out everything is okay, Ellie self-discharges from her ward after she wakes up from a nap fearing that a nurse with red hair like Sid’s means Yancy’s ex-wife is taking Isabella. Then, Yancy comes home to his girlfriend and baby mama to find Kai on the porch standing guard.
“The end of season two is a sign of things to come, which is that scene on the porch between Kai and Yancy. That’s the beginning of a new story. We’ve hinted and had these little Easter eggs in two seasons that Kai and Ellie have this history that Kai was a bit of a bad boy back in his own day, like reformed, but he’s always been very steadfast and truly concerned and loving of her,” Blair said. “I think it’s been obvious that he holds a candle for her, and so I think we’ve got to the end of Season 2 where Ellie is faced with a choice: is it now that her daughter is here and she’s making decisions that aren’t just about her, is she going to choose her head or her heart? Is she going to choose the guy that she feels safe standing watch on her porch, or is she going to choose the guy who makes her weak in the knees?”
For now, Ellie asks Yancy to leave, because she doesn’t want more shadows emerging and causing harm to their baby. If it were just Ellie, that would be one thing, but the picture is different now with her daughter involved and mama bear mode activated.
“That end scene and the breakup and Kai and the tension, that’s really the launch of the next story,” Blair said.
Cap’s Mystery Land Purchase – Could There Be Oil Underneath Or Something Else?
As for that land that Yancy still owns from his late father, Freddie (Kenneth Miller), who returned to help Yancy initiate the first stage of the original con against Sam Kirkland, points out that something valuable indeed does lurk under that ground.
“Yancy’s goal moving forward from Season 2 is to win his family back, and what does he do to go about that? What misguided things does he do to go about that?” Blair said. “And he still has this mystery of like, ‘What’s down there? Is it oil? Is it something else? What kind of rabbit hole does that take him?’”
For those worried that Freddie might be conning Yancy, that’s not likely the direction the story will take.
“I won’t do that to you,” Blair said. “I won’t do another con. I promise. I don’t think my brain could handle it.”
Lucas’ Future & College Aspirations After Lauren And Kit Love Triangle Outcome
Partly as a result of secretly witnessing his brother kiss his girlfriend and partly because of the distance he feels between himself and Lauren, Lucas makes a drastic choice to sleep with Lauren’s good friend and now cheer captain Ashley (Jennifer Ens).
“Lucas is struggling to figure out who he wants to be, and for me, I don’t know if it’s even within the life of the series, but I think Lauren and Lucas are endgame in the way that Staten and Quinn were and are,” Blair said.
“There’s a scene in Season 2 where Quinn comes to meet Staten at the cabin, and he’s like, ‘You think fate’s been keeping us apart, but it’s been it’s been leading us to where we are right now, and you had to leave, and you had to have other loves and other lives, and I had to do this. And I don’t regret any of it. It made us who we are,’” she continued. “I feel like that’s where we’re at with Lucas and Lauren, and that’s what they need to go do. They need to have loves and other lives and figure out who they are, and before they can be together, and I would love the show to go on long enough to see that. But even if it doesn’t, that’s, in my mind ,where they end up. They’re the Staten and Quinn, and they just have to have a lot of other journeys and figure out who they are.”
Blair also considers the parallels and interactions between Staten and Quinn and Lucas and Lauren to be a passing of the torch from one generation to the next.
“When Staten’s giving [Lucas] advice and saying, ‘If you love her, let her go, and if she comes back, it’s meant to be,’ that’s his experience, and it does inform it,” Blair said. “When [Lucas] lets [Lauren] know [Kit’s] at the bus station, he’s trying to take Staten’s advice, and is it going to work?”
“What [Lucas is] realizing is he needs to stop focusing on Lauren and winning her back. He needs to have his own sort of experience and figure himself out. We have a lot of fun with that in Season 3. Let him have his you know his own bad boy era,” Blair added. “Moving forward, in our idea of Season 3 — we’re just in the room — it’s a potential Season 3 right now, but the idea is that Lucas is hurt, but he’s trying to put on [a brave face].”
Blair has a speedier pickup between Season 2 and a potential Season 3 versus the six-month gap in between Seasons 1 and 2 of the Western drama series in order to “see all the fallout of where we left off in Season 2.”
Thus, Casey W. Johnson’s Kit would return after being upped to a series regular ahead of Season 2.
After hashing out their missed connection in the past and Quinn realizes her heart does not belong to Oliver (Ben Robson), Staten and Quinn have recognized their foundation for a real relationship.
“I think they’re solid. It was giving her a real dilemma with a guy who’s perfect on paper, where Davis [Eoin Macken’s character from Season 1] wasn’t. He was up to no good. So you weren’t like, ‘Oh my God, I want her to end up with Davis,” the showrunner said. “But you really wanted her to have a really difficult choice, like this person who could give her a really amazing life, and she’s had a great relationship with, but her heart belongs to Staten.”
