When and how Episode 6 landed
Season 2, Episode 6 of Landman, titled “Dark Night of the Soul,” premiered on Sunday, December 21, 2025 on Paramount+. The 53‑minute episode, rated TV‑MA, arrived in the streamer’s usual slot for the series: 12:00 a.m. PT / 3:00 a.m. ET on Sunday, part of a weekly rollout that has carried through Season 2.
The episode sits in the back half of a 10‑episode season. The current schedule has:
- Episode 7, “Forever Is an Instant,” on December 28, 2025
- Episode 8, “Handsome Touched Me,” on January 4, 2026
- Episode 9, “Plans, Tears and Sirens,” on January 11, 2026
- Episode 10, “Tragedy and Flies,” on January 18, 2026
Viewers in the U.S. can stream the episode with either:
- Paramount+ Essential at $7.99 per month or about $59 per year
- Paramount+ with Showtime at $12.99 per month or about $119.99 per year
Both tiers carry Landman, and the Showtime bundle is also available as an add‑on through Amazon and Hulu at the same monthly price.
Created by Taylor Sheridan and Christian Wallace, Landman has become one of Paramount+’s key dramas. Trade coverage estimates the show costs around $15 million per episode to produce, putting Season 2 in the same big‑budget tier as Sheridan’s other flagship series.
Where Episode 6 fits in the M‑Tex saga
“Dark Night of the Soul” picks up directly from the fallout of Episode 5, “The Pirate Dinner.” In that earlier hour, M‑Tex’s new owner Cami Miller (Demi Moore) accepted a $400 million loan from cartel‑linked financier Gallino (often called Dan in recaps) to keep the company out of Chapter 11.
Her decision flew in the face of legal advice and of Tommy Norris’ (Billy Bob Thornton) warnings. In Episode 5, Gallino positioned himself as the only way out, delivering a line that has echoed into this week:
“I am the f**king solution.”
At the same time, M‑Tex still carries the weight of a $420 million insurance settlement from Blanton after a Louisiana offshore rig disaster. That money was supposed to pay for a replacement well. It did not, and now lawyers are warning that unless offshore drilling restarts within 45 days, the company could face lawsuits and potential fraud allegations.
Episode 6 arrives with those twin threats already in place: cartel money on one side, an angry insurer on the other. The hour’s title is literal. Tommy spends the episode pulled between crises in the field, traps in the boardroom and unfinished business at home, while the clock on every problem keeps ticking.
Dan tightens the financial noose
The central business plot of “Dark Night of the Soul” shows Gallino using that new $400 million loan as leverage against both Cami and Tommy.
Recaps describe how Dan orchestrates separate meetings with each of them, carefully feeding doubt into Cami’s view of her president while boxing Tommy into a smaller and smaller corner. He does not yell or threaten in the open. Instead, he reminds Cami of Tommy’s past and quietly raises the specter of the 2008 financial crash, a failure that still shadows Tommy’s reputation.
By the time the episode reaches its signature set‑piece, Gallino has moved the arena from metaphorical to literal. Cami and Tommy meet him at a rodeo arena in or near Fort Worth, with Dan positioned as the confident rider in the ring while M‑Tex looks more and more like the bull he has lassoed.
That imagery mirrors the basic math of the situation. Cami has already taken his money. The Blanton insurance clock is running. If Tommy tries to tear up the loan or push Dan out, he risks blowing up both Cami’s ownership and M‑Tex’s immediate solvency.
SoapCentral’s recap frames the outcome bluntly: by the end of the episode, Tommy no longer has a good option. If he goes along with Dan’s terms, he helps a cartel‑adjacent lender tighten control over Monty’s company. If he resists, he could destroy Cami’s last chance to keep that company in Miller hands.
“Dark Night of the Soul” leaves him stuck in that bind, which is very much by design. FandomWire notes that the hour is structured to show Tommy “juggling an avalanche of professional and personal crises,” with the memory of previous financial ruin shaping every risk he does or does not take now.
Tommy’s long night with his father
While Dan plays chess with M‑Tex’s balance sheet, Tommy faces a second test on the road: rebuilding a relationship with his father, T.L. Norris (played by Sam Elliott and often called Thomas in some coverage).
Episode 5 ended with T.L. moving into the Norris home and Angela staging an elaborate pirate‑themed dinner to welcome him. Episode 6 extends that thaw. T.L. asks to accompany Tommy on a work trip to Fort Worth, turning a routine corporate run into a belated father‑son road story.
Along the way, according to recaps, the pair talk about:
- The oil business they have both lived inside
- The greed and shortcuts that come with it
- The environmental costs of drilling and disasters like the Louisiana rig
The conversations tie personal regret to real‑world consequences. T.L. has his own history of hard choices in the patch. Tommy is now repeating some of those patterns at a larger corporate scale, with cartel money and federal regulators in the mix.
Off‑screen, Elliott has described working on Landman as a “gift” in interviews and has said he tends to stay on set even when he is not filming. That presence comes across in Episode 6’s quiet scenes: the character of T.L. becomes a kind of conscience, sitting beside Tommy as he drives toward yet another meeting that might save or sink the company.
The episode never gives Tommy a clean answer about whether to prioritize his father or his job. Instead, it lets the two threads tangle. Every time a moment of connection appears, the phone rings or a lawyer calls, and the M‑Tex crisis pulls him away again.
