‘Landman’ Season 1 Ending Explained: Does Tommy Die? And What About Andy Garcia As Cartel Boss?

While a Landman Season 2 isn’t (yet) official, we’re gonna trust Demi Moore and say Taylor Sheridan’s first drama out of the cattle gate from Yellowstone is just getting started in West Texas. 

Despite beginning the series in a burlap sack, Billy Bob Thornton was an instant hit as oil business “landman” Tommy Norris. Sucking on a cig and hunched in his Western shirt, Thornton was like a pair of instantly lived-in cowboy boots, straight out of the Sheridan-O-Verse box. By midseason, when Thornton was paired with the terrific Ali Larter, as Angela and Tommy Norris went boldly, romantically, hilariously, and “fuck you, asshole!”-ly into the land of back together but not quite divorced, it made Landman as much a family drama as as one about the ruthless, relentless oil biz. 

Obviously, if you read any further, spoilers for Landman await you, like a seat at the bar at The Patch Cafe and a bucket of Michelob Ultra Lights.

What happened in Landman Episode 10 (season finale)? Landman Season 1 Ending Explained

Last time we saw Jon Hamm as Monty Miller, Jerry Jones was weaving Texas rich guy tapestries by the M-TEX boss’s deathbed-side. By Episode 10 of Landman, the finale, Monty is having open heart surgery. Tommy meets Cami Miller at the hospital, where there’s barely time to process the emotion of it. There are only “crumbs of hope,” the episode’s title, that Monty even survives long enough to get on a transplant list. According to his will, upon Monty’s death, Tommy is to take over as president of M-TEX. And with Cami’s ready agreement, he does. 

But here’s where a major spoiler comes in. Later in the episode, with Cami and their college-age daughters in shock and tears, Monty is shown flatlining. Is this the end for Jon Hamm and Landman? It certainly seems like it. And assuming Monty doesn’t make a miraculous recovery, Tommy is now an oil biz prez with a ton of new problems on his plate. First, he’s gonna light a cigarette. But then it’s time to sort out what to do about the financial future of M-TEX as it relates to Cami. Like we said, there’s barely time. Monty’s dying, and his wife and his best friend have to talk about the money. Specifically, a “farm-out” lease arrangement worth almost $200 million. 

This farm-out clause is tricky, but it was set up by a non-unalive Monty. It’s what he wanted. And in that spirit, Cami tells Tommy to let the money ride. “Close the farm-out. And we roll the dice one last time.” To do this, and make a potentially huge payday – or lose everything, boom-bust style – the new M-TEX president will need Rebecca Falcone on his side. The big city lawyer, initially sent in to handle a fiasco involving an exploding M-TEX plane and the drug cartel who stole it – we’ll get to them in a second – became the focus of one of the most interesting character arcs in Landman. There was her Episode 4 takedown of a sexist rival attorney. Instantly legendary. But mostly, with Tommy, Rebecca was in as much conflict with him as communion.

Tommy needs Rebecca’s cold-blooded negotiating skills on his side for the financially sticky farm-out fight to come. (Again, no season 2 announcement as of yet, but this is shaping up to be a big part of it.) And while the character who willingly charges an oil company $900 an hour suddenly takes a moral stand against fracking, President Tommy tries to reason with her by deploying another one of the salty big picture oil demand tutorials Taylor Sheridan has been dropping into Landman from the beginning. “Good and bad don’t factor into this, Rebecca. Our great-grandparents built a world that runs on this. Until it starts running on something else, we gotta feed it. Or the world stops.” 

Or, as Tommy says later, “oil men die, oil companies don’t.”

What’s up with the cartel on Landman? And now Andy Garcia is the cartel boss?

A deal was all Tommy Norris ever wanted with these guys. It’s why he was in that burlap sack in the first place. A landman secures the ground lease on a piece of property that contains petroleum beneath the surface. Even if its surface doubles as a Mexico-Texas drug smuggling route for the local cartel heavies. But by episode 10, the organization’s West Texas branch manager decided to make an example out of Tommy, again tied him to a chair, and hammered a nail into his leg. A gas shower followed. After a season of back-and-forth threats with this bunch, this level of violence was different. Tommy really thought this was it.

In that moment, even with Monty a goner and him as M-TEX prez, all he could think about was Angela. Angela, who for part of this season was married to a wealthy, unseen hotelier, but always argued with Tommy like they were a lovably combustible couple. By episode 4, they were officially a couple again. Their daughter Ainsley was overjoyed, and their son Cooper could only shake his head. They’re giving it another go? But by episode 9, they were building new family traditions in Midland, even if the house they were doing it in was still an M-TEX corporate rental.

An important note for the Landman Season 2 writers: More of regular Taylor Sheridan player James Jordan as Dale, the petroleum engineer – and Norris family roommate – who is as wise as he is uncouth.

Second important note for the Landman season 2 writers: With Cooper and Ariana as the show’s other couple making a go of it, let’s get more of the touching emergence of their love story. Out of the pain of her husband’s death in the oil fields came Cooper Norris and his quiet devotion. Which should be even more key for the writers, because it sure seems like Cooper’s ambitions with the hunk of West Texas land known as Wolf Camp are gonna butt up against the interests of M-TEX and its new president, his father.  

Anyway, Tommy Norris is still covered in gas. He thinks he’s dead, and will never get the second second chance with his family that Monty never fully got with his own. Which is when Andy Garcia arrives to save him. In a maddeningly brief appearance, Garcia’s few scenes as cartel big boss Galino are still intense – he kills his own guys just to prove Tommy’s original point, that the businesses of oil and drugs must coexist. 

Garcia is so comfortable as Garlindo, with his mix of wealth and menace, it’s seriously like he was in the show all along. But since he wasn’t, let’s look forward to a Landman Season 2 concerning, amongst other things, this tenuous alliance between the vendors of two of the world’s most volatile commodities. 

Oil and drugs. Both ruthless, both relentless. It’s like Tommy Norris calls to the animal hunting his fence out back at the M-TEx rental house at the end of the Landman finale. “You better run, buddy. They kill coyotes around here.”   

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.