‘Ransom Canyon’ Boss Breaks Down That Tragic Death & Reveals Season 2 Plans

[Warning: This post contains MAJOR spoilers for Ransom Canyon Season 1.]

Everyone has secrets in Ransom Canyon. The new Netflix series, based on Jodi Thomas’ book of the same name, explores the complicated lives of those living in the small Texas town.

In just the first few minutes of the premiere, Ransom Canyon hurls a devastating twist at viewers: the tragic death of Staten Kirkland’s (Josh Duhamel) teen son, Randall (Hubert Smielecki). A year later, Staten is still convinced someone else was involved in the car accident that killed his son, which kicks off a season-long mystery.

Eventually, it’s revealed that Margaret Brigman (Sarah Minnich), Sheriff Brigman’s (Philip Winchester) wife and Lauren Brigman’s (Lizzy Greene) mom, was behind the wheel of the car that ran Randall off the road. However, she wasn’t alone. Kit Russell (Casey W. Johnson), Lucas Russell’s (Garrett Wareing) older brother, was having an affair with Margaret. This revelation will irrevocably change the relationship between the Brigmans and the Russells, especially when it comes to Lucas and Lauren’s romance.

Randall’s death isn’t the only loss of the season. Fuller patriarch Cap Fuller (James Brolin) dies peacefully on his land at the end of the season, just as Yancy Grey (Jack Schumacher), the mysterious drifter who turned out to be Cap’s grandson, is ready to embrace his true identity. The ending of Ransom Canyon’s first season sets the stage for a thrilling Season 2, and the team is already preparing for the next chapter.

Anna Kooris / Netflix

Ransom Canyon showrunner April Blair spoke with TV Insider about the Season 1 ending and why the show solves such a huge mystery early on. She also opened up about killing off Cap and what his death means for Yancy, casting Ava Phillippe in a notable role, and what’s next in a potential Season 2.

The Randall death mystery was the throughline through the whole season and could have been stretched out for at least another. Why was it important to get that closure by the end of Season 1?

April Blair: We’ve already started the writers’ room, even though the show hasn’t been picked up to series yet for Season 2, but we were already grappling with that, and what we wanted to do was kind of put to bed that loss, in a way. Not that Staten will ever get over the loss of his child, but we wanted to give him some hope and a little bit of lightness. Quinn’s going to go off to New York and come back. How is he going to win her back if he’s still haunted? I don’t feel like he could ever truly move on in his heart and his mind until that mystery was settled. We wanted to find some closure with that, and also, who was behind it and what really happened opens up a whole new series of relationship drama between Lucas and Lauren, as you know. So it gives us a lot of runway in other stories as well.

Did you debate over who you wanted to be behind the wheel of the car that caused the crash?

Blair: This mystery is not in the book, so we knew we needed the mystery spine, something kind of soapy to keep you going. I just played with it for a while. I mean, at one point, we were going to have another character that was Lucas and Kit’s mother, and we had considered that Kit was covering for his mother. But that didn’t unwind enough complications with other characters. We wanted to find two characters, and what’s the worst thing that could happen? Just when everything seems to be sweet and love and this young love, this very adult, dark thing is uncovered, and they have to contend with that, not just at the end of Season 1 but into a potential Season 2.

How will Margaret’s arrest impact the Brigmans and the Russells?

Blair: In a potential Season 2, I think it’s a huge part of what’s going on. We’re still just in the room, so I don’t have every aspect to tell you. Westerns are morality tales, and so every aspect of this show, we always try to come from that foundation of love, lands, and legacy, and what that really means. For Sheriff Dan, this is his legacy and his family and the people that he loves. He has this moral choice. Does he do the right thing by his family and the wrong thing by his profession? That’s his morality moment, so we try to do that with everyone, but that’s the thing he’s grappling with, and he painfully chooses to do the right thing.

Anna Kooris / Netflix

Ava Phillippe plays young Amalah in a brief flashback. Are you wanting her to come back in the future? Do you want to do more flashbacks? 

Blair: That could be a whole spinoff of its own, the OG love triangle of Ransom Canyon. We would love for her to come back. She was amazing. I literally had a cameraman on set who came up and was like, That girl looks exactly like Reese Witherspoon. I was like, “Funny you should say that.”

Did you want someone with a recognizable face for young Amalah? 

Blair: Yeah. We cast that character with a lot of care, even though it was for this little bit, but we just wanted to be prepared and to be able to use it more in future seasons, or as its own show, potentially. I just thought it was fun, and also just what Ava brings to it is very much A-type, bossy. It just made it easier to communicate who that character was, and because Amalah looms larger than life in everyone’s world, and they’re always talking about her, that when we finally saw her face, we wanted it to be someone that was exciting.

Was there a debate about whether or not to have Cap die this season?

Blair: No. Actually, one of the most nerve-wracking things I had to do as a showrunner was drive to Jim’s house in Malibu that she shares with Barbra Streisand and pitch him to do the show. From the start, I was like, “Look, it is a one-season show.” Because of Cap and what that character represents, you want someone who was iconic, but that person was not going to sign up for eight seasons. I always thought it would be fun to just get someone very recognizable, that had some gravitas, and convince them to come play for a few episodes. Jim was totally on board. From the start, it was sort of crafted to be a shorter thing. But we had so much fun with Jim, and Jim was like, “I’ll stay and do more seasons.” But at that point in the season, it felt like you needed some kind of bigger loss or change, something to take people down in a different path and be affected by. We thought about it for a little bit, but I was like, no, it’s just really important in all these other characters’ stories.

Since Yancy is Lincoln Fuller’s son, he’s the heir to Fuller Ranch. With Cap dead, is Yancy truly ready for the pressure of the Fuller legacy? 

Blair: He’s never had anything and was also sort of was a grifter. Again, these Westerns are morality tales. It’s a morality tale for him, like, will he do the right thing? In my mind, Yancy came because he never had a family, and he came to get revenge for that. Instead, he didn’t get revenge, he got the family. I think he is actually a very loyal person, and he has turned a new leaf. I do think, moving forward, the challenges of running the ranch and also the challenge of the temptations and the challenge of this person from his past showing up, his wife, and kind of compromising what he wants to accomplish, it’ll be rocky.

Is Yancy’s father really dead? 

Blair: Yes. He died in the war. I feel like it’s the foundation of his plot, but his mom we don’t know. Who knows about his mom.

In a potential Season 2, will you do a time jump?

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Blair: We would need to because I don’t want to do anything in New York. Quinn needs to go away and save her ranch, and we need to see what the implications are for that punch that Davis goads Staten into doing and what that plot between Davis and Staten’s father, the senator, is like. I think we would probably do that because she says, “I’m going to go away for six months.” So the idea right now, although nothing’s set in stone, is that we would do at least a six-month time jump.

Ransom Canyon, Season 1, Streaming Now, Netflix