Story Retold S02E01: Death and a Sunset — Landman Season 2’s Explosive Premiere Recap

The West Texas oil drama roared back to life on November 16, 2025, and it brought the heat. Season 2’s premiere episode “Death and a Sunset” picks up right where the chaos left off. Billy Bob Thornton’s Tommy Norris is barely holding it together. Coffee isn’t cutting it anymore. He needs cigarettes. Lots of them.

But cigarettes won’t solve the mess Monty Miller left behind when he died at the end of Season 1.

Tommy’s New Gig Comes With Zero Perks

Tommy’s got a shiny new title now: President of M-Tex Oil. Sounds impressive, right? Wrong. The promotion just means Tommy’s stuck dealing with suits, bankers, and oil executives who smell blood in the water. Everyone knows Monty’s gone, and they’re circling like sharks.

The episode opens with Tommy at a Fort Worth hotel, surrounded by white men in cowboy hats. He’s supposed to reassure them that M-Tex is stable. That the company’s half-billion dollars in debt service is manageable. That nothing fundamental has changed.

Except everything has changed.

The real power now belongs to Cami Miller, Monty’s widow. She owns M-Tex outright. And the old boys’ club? They’re not exactly thrilled about taking orders from a woman they dismissed as a trophy wife.

Big mistake.

Demi Moore Unleashes Hell

If Season 1 underused Demi Moore, Season 2 corrects that error immediately. Moore steps into the spotlight with the energy of someone who’s done playing nice. Her first major scene unfolds in a hotel bathroom, and it sets the tone for everything that follows.

Two younger women breeze in, chatting about their wealthy boyfriends. One of them is planning a luxury vacation to Tulum. They notice Cami reapplying her lipstick at the mirror. The first woman delivers a cutting line: “The divorced doctor convention is one hotel over. It’s a young woman’s game here. No offense.”

Cami responds calmly: “I’m still offended.”

The young woman doubles down, tossing out a nature metaphor. “That’s life in the Serengeti,” she says with a laugh.

Wrong. Move.

Cami absorbs the insult quietly, then heads out to address the luncheon crowd. What happens next is the episode’s absolute highlight.

The Speech That Silenced the Room

Cami walks to the podium like she owns the place. Because she does. Tommy hands off her white purse without comment and steps aside. The room goes quiet. Oil executives lean forward, waiting to hear platitudes about continuing Monty’s legacy.

They don’t get platitudes.

Cami opens by referencing the Serengeti comment, positioning herself as a hunter rather than prey. She tells the assembled tycoons exactly what they need to know: she’s not here to play nice. No empty talk about philanthropy. No virtue signaling about the environment. Just cold, hard business.

“Underestimating me is how I buy you out,” she warns.

Then she drops the Tulum reference, a direct shot at the sugar daddies whose girlfriends gossiped in the bathroom. The discomfort in the room is palpable. These men realize their private lives just became leverage.

Her closing line lands like a bomb: “The only difference between me and Monty is that I’m meaner. Test me, and you’ll find out how much. Enjoy your lunch. I paid for it with your fucking money.”

The smile she flashes afterward? Pure predator.

Moore later revealed in interviews that this speech was her first day back shooting Season 2. She did seven or eight takes to nail it. The effort shows. It’s easily her strongest moment on Landman yet, and it promises a very different Season 2 than what viewers got before.

Cooper Hits the Jackpot (Maybe)

While Cami establishes dominance in boardrooms, Cooper Norris is playing his own high-stakes game out on the oil fields. Remember how he used Ariana’s settlement money to buy up small oil leases at the end of Season 1? Well, he’s drilling his first well now.

And he strikes gold.

The well produces around 6,200 barrels with over 20% oil ratio. His driller Marty runs the numbers and confirms what every wildcatter dreams about: they’re looking at roughly $10 million in yearly revenue. Cooper practically flies home to tell Ariana, eventually dragging her and baby Miguel out to the rig to witness the strike.

But Ariana doesn’t celebrate. Not really. She seems oddly detached, carrying her joy like it might explode at any moment. After years of trauma and disappointment, she’s learned not to trust good fortune.

Her questions are pointed:

• What if rivals attack the rig?
• What if Cooper changes under the weight of success?
• What if she and Miguel become collateral damage?

The Season 2 trailer dropped hints that Cooper’s funding might have come from questionable sources. So yeah, the other shoe’s definitely dropping soon. Cooper’s early success feels almost too easy, which means trouble’s brewing beneath the surface.

Ainsley’s “Special” College Interview

Meanwhile, the Norris family chaos machine keeps running at full speed. Ainsley needs to get into college, so Angela flies her to Texas Christian University for an admissions interview.

It goes spectacularly, hilariously wrong.

Ainsley sits down with counselor Greta Stidham and proceeds to share her deeply problematic theory. She argues that universities keeping cheerleaders from dating athletes is “really detrimental to humanity in general.” Why? Because it prevents “the prettiest girls from dating the tallest, most athletic boys, who could then get married and make babies that are, like, really, really pretty and athletic.”

