The billboard
The road leading to the Abbott Ranch has a random billboard on it that simply reads: “America tells you that the only things worth knowing are those which can be known. America is wrong.” It’s lingered on several times, including in the season finale when Rhett and his girlfriend Maria (Isabel Arraiza) crash their truck into its base. Another sign that appears several times is a cross-stitch in the Abbott home—Cecilia is a devout Christian—that reads “Oh Lord, reveal yourself to us.”
These production design choices are so prominently featured you have to assume Outer Range wanted viewers to take note of them and key into some deeper meaning. The cross-stitch makes some sense considering that inexplicable, unknowable hole; its existence leads Royal to ponder his own complicated relationship with God. But ultimately both signs feel more like distractions in a show that already has a lot going on. Maybe that’s the sort of enigmatic element that, as Brolin mentioned, season two will be pulling away from?
