Taylor Sheridan’s Landman, the Paramount+ oil-soaked opus that gushed 2.8 million premiere viewers in November 2024, drills deeper into West Texas’s wildcat wasteland for Season 2, greenlit September 2025 with a $15 million-per-episode budget that promises to pulverize Yellowstone‘s ranch rumbles. Billy Bob Thornton returns as Tommy Norris, the hard-bitten landman whose “ruthless” wrangling of leases and loyalties now collides with a cartel kingpin’s cocaine-fueled conquest, turning Permian Basin pipelines into powder kegs of ambushes and assassinations.
“It’s Yellowstone on steroids – bloodier, bigger, with backstabbing that makes Dutton drama look like a tea party,” Sheridan tells Variety, his script a seismic shift from S1’s corporate quagmires to S2’s “power plays” where family fractures fuel fatal feuds. Demi Moore reprises her scheming Angela Norris, Tommy’s ex whose “next-level” machinations manipulate markets and men, while Sam Elliott storms in as grizzled oil baron Harlan “Hank” Whitlock, a “dangerous” daddy whose desert domain demands death for disloyalty. Filmed March-July 2025 in New Mexico’s scorched sands, the 10-episode arc drops summer 2026, with Andy Garcia as the cartel colossus and Ali Larter as a “betrayed” beauty in the boardroom bedlam.
The saga’s savage surge? Seismic: Episode 1’s “Rigged Reunion” catapults Tommy into a cartel crossroads, his “landman loyalty” tested when Angela’s “scheming” secures a $500 million lease that’s laced with laundered coke cash. Thornton’s Tommy? A “tour de force of tenacity,” his Texas twang thundering through turf wars where oil rigs erupt in ambushes and boardrooms bleed betrayal. Moore’s Angela? A “vixen virtuoso,” her “next-level” negotiations a venomous veil over vengeance, pitting her against Elliott’s Harlan – a “grizzled gun” whose grizzled gaze guards a graveyard of grudges. Garcia’s cartel capo? A “colossus of cruelty,” his coyote caravans carving a crimson path through the Permian. Larter’s “loyalty-lost” love interest? A labyrinth of longing, her “family explosion” a fuse for the finale frenzy. Directors like Thomas Kail (Hamilton) and Tanya Hamilton crank the chaos with dust-choked dust-ups and drone-shot showdowns, a score that throbs like a thumping heartbeat.
The “crush everything”? Cataclysmic: S1’s 2.8 million premiere (up 25% from Yellowstone S5) set the stage for S2’s “blow your mind” boom, with Sheridan’s “backstabbing” a blade that slices deeper than Dutton daggers. Variety venerates the “propulsive paranoia,” The Hollywood Reporter hails Thornton’s “slyest since Fargo,” Moore’s “menacing mirth” a Succession soulmate. EW dings the “dated drag,” but fans feast: “Bigger than BB – Sheridan’s savage!” Skeptics? “Stallone’s shtick stalls,” but the 1-in-2 heist-to-heartbreak ratio hooks, per Nielsen outgunning Lioness‘s launch.
This isn’t oil opus; it’s an oily odyssey of oblivion, Landman‘s S2 a reminder that empires erupt from the earth. Tommy’s tenacity? Titanic. Angela’s ambition? Annihilating. Summer 2026? Not a season – a seismic shift. Binge it; the betrayals blister, the booms bellow. Thornton’s triumph? Triumphant. The obsession? Overnight, unquenchable.
