Outer Range season 2 ending explained: How Amy became Autumn, revealed

Outer Range season 2 finale spoilers follow.

If the debut season of Outer Range left you scratching your head then there is every chance that season two will do just the same and then some.

Time travelling has become old news, we're now talking multiversal conundrums, people returning from the dead (sort of) and in place of a herd of bison we now have a random collection of animals trying to usher Joy (Tamara Podemski) in a new direction.

It was A LOT and the mysteries came in thick and fast, so if you need a little demystifying or just a quick breakdown of what happened that's where we step in.

After discovering that Amy (Olive Abercrombie) had been living in the women's shelter called Fourwing, after being abducted by her mother Rebecca, Royal (Josh Brolin) and Cecelia (Lili Taylor) go to retrieve her.

However, they are not the only ones who have figured this out. Amy's future self, Autumn (Imogen Poots), has as well and already has a head start in reaching her thanks to the help of her driving companion Luke Tillerson (Shaun Sipos).

What happened to Billy (Noah Reid)? Well, after seeing a vision of the future in which he saw himself standing devoutly by Autumn's side as her protector, Luke decided that he would do anything to be with her, including bludgeoning his brother to death.

To be fair, Billy struck the first blow in his attempt to win Autumn but Luke won out.

Autumn learns about her former lover's death on their drive to get Amy and despite their desperately intimate connection, she takes it well. Consoling a heartbroken Luke she tells him:

"If there's one thing I've learnt from all this it's that nothing is final, not even death."

Curious, but there's no time to ponder the idiosyncrasies of Autumn's mind, not when they've arrived at Fourwing.

She cons her way inside and locates Amy first. The two talk and after Amy confesses that she wants to go home the manipulative Autumn agrees to help.

Eventually, Autumn confronts Rebecca alone and proves that she is her time-travelling daughter by sharing memories that only she could know. Autumn bitterly tells her mother that she kidnapped Amy not out of love but spite and promises to share the truth with Amy unless Rebecca agrees to let her go.

Rebecca says a difficult goodbye to Amy, promising that she will join her at the Abbotts' in a few weeks, both knowing that she won't.

As Amy heads to the front of the compound Autumn shares a parting gift with her mum.

"Cecilia was right to run you off," she spits before forcing Rebecca to ingest the mineral from the black void, giving her a vision of the future.

In that vision she sees Autumn leading her yellow-clad cult while an older-looking Rebecca – wearing black – is decidedly on the outskirts of things as everyone walks away.

The Abbotts eventually arrive at Fourwing and there is so much commotion with people fussing around Rebecca.

The others tell Royal and Cece who took Amy, while Rebecca rambles:

"I saw it like it was right in front of me. She's a gift, for time. She's a gift."

Spooked, Cece calls Autumn and through all the cryptic talk they discover her plan to throw Amy into the void on the west pasture so that Amy can begin Autumn's trajectory in life.

Cece's attempts to reason with Autumn fall on deaf ears and she tells her grandmother that she wishes she could see things as she does.

"It's all been about her," Autumn explains. "She's the final piece of this puzzle.

"I am her, just like me, she has to serve her purpose."

Royal's threats do nothing to deter Autumn and so he calls on sheriff Joy to intercept on their behalf, knowing that they won't get to the west pasture in time to save Amy.

While Joy makes it and manages to knock Luke out cold, she inadvertently seals Amy's fate when she shoots Autumn in the chest and Autumn loses her grasp on Amy, who goes tumbling into the void.

The hole immediately seals itself and at the same time, Royal begins to twitch and retch, losing control of the car.

Both Autumn and Royal end up in the hospital. It's touch-and-go for Royal but when he comes to (after a particularly interesting vision) Joy delivers the news about Amy.

Meanwhile, Autumn's time of death is called. However, just as the doctors give up hope, Amy (who has now been spat out by the void) wakes up on the other side of nowhere.

She is found by two backpackers who quickly realise that she doesn't have any memory. The only thing she can recall is her name and when they ask she replies: "I think it's Autumn," thus beginning the transition into the eccentric time traveller we've come to know and sort of love.

During Royal's life-and-death vision that not so coincidentally occurred while Autumn was dying, he saw a vision of a collection of people in his life, from past to present and across all this season's timelines.

Boy Royal was there along with his dad, mum and siblings, Cece, Amy, young Royal and young Cece, Rhett, his girlfriend Maria and Perry standing shoulder to shoulder with Autumn.

Cece is the first to speak and she tells him: "Time is a river Royal, this is your destiny."

Amy joins in, repeating the phrase until everyone is chanting it back at him. He wakes and that is when he discovers from Joy about Autumn's near-death and Amy's disappearance. He pleads with Joy to help stop the future which is coming.

"Nothing can stop the future, Royal," she replies and they are joined by Maria (Isabel Arraiza), Rhett (Lewis Pullman) and Cece.