“I think, moving forward, there will be hurdles and challenges, but it’s not about breaking them up. It’s two seasons to bring them together, and I don’t want to just keep doing that to people, apart together. [You] start to get whiplash. I wanted, ‘Okay, now they’re together, but what are those challenges moving forward?’” Blair continued. “A relationship, finding each other and falling in love, is actually the easy part. It’s making a life with someone and figuring out who they really are deep down, what are the skeletons in their closets, and ‘Can you love someone at their worst?'”
Other conflicts would take center stage should Ransom Canyon get a Season 3.
“I was nervous about getting into season three because I was like, what’s going to be the challenge?” Blair said. “There’s so much.”
Claire O’Grady’s (Patricia Clarkson) parting gift to her daughter, Quinn, is rectifying a wrong she committed years ago when Quinn and Staten were still in high school. Staten had left Quinn a letter after their high school prom last dance gone wrong, but Quinn’s mother hid it from her, so she never got the message to meet Staten at the cabin. As Blair puts it, Clarkson’s character has “gone to Encinitas with the hot deputy.”
“Brett Cullen and Patricia Clarkson, are both iconic actors, and they make it easy to make it emotional,” Blair said. “One of my favorite scenes of the season is with actually Patricia Clarkson and Staten when she goes, ‘Love is a canyon.’ I love that someone who, way back when, sabotaged this relationship is the one that goes and fights for it.”
Claire initially returned to Ransom Canyon to sell the house and farm where Quinn now lives, and this drove Quinn to create a music festival to sustain the small town that her mom claimed was dying. The parental parallels between Quinn reconciling with her mother’s ulterior motive and Staten hashing out the Double K Ranch chairman debacle with his father provided another test for the couple to work through before being together.
“I think in that thing of Staten being like, ‘Oh, we had to go through all these things to be ready for each other,’ part of that is also them healing those things with their parents. So they’re not carrying that emotional trauma into this new relationship in order to be like in a really good place and tackle this moving forward,” Blair said. “You wanted [Quinn] to make amends with her mother. You wanted her to understand why her mother is who she is and move the way she moved. And I think the same with Staten. Staten had to put to bed this beef with his father and this fight about about his land — he’s been fighting for so long.”
Though these relationships have been mended, Blair does have other family tree connections in mind for the future of the show.
“Season 1 it’s always harder because you’re establishing everyone, all of your regulars, but then, you know every season how are we building out those relationships and families? Like I want to meet Lucas and Kit’s family. I want their dad to come back. I want to know who’s Staten’s mom? Who’s the lady that made him?” she said. “We got to know Quinn’s sister Angie more this season, and I really love Lauren Glaser. She’s such a great actress, so there’ll be more of her. I just like building out their worlds and their families. It’s like an onion. We’re peeling back the layers.”
Mysterious mountain man and half brother of Staten, Levi (Steve Howey) also gave Staten a huge nudge in the right direction in terms of the ranch battle and how to re-evaluate his priorities.
“We really wanted to have a big moment for Staten, something sort of life shattering to make him realize he needed to shift away from this laser focus, ‘Gotta save the ranch’ [mentality] for a season and a half to realizing he needs to put that focus on on Quinn,” Blair said. “It’s like Steve says, ‘Home isn’t a place; it’s a person,’ and that changes [Staten]. And he goes back, and he’s changed from that. It changes his relationship with his dad, and I think like they both needed to heal.”
Blair wouldn’t rule Howey out as a returner for a third season, either.
“Levi’s gift is that he’s the the philosopher poet hermit in the woods that Staten goes to when he needs something,” she said. “You want to use it, when the time [comes], judiciously when it’s gonna really mean something.”
Mary Lou (Bridget Regan), to whom Quinn pitches the music festival, also “definitely plays a role in a potential Season 3” according to Blair. Beyond the establishment of the festival, their partnership will continue in rebuilding the Lone Star Theater and getting it up to code.
“I like her as a lady business women [who can] get stuff done. I really like that they’re lady bosses. I’m just really excited by even the creative aspect of building that Lone Star. The set decorator, Rich Divine, and I have already been sending pictures for what it could look like. It’s my Nancy Myers moment,” Blair said. “I think that story and [Quinn] growing this place into something that will sustain and build this town. We’ve learned in Episode 1, she tells Oliver the story about how Gracie’s was born, and that Gracie’s was an old oil factory and then Willie [Nelson] rolled through town, and ‘This is what happened.’ He set up shop, and it became this place, and so it has this musical history. And how is she going to build on that and help sustain the town?”
The theme of a flailing small town hits home for the set of Ransom Canyon as well.
“There’s all these sort of things about these small American towns, and they’re dying because they used to be self-sustaining. You would go to the little grocery, and you’d get everything, or you’d go to the pharmacy, or you know all those [mom and pop’s] and now it’s Amazon,” Blair said. “So all of those little little spots are dying, and even the town we shoot in, it’s Las Vegas, New Mexico. You can see it there. There’s a lot of empty storefronts and things like that, and so [Quinn]’s deciding to build something that can help keep the town going.”
Blair also envisions the incorporation of live music as a challenge to meet every season, thinking next time it should be a female artist’s turn.
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