‘Ransom Canyon’ Ending Explained By Showrunner April Blair

SPOILER ALERT: This piece contains spoilers for the entirety of Ransom Canyon on Netflix.

In the Western world of Netflix’s Ransom Canyon, showrunner, creator and executive producer April Blair took the bones of Jodi Thomas’ book, the first in the series which shares its title with the show, and expanded the ensemble cast and plots that weave together.

Apart from the three big ranching families and their stories that intersect at the heart of the romance drama adaptation, three love stories sprout — two if you count the obvious history between Josh Duhamel’s Staten Kirkland and Minka Kelly’s Quinn O’Grady, who have known each other since high school.

“I always viewed these relationships through this lens of, it’s kind of like achoose your own adventure. We’ve all had one of these — the Staten kind of romance, from Quinn’s point of view, is the man you want to fix. Yancy is the bad boy you should probably avoid,” Blair told MyRumors in an interview ahead of the show’s release. “And for Lucas, it’s like the high school sweetheart we all deserved to have, but probably didn’t. You weave through those romances and they’re all relatable in their own way. Those three relationships are the central element of the series so we’re always trying to keep those alive.”

In addition to drawing out Staten and Quinn’s getting together compared to the book’s pacing for their relationship, Blair also carved out a whole new path for a mystery element to the story, which also ends up connecting various characters across the small town that is the crossroads of Ransom Canyon in Texas.

In the below interview, Blair unpacks how the mystery unfolds and who is behind the terrible accident that befell Staten’s son Randall Kirkland (TK name), how each romance grounding the series leaves off, the choices of the more villain and anti-hero-leaning characters and of course, possibilities to explore should the show get renewed for a second season.

On Quinn’s Piano Arc & Her Love Story With Staten

In the finale of Ransom Canyon, titled “Maybe It’s Time Yancy Grey Dies Too,” Quinn makes the decision to go back to New York, where she had previously studied piano, to play for six months for the New York Philharmonic. It’s safe to say that Staten’s reaction to this news is less than satisfactory.

“She wants to stand on her own two feet and do the right thing and go her dance hall. And I think that he is just feeling wounded,” Blair told MyRumors. “He’s someone who has lost so much in his life, and the idea of losing her too, Staten’s challenge for me is that he has a hard time expressing himself.”

During a vibrant line-dancing scene at Gracie’s Dance Hall, which Quinn owns and runs and faces pushback from Austin Water and Power developers after they initially invested in her business, Staten is seen nursing a drink at the bar while Quinn is out enjoying herself dancing to Walker Hayes’ “Fancy Like.” She catches his eye, and she approaches him, but by the time she gets to where he was sitting, he has left, and he pushed the knife in further by leaving behind the lavender twine bracelet they each wore to signify their commitment to each other.

“He’s one of those people, like if he could just say how he feels, they would be fine, but he struggles with that,” Blair added. “It’s something he struggles [with] very much in season one and [given a renewal] into season two, but in this moment, I think, instead of telling her that he feels hurt and afraid he’s gonna lose her again and afraid of losing someone else that he loves, instead of saying that he just chooses to guard his heart and walk away, and and I think it’s a huge disappointment for her, and something that like definitely is an obstacle in season two [potentially].

On the Mystery of Randall’s Accident & Who Was Actually Behind The Wheel

Another thread besides the land disputes and love stories in the series, is what really happened to cause the tragic death of Staten’s son, Randall, who died in a car accident the night of his birthday after being gifted a new vehicle from his uncle Davis (Eoin Macken).

“That mystery spine is not something that’s in the book. Randall’s accident, the fact that that Staten lost his son is, is definitely a big part of his motivation in the book, but it happened several years back,” Blair said. “That’s one of the things we wanted to pull up and see happen and see the after effect of that. We wanted to create a mystery spine to that, and to keep that for 10 episodes, I wanted it to be this evolving thing where, at first you think it’s one character, and then you think it’s another, and then you get this twist of, it’s someone completely different and it’s not some big, bad, horrible person.”

Viewers first suspect Davis’ son and Randall’s cousin Reid Collins (Andrew Liner), because he was spotted on security camera footage taking the blue pickup truck involved in the accident to a chop shop in Bandera, Texas. In later episodes, it becomes revealed that Kit Russel (Casey W. Johnson), Lucas Russell’s (Garret Wareing) older brother, asked Reid to do this as a favor the quarterback owed him, and Kit, in turn, was doing it to protect Margaret Brigman (Sarah Minnich) mother of Lucas’ flame Lauren Brigman (Lizzy Greene) and wife to Sheriff Dan Brigman (Philip Winchester). She had been behind the wheel of the blue truck, and she was drunk that night.

“It’s very personal to Lauren. It’s a very personal loss, and having to push her father to do the right thing at the expense of her mother’s freedom felt like it gave [Lauren] a very season-defining end place to be,” Blair said specifically of the moments when Lauren overhears her parents arguing about the truth and then her telling her dad to arrest her mother so that Kit can get out of jail. “It’s something that we’re hoping to continue and track through the after effect of that in a season two, potentially.”

