Amazon Prime Video’s ‘Outer Range’ Has a Big Hole, but Are There Aliens?

C’mon — you know you’re wondering it! You take one look at Prime Video’s new series Outer Range and you have one question on your mind: are there aliens? It’s a valid question! Even the show’s premise screams “aliens!” It’s Yellowstone meets Twilight Zone (Twilight Stone? Yellowzone?) and few pairings feel as ripe with possibility as cowboys meeting aliens. And no, the 2011 film Cowboys & Aliens very much did not live up to expectations. But really, crop circles, cattle mutilations, remote locations, and good ol’ common folk are all hallmarks of UFO stories. If that doesn’t sound like good fodder for a 21st century western then, well, what does?

So, does Outer Range have aliens in it? Keep reading for SPOILERS about Outer Range episodes 1 and 2 and what we know so far.

Is Outer Range about aliens?

So far, having watched the first two episodes, we’re gonna have to go with “no” — for now. First of all, while it’s easy to mistake for a crop circle since it’s… circular and in a field, Royal Abbott (Josh Brolin) actually finds a hole. It’s a supernatural hole, though. There doesn’t seem to be a bottom to it, not one that Royal can detect, and it has a strange ethereal aura to it.

What is the hole in Outer Range?

We don’t know yet, but we’d have to guess that it’s a portal — but a portal to what exactly remains unclear. At the end of Episode 1, Autumn (Imogen Poots) almost gleefully shoves Royal into the hole, seemingly just to see what will happen. Episode 2 starts with Royal alive on the ranch, not too long after he descended into the abyss on his ranch. But at the end of Episode 2, we get a tease of what happened to him. The hole dropped him somewhere or somewhen else, in front of a whole lot of people and a whole lot of mining/farming machinery. Some of the people, like Autumn, are in cult-like yellow jumpsuits. Then Royal’s wife Cecilia (Lili Taylor) approaches him and tells him that he died two years ago. Uh, WTF? She then tells Royal to run, which he does once a bunch of army dudes start firing at him. He dives back into the hole and — well, that’s the beginning of this big mystery.

So is this an alternate reality? It’s definitely the future. The only thing we know for sure is that the future is super ominous (the way Cecilia tells Royal to run!) and hostile. Really, a whole army of heavily armed dudes chasing after one shirtless rancher? Seems like overkill! We’ll have to wait until next week when Amazon drops episodes 3 and 4 of Outer Range for some more clues about the hole’s origin. And who knows, maybe some aliens will show up eventually. Until then, it looks like we got us a time travel portal on our hands.