Greta calls it “easily the most offensive and elitist statement uttered in this office.” She’s not wrong.

But here’s the twist: Ainsley gets in anyway. She’s a preferred walk-on for the cheerleading squad, meaning TCU wanted her badly enough to admit her despite that train wreck of an interview. Her 29 ACT score met minimum requirements. That’s all she needed.

Angela beams with pride. Tommy will find out later that this acceptance comes with expensive consequences.

The Dinner That Exploded

Back home, Angela prepares a celebration dinner with all the flair of someone married to an oil company president. She’s making cacio e pepe with white truffle, which she shaves onto everyone’s plate except Ainsley’s. The girl’s unsophisticated palate doesn’t deserve the added expense.

Cooper shows up wanting to discuss business with his father. Important business. The kind that involves $10 million per year in oil revenue.

Tommy’s too distracted to focus. He starts needling Angela about her hormones and menstrual cycle. Wrong move. The dinner devolves faster than an untended oil fire.

Angela starts hurling plates against the wall. Expensive ingredients become airborne. The celebration dinner transforms into a war zone. Cooper never gets to have that business conversation with his dad.

But then classic Tommy-and-Angela chemistry kicks in. They stop fighting and start making out on the floor, nearly tumbling into bed together. The attraction is still magnetic, still dangerous, still completely dysfunctional.

Until Tommy’s phone rings.

Sam Elliott Arrives With a Sunset

Season 2 introduces a new character who’ll clearly play a major role going forward: T.L., Tommy’s father, played by the legendary Sam Elliott. We meet him at an assisted living facility, sitting in a wheelchair and insisting on watching the sunset.

The man’s as cranky as his son, snapping at a nurse about the timing of sundown. When an aide delivers news that his wife Dorothy died at a separate memory care facility, T.L.’s response reveals deep fractures in their marriage. When the orderly tries consoling him about reuniting with Dorothy someday, T.L. replies that he’d have to end up in Hell for that particular reunion.

T.L. and Tommy don’t share a scene in this episode. But they will soon, because the woman who died—Dorothy Norris—is Tommy’s mother too.

The phone call interrupts Tommy’s almost-reconciliation with Angela. He learns his mother is dead. The news hits hard, even though Tommy doesn’t seem overly broken up about it. The emotional distance speaks volumes about their relationship.

The Sunset Connection

The episode’s final shot is pure Taylor Sheridan poetry. Tommy stands beside Angela, staring at a blood-orange sunset. The camera cuts to T.L. in his wheelchair at the assisted living facility, watching the same sunset. Father and son, separated by miles but connected by loss, both searching for meaning in the family matriarch’s death.

It’s beautiful. It’s devastating. And it sets up what’s clearly going to be a complicated family reunion.

What’s Cooking for the Rest of Season 2

This premiere stacks up conflicts like oil barrels. Tommy and Cami will inevitably clash over M-Tex’s direction. She’s assertive enough to push back when Tommy tries to shield her from negotiations. Meanwhile, Cooper’s instant success smells suspicious. The kid went from broke to millionaire overnight, and Taylor Sheridan doesn’t let characters win that easily.

Angela’s already planning to buy an expensive house in Fort Worth now that Tommy’s “president of an oil company.” Tommy objects, pointing out she’s about to bankrupt him again with another mansion they can’t afford. That argument’s far from over.

The cartel storyline lurks in the background too. Andy Garcia’s Gallino appears in the opening credits as a season regular but doesn’t show up in the premiere. That threat’s coming back, probably when everyone’s least prepared for it.

And now T.L.’s arrival adds another layer of family dysfunction. The relationship between father and son clearly has history. Bad history. Expect ugly truths to surface when they finally share screen time.

When Shadows Grow Long

“Death and a Sunset” runs 49 minutes and was written by Taylor Sheridan, directed by Stephen Kay. It premiered on Paramount+ and immediately reminded fans why they fell for this show in the first place.

The episode balances grief with ambition, power plays with vulnerability. Billy Bob Thornton continues proving why he’s perfect for Tommy Norris—world-weary, permanently exasperated, but somehow still sweet when it counts. Demi Moore finally gets the showcase she deserves, and she absolutely demolishes every scene.

Sam Elliott’s addition brings gravitas to an already stacked cast. His weather-beaten presence promises complications for Tommy, who’s already juggling enough problems to break most men.

The sunset imagery works on multiple levels. It represents endings—Dorothy’s death, Monty’s legacy fading, old power structures crumbling. But sunsets also mean transitions. Cami’s rising. Cooper’s building his empire. The Norris family’s shifting into new configurations.

Everyone in the Permian Basin faces their own version of death and sunset. Some, like T.L., watch peacefully from wheelchairs. Others, like Tommy, stare through grief and cigarette smoke. But Cami Miller? She’s not watching sunsets.

She’s too busy hunting.