On Lauren and Lucas’ Love Story

Lauren and Lucas have a will they won’t they, back and forth dynamic of their own that slightly mirrors that of Quinn and Staten. After Lauren tries to back out of the very “serious” relationship they find themselves in saying things like “we’re all we need” in the small Texas town, Lucas wins her back by asking her to dance at Gracie’s and making a heartfelt speech to her in front of the crowd.

One of the last shots of Lucas is him looking through interest letters he has received from some very good schools — Ivy League and more.’

“He has this potential. They’re reaching out. When you have a high GPA and you’re in a certain ranking in class, you do get reach out letters, letters of interest, but they’re not offers, it’s a future story,” Blair clarified.

This could certainly spell out a new tension between the head cheerleader and the head-down, hard-working cowboy as Lauren has just injured her shoulder, putting her dreams of a UT full-ride scholarship for cheer on hold.

On Ellie & Yancy’s Flame & The Entrance of [Spoiler] And Who Could Play That Character

Yancy Grey (Jack Schumacher), who started the show off as a drifter who landed in Ransom Canyon to try and make quick work of getting close to one Cap Fuller (James Brolin). He signals a potential change of heart several times throughout the series as he falls for Ellie Estevez (Marianly Tejada), Quinn’s righthand woman and later partner in managing and ownership of Gracie’s.

Yancy also asks Ellie to marry him in a small chapel later lit with candles, and she goes to the dance hall to work a celebration for a bit before she comes back to give him her answer, which she thinks on. Before she can make it back there, though, a brunette woman whose face we don’t see comes up to her and asks her where Yancy is, revealing that she is his wife!

“A fun tidbit nobody knows, is that the girl who played the back of her head was actually the star of my very first show, Jane by Design that was on ABC family at the time. That was Erica Dasher, and she was just there to visit and I said, ‘Will you, will you be the back of his wife’s head? And she’s like, ‘I will if you let me audition for her,’” Blair told MyRumors. So we don’t know [who will play her] yet. Obviously it’ll be a brunette, but it’s a fun, now that we’re in the room on season two, it’s a very fun character that’s shaping up and a very juicy backstory.”

On The Austin Water & Power of It All

With the Collins family’s close ties to Austin Water and Power via Davis’ deal to get Staten and Cap Fuller to sell their ranches to them for land development and Davis’ ex-wife Paula Jo (Meta Golding) sitting on the AWP board, the presence of the looming pipeline development isn’t likely to let up either.

Reid proves to stand out as a good egg among his parents when he plays a recording of his mother trying to sabotage Staten’s wells and also when he encourages Lucas to go after Lauren, whom Reid had been dating at the beginning of the series.

“I think Drew did a great job with that character. His arc, to me, is very interesting, because he starts as this kid who’s very privileged and a little bit narcissistic, and, you know, not in touch with his feelings or his ability to do the right thing. He’s sort of like every man for himself,” Blair said. “And by the end of the season, in the finale where he and his father are standing, inside Cap’s farmhouse, and they’re looking at — on one side, it’s Lauren and Lucas, and the other, Quinn and Staten, and [Reid says] ‘Oh, now we have something in common.’ And Davis says, ‘What’s important now is what we do with it, right?’”

Reid befriended Lucas, who became romantically involved with Lauren when she broke things off with Reid,  when they both worked for Staten to recover some of his cows taken by Rustlers, and at that point, Reid had been living with Staten because his dad kicked him out for lying about being a hero in an accident at an abandoned Ghost House. Lauren didn’t exactly make things clear between the two boys, especially because her dad had laid down the law that she not associate with Lucas at first.

 “Then the next time, Reid’s choice of what to do with that is to empower Lucas to mend things with Lauren. Davis’ is to goad Staten into making a critical mistake that might cost him his ranch,” Blair added. “It’s like these two people are at a similar crossroads at the beginning of the finale, and they make very different choices, and that kind of echoes into their future stories as well.”

On Cap Fuller ‘s Death

One of Yancy Grey’s underlying motives to get close to Cap Fuller is that he is related to the old rancher, though Cap died before the two could have a proper conversation about it.

“Jim Brolin is just iconic and a huge character, and he really brought a lot to that character.  I do think people are going to love Cap, and I do think he’s this uniting force, because for me, it’s on the posters and stuff, but there’s this organizing principle of this series, which is Love Land and Legacy,” Blair said. “It’s about the people that we love and land we want to protect, and legacies we leave behind. Every story we’re telling in Ransom Canyon is sort of rotating on that axis and what does that look like for each of our characters? What does it look like for this small town?”

 “After Cap passes away, it’s the uniting thing for this town, and those are the sort of defining characteristics of the western genre anyway — home and heart and family and protecting a way of life,” Blair said. “Westerns are these morality tales. Jim’s character Cap is at a crossroads of how will he handle his regrets, what will he do with that? And the legacy that he leaves behind, I think, is almost as important as before he dies. What his death moves people to do I think is really the emotional sort of crux of the season.”

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