Cooper, Angela and the cost of growing up
Back in Texas, Cooper Norris (Jacob Lofland) and Ariana (Paulina Chávez) carry forward the more intimate storyline that began in Episode 5.
There, Ariana made her position clear. As a practicing Catholic, she told Cooper she would not keep “shacking up” and pushed for a proper engagement. Cooper drove to Corpus Christi to get her father’s blessing, and the couple moved toward marriage.
Episode 6 adds a practical twist: how to pay for that future. Recaps describe Angela Norris stepping in and handing Cooper her own wedding ring so that he can give Ariana something meaningful without going further into debt. It is a small moment compared with offshore rigs and cartel loans, but it hits the same theme. Even personal promises in Landman carry a financial price.
The gesture also reflects Angela’s evolving role. Once mostly the ex‑wife caught on the edges of oilfield chaos, she is now the one quietly underwriting the next Norris generation while Tommy wrestles with billion‑dollar problems in Fort Worth.
Rebecca’s offshore gamble in Louisiana
Far from West Texas and Fort Worth, Rebecca Falcone (Kayla Wallace) spends “Dark Night of the Soul” staring down the other half of M‑Tex’s crisis: the destroyed offshore rig off Louisiana’s coast and that conditional $420 million Blanton insurance payout.
Legal advisers tell Cami and Tommy that unless M‑Tex restarts offshore drilling within 45 days, Blanton and other parties may accuse the company of fraud or sue to recover the settlement. To meet that deadline, Rebecca does something she has avoided for both personal and professional reasons: she brings Newsom, a geologist with whom she previously had a one‑night stand, back into the project.
SoapCentral’s recap notes that Rebecca and Newsom plan to drill near the damaged rig site. If they hit oil, the company can claim it fulfilled the spirit of the Blanton deal, strengthening its legal position. If the well comes up dry or another accident occurs, they will likely become the most convenient scapegoats for board members, regulators and perhaps prosecutors.
The episode leans on the awkwardness between them to underline that risk. Their shared past is inconvenient and at times uncomfortable. Yet the bigger danger is in the water below them, where one failed well has already cost lives, forced a $420 million payout and now threatens to drag M‑Tex into court.
This offshore storyline runs parallel to the Fort Worth meetings rather than intersecting with them directly. Together, they show how stretched the company has become. While Dan and Cami argue over corporate control, Rebecca is trying to keep the entire enterprise from capsizing in the Gulf.
Robots in Odessa: the future of roughnecks
The episode also takes a detour to Odessa, Texas, where a group of working‑class regulars from the series attend the Permian Basin International Oil Show.
There, characters including Dale, Boss, Ben and Russ watch a demonstration of robots designed to work on oil rigs. Sales reps highlight improved safety and lower long‑term costs, presenting automation as another tool in the patch.
The implication is less rosy for the men watching. The Permian Basin has long depended on roughneck labor. Now, as the show’s recaps point out, Landman introduces machines that can swing the tongs, handle pipe and take on some of the very jobs that defined earlier episodes.
Within the story, the robot sequence broadens the definition of a “dark night.” It is not just Tommy’s personal crisis. It is the dawning realization for rig hands that even if the cartel money, insurance lawsuits and gas leaks all somehow get resolved, the future of work in the oilfield is changing under their feet.
Off‑screen stakes: Viewers, budgets and Texas money
Beyond the fictional numbers attached to M‑Tex, Landman itself is dealing with some very real figures.
- Trade coverage pegs the show’s production cost at roughly $15 million per episode, placing it among Paramount+’s most expensive dramas.
- A recent Newsweek piece reported that more than 14.9 million people watched Landman in its first four weeks on Paramount+, making it the streamer’s most‑viewed series during that period.
- Texas officials and local economic studies have tied productions like Landman to a broader boom in the state’s film and television business. Since 2015, film and TV shoots have injected an estimated $655 million into the Fort Worth economy, with Sheridan’s projects frequently cited as key contributors.
Those figures help explain why Landman spends so much time in recognizable Texas locations such as Fort Worth, Odessa and the Permian. The show is telling a story about resource extraction, but it is also part of a different kind of boom in the region’s economy.
What Happens Next
“Dark Night of the Soul” ends without giving Tommy, Cami or Rebecca a clean win. Instead, it rearranges the battlefield heading into the season’s home stretch:
- Tommy leaves Fort Worth with Dan’s loan still in place and fewer tools to fight it.
- Cami has more reasons to doubt her president, even as she needs him to navigate both the cartel lender and Blanton.
- Rebecca and Newsom move closer to spudding a new well near the damaged Louisiana rig, hoping to beat the 45‑day clock.
- Cooper and Ariana step further toward marriage, thanks in part to Angela’s sacrifice.
- Dale, Boss, Ben and Russ return from Odessa with robots fresh in their minds and the long‑term security of rig work newly in question.
With four episodes left in Season 2, the stakes are now clearly drawn. M‑Tex is pinned between Blanton’s lawyers and Gallino’s money. Tommy is caught between saving the company and reclaiming time with a father who is finally back in his life. And across West Texas and offshore Louisiana, every choice seems to come with a price that cannot be easily paid.
Episode 7, “Forever Is an Instant,” is scheduled for December 28, 2025, again dropping in the early‑morning Paramount+ window. For viewers who have followed M‑Tex from land deals in the Permian to cartel‑backed financing and federal scrutiny offshore, “Dark Night of the Soul” serves exactly as its title promises: the deep, tense pause before things either break apart or somehow hold.
