Netflix‘s new show American Primeval has no problem showing the true brutality of life in the Old West. The very first episode of American Primeval crescendoes with the horrific events of the Mountain Meadows massacre, a real life event wherein the Mormon militia known as the Nauvoo Legion disguised themselves and murdered hundreds of settlers. Subsequent installments feature innocent women having their throats slit, terrible acts of sexual violence, horses and wolves attacking humans, arson, murder, and illness. Given everything that’s stacked against our heroes and heroines, is there any possibility that the likes of Sara (Betty Gilpin), Devin (Preston Mota), Two Moons (Shawnee Pourier), Isaac (Taylor Kitsch), and Abish (Saura Lightfoot-Leon) can survive all six episodes of American Primeval?
Does anyone in Netflix’s American Primeval get a happy ending? Can they??
**Spoilers for all six episodes of American Primeval, now streaming on Netflix**
American Primeval is set in 1857 Utah Territory, a time and place full of violence. Sara Rowell has arrived at Fort Bridger with her young son Devin in the hopes of traveling even further west to meet up with the boy’s father in Crooks Springs. What she hasn’t disclosed is she’s also on the run from vicious bounty hunters because she murdered her rich, abusive husband. Sara and Devin wind up narrowly surviving the Mountain Meadows massacre with the help of frontiersman Isaac Reed. The trio, along with wagon stowaway Two Moons, fight their way across the harsh landscape over American Primeval‘s six episodes.
Elsewhere in the Peter Berg directed and EPed show, we follow a pair of Mormon newlyweds, Jacob (Dane DeHaan) and Abish Pratt. Jacob is scalped and left for dead during the historic massacre, while Abish and a number of other Mormon ladies wind up handed over to Paiute warriors. The Paiute are soon felled, in turn, by Red Feather’s (Derek Hinkey) Shoshone. Although the Shoshone kill the rest of the captured women, Abish impresses the warrior with her spirit and her life is spared.
Does Sara managed to outrun the bounty hunters, led by the villainous Virgil (Jai Courteney)? Can Isaac safely shepherd his new friends west? Does Abish stay with the Shoshone? Do any of the characters in American Primeval survive? Here’s everything you need to know about how Netflix’s American Primeval ends…
Finding it impossible to get through Netflix’s American Primeval without knowing what happens to our heroes? Do they live? Do they die? Does Fort Bridger endure? Here’s your spoiler-filled guide to what happens to the main characters of American Primeval…
Good news! Isaac succeeds in guiding Sara, Devin, and Two Moons to Crooks Springs. Well, he gets them to the outskirts. This is after he narrowly dies fighting off fur trappers, watches Sara submit herself to sexual assault to save Devin, and even kills Jai Courteney’s bounty hunter Virgil. The problem is that Sara and he left Virgil’s brother Lucas (Andrew P. Logan) alive. So, after Isaac and Sara share a bittersweet kiss goodbye, Isaac has to double back to where he left his beloved to kill Lucas. Bad news: He is mortally wounded in the fray and dies in Sara’s arms. She, Devin, and Two Moons give Isaac a funeral pyre sendoff before deciding to skip Crooks Springs to travel further to California.
Sara’s storyline is somehow still much happier than Abish’s. Once the spirited Mormon woman acclimates to Shoshone life, she realizes how cruel and futile the whole situation the characters find themselves in is. Neither the Mormon settlers nor the Shoshone will live in peace on this land, dooming one side, the Indigenous one, to annihilation. When Abish recognizes that the Mormon militia officers the U.S. army eventually wants to hand her off to are the same men who perpetrated the Mountain Meadows massacre, she runs away to reunite with Red Feather and Shoshone. She attempts to warn them that the Nauvoo will follow her to their camp, but the Shoshone are defiant. They will fight and probably die. Abish joins them. In an emotional moment, Red Feather paints Abish with warpaint and names her “Stone Woman.”
During the ensuing battle, Abish comes face to face with a hooded Mormon soldier. They point guns at each other, but the man fires first. Then, he takes off his hood to reveal that he is none other than Jacob. The mentally unstable man is thrilled to finally have found his wife and holds her in his arms. When he realizes he has killed her, he dies by suicide.
“I think that, yeah, it is kind of a messed up version of Romeo and Juliet. It does seem kind of fated, right?” Dane DeHaan told Decider. “It’s wonderful, I think, that Jacob really believes he’s going to find this person and he finds her.”
“What was important to me in that scene is that he’s happy. And I know that seems so weird because he’s gone through so much and he’s about to make a really drastic move, but it’s almost like after everything he’s been through, he actually finds this person that he loves, that he’s been looking for. And it is kind of like really sad.”
Red Feather also is killed, as is his son, and the rest of the Shoshone.
While Brigham Young (Kim Coates) succeeds in burning down Jim Bridger’s (Shea Whigham) beloved fort, Bridger survives the fire. In real life, Jim Bridger would head east to plea his case to the U.S. Government against Young. Fort Bridger would be resurrected as a key U.S. military base of operations and Bridger wouldn’t die until 1881.
Netflix has yet to announce plans to continue American Primeval, but Peter Berg told Decider he’s got some ideas for a second season percolating.
“You know, after we wrapped and I looked at all the actors — the ones that were still alive — I felt such affection for them,” Berg said. “And I do think there are many ways that we could go.”
Berg wasn’t explicit about which surviving characters he was focused on, so perhaps American Primeval Season 2 could follow Jim Bridger. More likely, however, it would continue the story of Sara, Devin, and Two Moons.