Outer Range: 9 Burning Questions We Still Have After The Season 1 Finale

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the first season of Outer Range.

Time-traveling through freaky voids in the earth, animals that seem to know more than humans do, kitchen cookware that taunts us... the wild, wild west sure is feeling otherworldly these days.

If you've already devoured all eight episodes of Prime Video's Outer Range, you almost definitely have a few (million) questions rolling around in your brain. We certainly do! Even after an eagle-eyed rewatch, we're still piecing together the show's layered symbolism, mythology and more, and trying to guess what answers may be around the corner should the show be renewed for Season 2.

Below, we tackle nine of the biggest questions put forth by the Josh Brolin-led supernatural Western, including the lurking BY9, Autumn and Rebecca's true motives, the hole and so much more. (And if you have any theories as to the connection between Billy's song choices — see below — we want to hear 'em!)

Read on for our list of burning questions — and last warning, MAJOR spoilers ahead, so bookmark this page and come back later if you haven't finished the season. Then, be sure to hit the comments and share your own questions and theories, along with any answers you may have.

No conversation about Outer Range would be complete without a deep-dive into the mysterious buffalo, especially the one with two arrows in its side. Who shot it with the arrows, and why does it always show up at very particular moments (like when Royal returns from the future at the beginning of Episode 2)? What's the significance of Royal and Autumn each removing one of the arrows at different points in time? And how did Luke Tillerson get an entire herd of buffalo to explode out of the new hole he dug up?

Lastly, are the bears connected to the buffalo, and is there any sort of connection between the cub and young Amy? If we were jaunting about on the Abbott range, we'll tell you one thing: We'd stay far, far away from the wildlife.

We almost chocked Billy's singing up to mere quirkiness or comedic relief (or perhaps he was prepping for an American Idol audition or something). But then creator Brian Watkins tipped us off to a deeper meaning. "If you listen to the lyrics of some of Billy's songs, you can connect the dots," he tells TVLine. 

Here's the full list of songs sung throughout the eight-episode run:

"Private Eyes" by Hall & Oates (Episode 1)

"I Have Nothing" by Whitney Houston (Episode 2)

"Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac (Episode 3)

"Angel of the Morning" by Juice Newton (among other artists, Episode 4)

"Don't Give Up" by Peter Gabriel feat. Kate Bush (Episode 4)

"Every Rose Has Its Thorn" by Poison (Episode 5)

"The Kiss" by Judee Sill (Episode 8)

"Save the Best for Last" by Vanessa Williams (Episode 8)

Any guesses as to what the connective tissue might be?

And what are the organization's true intentions? How is Autumn connected to BY9? If Royal is indeed dead in the future, does that mean Autumn somehow took control of the land and sold it off?

In the season finale, a Crock Pot on the Abbott's kitchen counter proved ominous, as Cecilia's stress simmered to a boil, along with tensions between Royal and Autumn. The slow cooker was repeatedly seen throughout the hour, and was even shown as the second to last shot of the season. Is there any deeper meaning there, or is it solely meant to parallel the rising interpersonal conflicts?

"I can tell you that the show is filled with symbology," adds Watkins. "Anything from the wall of owls that hang in the Tillersons' great room, to the buffalo itself, to the simmering Crock Pot with a family that's tearing apart at the seams. The symbols serve as sort of Easter eggs, and you can actually draw some direct narrative lines between them if you look hard enough." 

And if we're deep-diving into the world of symbology here, what does the color yellow signify, besides power, which Autumn explained? (She and many others can be seen wearing yellow jumpsuits when Royal travels a few years into the future.) And what does the strange, brand symbol mean, and why does Autumn carve it into her body with a knife?

How is Royal able to travel both forward and backward through time? How did he figure that out, and what other control does he have over the land/mineral that we aren't privy to? And why did the hole completely close up after Perry jumped in?

Now that we know she's alive, why did Rebecca run away from the Abbotts? From whom or what was she hiding? Does she fear Royal?

Since we can assume that Rebecca was the person Autumn kept speaking to on the phone, what are their goals moving forward? And since we know that Autumn is the adult version of Amy, how can they both simultaneously exist in the same time period? Will Perry learn the truth about Rebecca in some other timeline now that he's swan-dived into the hole himself?

In the finale, Deputy Sheriff Joy stumbles upon a whole new world. Not only does she find swarms of buffalo — hundreds? thousands? — but also a plethora of teepees and Native Americans hunting the stampeding animals.

Plus, the sheer amount of animals she discovers is jaw-dropping, and suggests that Joy is, in fact, standing in the past. As history has sadly depicted, white settlers began slaughtering bison and buffalo as a way of starving and combatting Native Americans. So if we are to assume that Joy is somewhere in the 19th century, how did she travel there without knowing it or actively doing so?

We've got to credit Autumn's portrayer, Imogen Poots, for this one. "Can Autumn actually die? Can anyone actually die?" the actress posed in a recent TVLine interview. "There's something about that [finale] shootout that almost feels like a video game. It's just for s–ts and giggles because what about the future and the past, and all of that? The stakes felt kind of floppy."

If Royal can control moving backward and forward through time, wouldn't it make sense that he could manipulate space and time to prevent someone's death? Couldn't he have gone back in time to stop Perry from murdering Trevor? If all of this is true, what are the stakes then?

At the very start of the series, Royal briefs us on the Greek god Chronos (sometimes spelled Kronos), who used a sickle to cut a hole in the cosmos between heaven and Earth, separating our world from the next. While doing so, he also castrated his father. The god is synonymous with the element of time, and thus, the chasm created between the known and the unknown is what Royal calls "the Void." Chronos' dastardly deed is comparable to Royal (accidentally) shooting his father as a boy in the 1800s. But what other roles does Greek mythology play in the series? Will all of its references to gods eventually become literal representations in the story, or are they merely more symbolic parallels being sprinkled throughout? A longshot: Is Royal himself Chronos?