Royal holds Cece tightly, telling her everything will be fine but there's fear in his eyes as his mind returns to the end of the vision in which Autumn walks up to him and tells him, "this is just the beginning."

After spending some time in the past with a younger version of his dad, Royal, Perry (Tom Pelphrey) is finally ready to accept that his wife Rebecca is not a time traveller and did not disappear into the past all those months ago. She simply left him and their daughter Amy.

At the helm of the void he dithers about what he should do next but a young Royal is determined not to let his future son lose himself in the past and so pushes him into the void.

However, instead of returning home, Perry ends up in a different past, one right before he killed Trevor Tillerson (Matt Lauria), which spurred on the events of season one.

He is desperate to rewrite history by stopping his past self from accidentally killing Trevor, but while he arrives in time, a death is still owed.

Perry prevents himself from landing the fatal blow but it is now Trevor who kills past Perry. Trevor panics, spots time-travelling Perry and bolts.

Since time-travelling Perry doesn't fade out of existence we can only assume that the change of events has caused a fork in the timeline, creating an alternate timeline on which Trevor lives but Perry dies.

A spooked-looking Perry calmly retrieves his dead body, takes it to the west pasture and – as respectfully as one can in these bizarre instances – rolls him into the void, but not before switching shirts with dead Perry.

Not sure that was the wisest choice but it's very on-brand for Perry.

Alternate-timeline Rhett catches up with Perry back at the ranch but original-timeline Perry doesn't reveal the truth of the situation.

They are met by alternate-timeline's Amy and Royal and they all go inside together, all except Royal who obviously suspects something.

Will Perry live out the rest of his days on another timeline? Doubtful, but what could this new truth about how the past works mean for Billy?

Possibly not. With all Autumn's talk of death not being final and original-timeline Perry watching alternate-timeline Perry die in place of Trevor, who now lives on a different multiversal plane, we're going to go ahead and say anything is possible.

Of course the original songbird Billy is gone but if Perry gets to live on another timeline the same can be true of an alternate Billy who could join our original Outer Range timeline.

It would just take someone else to retrieve him, which brings us to the Wayne Tillerson (Will Patton) of it all.

Earlier on in the episode, before the Amy saga, Wayne discovers that Luke killed Billy.

He leaves Luke a scathing, heartbroken voicemail laying into him before torching his home with Billy's dead body inside.

Luke may be dead to him but I guess the Tillerson reputation matters more than justice for Billy and so we can only presume this is why he covers up for Luke.

Like an addict, Wayne crawls back to the void to find answers and at the helm of the hole on the west pasture, he begs for a sign.

Earthquake-like rumbling begins and as if the void has communicated with him Wayne says, "That makes sense. All the sense in the world," before jumping in.

Could he have gone to find another Billy? Will he pursue his vendetta against Royal in the past? Perhaps both? We can but theorise.

The Abbotts may have managed to save their land once again but there is growing interest in the void on the west pasture.

Apart from the Tillersons, a scientist, Dr Nia Bintu (Yrsa Daley Ward) knows of its existence, knows it has a connection with time and wants to investigate.

After a couple of failed attempts to persuade both Royal and Rhett to let her work on it, Rhett agrees to meet with Nia to broker a deal: $30,000 in exchange for him trying to convince Royal that it is in their best interest to work with her.

Rhett is then to receive more money if he is able to convince Royal to be cooperative and to understand that if he doesn't come around, the Abbotts will be damned.

Rhett warns Nia that if she disagrees she'll have to go toe-to-toe with Royal and "that is a fight [she will not win]."

The only other stipulation is that Nia must do everything she can to protect their land from others like her. She agrees.

This coincides with Maria stealing money from the bank that she works at, suggesting that she and Rhett are up to something very suspicious.

Speaking of suspicious, Outer Range wouldn't be Outer Range if some animals didn't leave a breadcrumb trail for people to follow. So when Joy wakes up on her front lawn (don't ask) to a bison, a wolf, a bird and a bear, we didn't question it. Her wife, Martha (Morningstar Angeline), did but we didn't.

It could very well mean that Joy's time-travelling days are not as behind her as she thinks. That there is more to do in the past than she realised.

All episodes of Outer Range season 1 and 2 are available to stream now on Prime Video.

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Janet A Leigh

TV writer, Digital Spy Janet completed her Masters degree in Magazine Journalism in 2013 and has continued to grow professionally within the industry ever since.  For six years she honed her analytical reviewing skills at the Good Housekeeping institute eventually becoming Acting Head of Food testing.  She also freelanced in the field of film and TV journalism from 2013-2020, when she interviewed A-List stars such as Samuel L Jackson, Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson. In 2021 she joined Digital Spy as TV writer where she gets to delve into more of what she loves, watching copious amounts of telly all in the name of work. Since taking on the role she has conducted red carpet interviews with the cast of Bridgerton, covered the BAFTAs and been interviewed by BBC Radio and London Live. In her spare time she also moonlights as a published author, the book Gothic Angel.