Josh Brolin’s Overlooked Western TV Show With 80% On RT Is Secretly A Trippy Remake Of 2 Back To The Future Movies

Summary Outer Range's season 2 storyline mirrors Back to the Future movies, with characters facing personal challenges in different eras through time travel portals.

Perry and Autumn's plots in Outer Range season 2 parallel Marty and Doc's experiences in Back to the Future sequels, creating a familiar narrative.

Despite similarities, Outer Range's time travel rules differ from Back to the Future, emphasizing fate over characters' control of when and where they travel.

Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for Outer Range season 2.

Although Outer Range has a twisty time travel mystery of its own to unravel, the show’s storyline is surprisingly close to the second and third Back to the Future movies. There are countless time travel stories in the annals of sci-fi cinema and television, from cerebral indie efforts like Primer to wacky romps like Hot Tub Time Machine. The sci-fi Western Outer Range is one of the more critically acclaimed time travel shows in recent years. The series follows John Brolin’s Royal Abbott, a rancher who is disturbed by the discovery of a black void on his Wyoming ranch.

Throughout Outer Range season 2, it became clear that the void was a time travel portal that various characters fell through, or willingly entered, throughout their lives. While Outer Range season 3's story may explain things further, the question of how these voids work and why they show up remains unclear. What is obvious is that all the characters who enter them are sent to another era and, once there, must face a personal challenge that will reshape their lives and the lives of those around them. This resulted in a surprisingly familiar plot playing out in season 2.

Outer Range Seasons 1 & 2 Are Very Similar To Back To The Future 2 & 3

Perry and Autumn’s Plot Weirdly Mirrors Marty and Doc’s Famous Sequel Story

Close

In Outer Range season 2, Perry traveled back in time to meet younger versions of his parents, while Autumn was revealed to be Amy from the future. These Outer Range season 2 storylines both mirror Marty McFly’s experiences in Back to the Future Part II, where he first met his future self and then traveled to the past to help another version of himself intervene in the relationship between his parents. Technically, Autumn being Amy’s older self is currently just an Outer Range season 2 theory, but it seems like this will soon be confirmed canonically.

Meanwhile, another plot echoed the Back to the Future franchise’s final outing. When Joy Hawk accidentally ended up going through a void, she found herself in the middle of a battle between native tribes. She soon met another time traveler and discovered that she was in the 1800s, much like Marty McFly in Back to the Future Part III. Not only was her fate similar to Marty’s predicament, but Joy and Marty McFly both accidentally time-traveled into the middle of a tribe en route to battle. This similarity was a particularly striking twist shared between the two stories.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

How Outer Range's Time Travel Rules Compare To Back To The Future

Outer Range’s Time Travel Story Follows Different Rules From BTTF

Close

Although the show does have a lot in common with the Back to the Future movies, Outer Range season 2 proves that its story also has plenty of unique twists. Most pertinently, the two franchises have totally different rules around time travel. In the Back to the Future movies, Doc and Marty decide when and where they want to travel using a modified DeLorean. In Outer Range, characters can’t control where the void leaves them and not everyone even enters the void on purpose. Thus, Outer Range’s time travel is dictated by fate, whereas Back to the Future offers its characters agency.