Autumn’s heel turn
Granted, we knew Autumn had an off-kilter agenda when she pushed Royal into the hole, and thanks to Royal’s subsequent journey into the future, we know she plays a major part in what’s to come. But her energy becomes more frantic and violent near the end of the season. Some of that, it’s suggested, is because she’s briefly without access to her bipolar medication—her illness unfortunately doesn’t get much exploration beyond frantic trips to the local pharmacy—but her viewpoint on reality has already begun to fracture by the time she encounters a bear on the ranch who leans over her and whispers “Show him!”
This leads to an unlikely alliance—it’s hard to call it a romance, despite their distressingly awkward make-out scenes—with Billy Tillerson, who’s an odd duck himself, fond of spontaneously belting out Whitney Houston and Fleetwood Mac songs (he does have a nice voice, but still). He pledges to do her bidding, which is worrisome because a) he has access to a lot of guns, and b) Autumn has shifted into the sort of person who stares into a mirror and says things like “I am the mother of undying time and I will usher her into the world with power and love and justice as a gatekeeper to the unknown.”
And when we do learn a bit more about Autumn—including a key reveal we’ll get to in a moment—her wild-eyed, would-be fight to the death against Royal in the season finale gains another level of “Wait, what?”
