Season 1 of Marshals concluded with its best and most brutal stretch. Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes), his son Tate (Brecken Merrill), and the marshals of Team Jock Up survived the Battle of East Camp. But it’s always one battle after another — especially when we’re talking anything involving a Dutton — and in short order, Pete Calvin (Logan Marshall-Green) and Belle Turek-Skinner (Arielle Kebbel) were ambushed, while wealthy rancher Tom Weaver (Chris Mulkey) took Tate from Kayce under false pretenses. 

Smartly, that’s right where Season 2 of Marshals begins. “Mission’s not over! We need a better fight position!” As we rejoin Cal and Belle under fire from Weaver’s hired guns, we also find Kayce still silently enduring the come-ons of Dolly Weaver (Ellyn Jameson) as they ride East Camp’s 5,000 acres. Right when we were dreading the extension of their utterly chemistry-less relationship into this season, another group sent by Weaver arrives at Kayce’s. Either he signs the ranch over, or they harm Tate. Which, of course, will not stand. Kayce gets the upper hand, shoots two guys with their own pistols, and kills Weaver’s smarmy lawyer with a kitchen knife. Then he draws on Dolly. “You’re not my partner. You’re my leverage. Where’s my son?”

Remember how Andrea Cruz (Ash Santos) was gonna leave Jock Up for the US Marshals office in Washington? Yeah, that was never happening. Not after the Montana posting changed her. She almost got killed by a white supremacist cult, and could’ve maybe had something going with ol’ Double-G (Riley Green), if he hadn’t died saving Kayce’s horses from a barn fire.

At marshals HQ, worried about Kayce, her team member and “Cowboy,” Andrea digs into the incident at East Camp, which unearths the links between Weaver and the mercenaries who attacked. It turns out he’s not a moneyed gentleman rancher from Back East — he’s running a Montana land grab to prop up a crumbling Ponzi scheme full of floated checks and bad invoices. In the words of team member Miles Kittle (Tatanka Means), Weaver’s running a “nine-figure ghost cows scam,” with both the East Camp land and the ongoing mine dispute with Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) in his sights.   

And Tom Weaver didn’t take Tate to Texas. (So no Dutton Ranch crossover. At least not yet!) He took him to his property nearby, in Big Horn, Wyoming, where Kayce drives with Dolly to recover his son. He would have gladly given up his ranch if it meant getting Tate back safe. But Weaver is a criminal in a fake cowboy hat, and instead, mercs open up on our guy from the treeline. Luckily, Kayce Dutton’s pearl snap western shirt is bulletproof or something. He fights back as Dolly runs to her dad’s side — even if she didn’t know about his financial chicanery, she’s still a Weaver — and the rest of Jock Up arrive in a chopper with guns blazing. Weaver’s men are killed, Kayce crushes his top henchman’s skull with a rock in the river, and finds his way to Tate. None of this bloodshed is the kid’s fault. “You did nothing except for being my son.” Grimes always saves his expressions of Kayce’s emotions for tender moments like this. Duttons are always fortified by bloodshed. 

“Living with Dolly’s death is a punishment you deserve.” Once backup arrived, Weaver knew he was a goner. He’d already put his daughter in all kinds of danger, and he does it again, trying to flee the marshals in a 1980s Jeep Cherokee. What a dummy. The vehicle takes fire, barrel rolls down a rise, and all the injured man has left is a long prison sentence and the harsh memory of his daughter dying in a wreck his hubris caused. Back at base, as Kayce mulls over the events of the last few days, he considers the parallels between Tom and Dolly and his own relationship with John Dutton (Kevin Costner), which itself was fortified in pain. He rolls his eyes. It’s generational. “The Dutton way…”

So what’s Kayce, Marshals, and Team Jock Up gonna face in Season 2? There is one thing we still hope happens. Yes, Andrea Cruz found romance with Double-G, Kayce’s SEAL team buddy and her fellow displaced soul. But we were always highlighting her connection with Cowboy, and now that Cruz is staying on the job in Montana, we still think a Cruz-Kayce spark could happen. Back at East Camp, bullet-riddled and bloodsoaked again, Tate tells his dad he’ll be 18 in a couple of months. “I’m almost a man.” And as Kayce gazes at a picture of his late wife Monica (Kelsey Asbille) — he tears up, because she was his everything, and all of this is how he’s bruised her legacy — we wonder if he’s thinking about making some significant changes to his cowboy ways. The mission’s never over.

Kayce Taykes for Season 2 Episode 1 of Marshals (“All Hat No Cattle”): 

• During their tense gun battle with Weaver’s soldiers, Belle noticed Cal’s neck discomfort. They ended Season 1 with further acknowledgment of their feelings for one another, and here in Season 2, Belle reaffirms her commitment to swimbuddying his cancer treatment. She’ll accompany him to see an oncologist in Salt Lake City. Like a partner would. And besides, she says with a glance at the rest of the team, “There are fewer eyes there.”

• No Bullet ‘n Barrel Saloon hangout scenes this episode, but once all the action’s done, we do get a song placement. It’s George Shingleton with “Fire or Flame.”

• “I know a guy who can raise an army.” When Kayce still thought Weaver abducted Tate to Texas, he warned Dolly he had people there. Who does Kayce know in Texas? Well, his sister Beth and Rip Wheeler, to start. Do we smell what the Sheridan-O-Verse is cooking? A Dutton Ranch–Marshals crossover? Nothing solid yet, but Marshals has also announced a fantastic casting addition for Season 2: it’s the return of Jefferson White as Jimmy Hurdstrom, who we last saw cowboying down at the 6666.    

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.