The dust-choked plains of West Texas, where the horizon bleeds into infinity and the ground spits black gold like a curse, have always been a battleground for dreamers and desperados. It’s a land of boom and bust, where fortunes rise on the whim of a drill bit and crumble under the weight of greed-fueled grudges. Into this unforgiving arena roars Landman Season 2, the Paramount+ juggernaut that dropped its premiere episode like a seismic charge on November 16, 2025—exactly one year after the series’ debut shattered streaming records. Co-created by Taylor Sheridan and Christian Wallace, inspired by the raw, unflinching Boomtown podcast from Imperative Entertainment and Texas Monthly, this sophomore run doesn’t just build on the first season’s foundation; it dynamites it, unleashing a torrent of corporate espionage, cartel incursions, and familial fractures that make the Permian Basin feel like the eye of a Texas tornado. Billy Bob Thornton returns as the chain-smoking crisis manager Tommy Norris, a man whose moral compass spins wild in the wind but always points true north. At 70, Thornton isn’t phoning it in—he’s embodying the role with a feral intensity that earned him a Golden Globe nod last year, his gravelly drawl cutting through the chaos like a torque wrench through rusted pipe.

If Season 1 was a gritty excavation of the oil industry’s underbelly—exposing the roughnecks, wildcatters, and billionaire puppeteers who fuel America’s energy addiction—Season 2 is the gusher that follows: explosive, uncontainable, and laced with Sheridan’s signature blend of operatic violence and philosophical bite. The stakes skyrocket as M-Tex Oil, the Fort Worth-based behemoth teetering on the edge since Monty Miller’s shocking demise in the finale, finds itself in the crosshairs of international predators. Tommy, now reluctantly shouldering more operational weight after his mentor’s fall, navigates a labyrinth of betrayals that pit old loyalties against new threats. Episode 1, “Death and a Sunset,” opens with a gut-punch: a fiery rig explosion that claims lives and ignites a chain reaction of investigations, forcing Tommy to dust off his fixer instincts amid whispers of sabotage. As the body count climbs—from anonymous workers vaporized in blasts to high-rollers felled by precision hits—the narrative coils around themes of legacy and loss, with Tommy grappling not just with corporate wolves but the ghosts of his own fractured past.

Demi Moore, riding high off her 2025 Oscar win for a supporting turn in a indie drama that proved her enduring fire, seizes the reins as Cami Miller, Monty’s widow and M-Tex’s new iron-fisted CEO. No longer the poised arm candy from Season 1, Cami emerges as a force of nature, her boardroom monologues dripping with venomous eloquence as she claws back control from opportunistic vultures. In the premiere’s standout sequence—a blistering speech to a room of skeptical executives where she eviscerates a rival’s bid with surgical precision—Moore channels a widow’s rage into something mythic, her eyes blazing like refinery flares. “This isn’t a company; it’s a war machine,” she snarls, slamming a fist on polished mahogany, a moment that’s already meme fodder across social feeds. Moore, who joined the fray last season after catching Sheridan’s eye at a Yellowstone wrap party, has teased in interviews that Cami’s arc this year is “a phoenix rising from Permian ash—raw, unapologetic, and ready to burn it all down if needed.” Her expanded role isn’t filler; it’s the narrative’s beating heart, injecting feminist fury into Sheridan’s macho milieu and reminding viewers that in the oil game, the sharpest weapon is often the one with lipstick on the trigger.

Enter Andy Garcia, the Cuban-American legend whose brooding charisma has simmered through The Godfather Part III and Ocean’s Eleven, now unleashed as Gallino, a cartel kingpin with a velvet glove over a fist of barbed wire. Introduced in the Season 1 cliffhanger as a shadowy financier lurking on the fringes, Gallino storms center stage in Episode 1, his private jet touching down amid a dust storm like a harbinger of hell. Garcia, 69 and still radiating that quiet menace, plays Gallino as a chess master in a game of checkers—suave in tailored suits, but with a penchant for medieval tortures that make Tommy’s interrogations look like tea parties. “Taylor called me and said, ‘I wrote this for your voice, your spirit,'” Garcia shared in a recent sit-down, his trademark gravitas underscoring the thrill. Gallino’s siege on M-Tex isn’t mere business; it’s personal, rooted in a decades-old land grab that displaced his family during the ’70s oil rush, fueling a revenge arc that twists the knife of colonial exploitation into the heart of American exceptionalism. As Tommy brokers a tense sit-down in a sun-baked cantina—whiskey shots exchanged amid veiled death threats—the chemistry crackles, pitting Thornton’s world-weary pragmatism against Garcia’s operatic vendetta. It’s Sheridan at his pulp-poet best: high-stakes haggling laced with Spanish curses and sudden stabbings.

