Season 2 of Taylor Sheridan’s Landman on Paramount+ ends with a major shift for Billy Bob Thornton’s Tommy Norris as he launches his own company after being fired by his longtime friend, Cami Miller (Demi Moore). It’s a personal evolution for a character who has always seemed more comfortable in the passenger seat after he was burned. But was it fate? There’s a lot to think about heading into Season 3, which has already been announced.
In a finale postmortem interview with Blavity’s Shadow and Act, Thornton said, “I think a lot of it had to do with being fired by his best friend’s widow, who he’s known for years. And also now that he sees what she’s doing, he has no choice. If he’s going to stay in this business, he’s going to have to do something. But I think there probably was a little bit of fate involved, particularly just from a writing standpoint and a dramatic standpoint, you would think that that would have to eventually come to be.”
“And I think it’s probably as close to happiness as Tommy has come, knowing that he’s going to be involved in something that is just his. Because when Tommy and Monty, played by Jon Hamm in Season 1, they knew each other before they were successful, and Jon became the big rich guy and Tommy then ends up working for him. So I’m sure Tommy has had a little chip on his shoulder for a long time that he never really got to run the show.”
Where does Cami go from here?
While Tommy takes control of his future, Cami’s fate remains uncertain. After a meeting with Nathan, where he turns down her offer for him to be president and asks her to let them help her sell the company, she doesn’t reappear in the finale. Will she end up selling or emerge as Tommy’s biggest rival?
“Well, first of all, I watch this show more as a fan than a part of it. I wonder the same things you do. I wonder the same things the fans do. I come up with different scenarios in my head and stuff like that, because Taylor really does not tell us anything. So when we’re doing an interview with someone like yourself, when we say, ‘Can you tease Season 3 or something,’ it’s like we honestly don’t know,” Thornton said.
“It definitely sets it up for Cami to be Tommy’s nemesis, and this is just me as a viewer saying that. I mean, the natural progression, you would think, would be that, okay, now maybe Gallino and I actually get closer now. Maybe we don’t. Maybe it’s worse. Maybe he hooks back up with her. You never know.”
“But I think Taylor did a really smart thing by making this season what he made it, as opposed to repeating Season 1 and having a lot of danger and explosions and guys getting killed on oil rigs and things like that, because then it would become one of these shows like the ones about the firemen or whatever, where every week it’s another dangerous situation.”
“I think it was very smart to make this season about the dynamics between the people in the family and between the workers and between me and Cami.”
The surprising shift in Tommy and Rebecca’s relationship
Another highlight of the season is the evolution in Tommy’s working relationship with Rebecca Falcone (Kayla Wallace). What began as tension has slowly turned into mutual respect.
“I think that as time went on in Season 1 and the beginning of Season 2, I think that they both started to admire one another. I think that Rebecca started to see, ‘You know, I kinda get this guy. I see this edgy, curmudgeony guy as … it’s like I think this guy knows what he’s doing.’”
“And I think Tommy had a lot to do with chipping away at her hard surface. And I think for Tommy, he started to admire this woman’s grit. He started to really admire how she stands by what she believes in. It’s like, ‘Well, wait a minute, I stand by what I believe in too.’ And I think they started to melt away some of this tension between them by a mutual admiration for what they do in their business.”
With Season 2 setting up new alliances and rivalries, fans are left with more questions than answers. But as Thornton himself says, that’s exactly what makes this season stand out.
“Now, before we did Season 2, there weren’t as many questions about, ‘Well, what do you think’s going to happen?’ Now, this season has made everybody wonder, because it’s set up for so many different things. I mean, are Sam and I going to become closer as father and son? Am I going to become closer to Cooper as father and son? Are Cooper and I going to butt heads now because now he’s the guy, and I’m like, ‘Well, wait a minute,’ and I know more about what to do with this than he does? There’s so many possibilities here, and we know none of what’s going to happen.”
Landman Season 2 is now streaming in full on Peacock.