No Landman revival would be complete without the familial fault lines that Sheridan wields like a Halliburton hammer. Ali Larter reprises her role as Angela Norris, Tommy’s ex-wife and eternal thorn, whose return unleashes a maelstrom of custody battles and bedroom betrayals. Larter, 49 and channeling the fierce maternal edge that made her a Heroes standout, delivers Angela as a powder keg of pent-up fury—seducing old flames while plotting to leverage Tommy’s secrets for leverage in their endless divorce wars. Her chemistry with Thornton sizzles anew in a rain-soaked motel confrontation, where accusations fly like shrapnel: “You think oil buys absolution? It just stains everything it touches.” Flanking them are the Norris offspring: Jacob Lofland as the hotheaded teen Cooper, whose joyride into roughneck life spirals into a brush with cartel enforcers; Michelle Randolph as the whip-smart Ainsley, fresh from her 1923 Dutton days, navigating college apps and daddy issues with sardonic bite—her hilariously awkward Zoom interview in the premiere is pure Sheridan schadenfreude. Rounding out the clan is Kayla Wallace as the enigmatic Rebecca Falcone, Tommy’s on-again paramour whose forensic accounting skills unearth ledgers that could topple empires, and Paulina Chávez as Ariana Medina, the plucky intern whose immigrant grit clashes with the old boys’ club.

Then there’s the thunderclap addition: Sam Elliott, 81 and mustachioed like a monument to the Old West, debuting as T.L. Norris, Tommy’s estranged father and a legendary landman whose shadow looms larger than the rigs he tamed. Elliott, reuniting with Sheridan after their 1883 trailblazing, brings that sepia-toned gravitas to T.L.—a ranch-hardened patriarch nursing grudges from the ’60s shale boom, now resurfacing to meddle in his son’s messes with folksy aphorisms and a .45 tucked in his boot. His premiere entrance, silhouetted against a blood-orange sunset as he drawls, “Boy, you drill deep enough, you hit family—and it always bleeds,” lands like a gut-shot, blending paternal wisdom with simmering resentment. Elliott’s been vocal about the gig: “Taylor’s got a way of makin’ these worlds feel lived-in, like the dirt’s got stories.” Supporting players beef up the ensemble: James Jordan as the loyal-but-leaky Dale Bradley, whose side hustle with shady drillers sparks a mole hunt; Mark Collie as Sheriff Walt Joeberg, doling out frontier justice with a corrupt wink; and Colm Feore as a silver-tongued energy lobbyist whose Washington strings pull tighter than a wellhead.

Sheridan’s beast mode is on full throttle here, his script a Molotov cocktail of authenticity and audacity. Drawing from Wallace’s podcast roots—real tales of fracking feuds and fentanyl floods in boomtowns—the season dives deeper into the geopolitical quagmire: Russian oligarchs laundering through leases, environmental activists chaining to pumps, and a subplot threading climate refugees into the mix, their tent cities clashing with luxury RVs like oil and water. Production, which wrapped principal photography in Fort Worth’s sun-scorched lots after a brisk April start, mirrors the speed: 10 episodes rolling out weekly Sundays, filmed with IMAX-grade lenses that capture the Basin’s brutal ballet—gushers erupting like veins in the earth, dust devils swirling around battered pickups. Sheridan’s fingerprints are everywhere: the twangy soundtrack heavy on Turnpike Troubadours (kicking off Episode 1 with a boot-stomper), horse chases through scrubland, and monologues that philosophize on legacy amid the roar of mud pumps. “It’s not just about the black stuff underground,” Sheridan growled in a rare on-set dispatch. “It’s the blood it draws above.”

The drop has ignited a firestorm. Paramount+ reports premiere viewership eclipsing Season 1’s 35 million global hours, with #LandmanS2 spiking to trend No. 1 stateside. Rotten Tomatoes’ audience score hit 94% overnight—edging out the debut’s 89%—fueled by posts like “Billy Bob unchained? Chef’s kiss” and “Demi owning suits like she owns souls.” Critics are divided but dazzled: Variety hails it as “Sheridan’s slickest since Sicario,” praising the “testosterone tango” of Thornton and Garcia, while The Hollywood Reporter nitpicks the “predictable patriarch pivot” with Elliott but lauds Moore’s “commanding reinvention.” X threads buzz with Easter eggs—callbacks to Yellowstone‘s Dutton ethos, a coy nod to Lioness spycraft—and fan theories on Gallino’s endgame, from a bloody merger to a border showdown. Even haters concede the pull: one viral rant dubbed Episode 1 “a fever dream of Freud and fracking,” yet admitted bingeing till dawn.

In a streaming era bloated with reboots and retreads, Landman Season 2 stands as Sheridan’s defiant dispatch from the front lines—a raw hymn to the American hustle, where every handshake hides a shank, and redemption’s just another dry hole away. Tommy Norris isn’t saving the world; he’s salvaging his sliver of it, one rigged deal at a time. As the rigs hum into the night and the cartel shadows lengthen, one thing’s clear: this blowout’s just begun. Strap in, roughnecks—the Basin’s boiling over.