Landman Season 1: Episode Guide and Recaps

Landman Season 1 has ten episodes, all on Paramount+. The first two aired together on November 17, 2024, and the finale aired on January 12, 2025 at 80 minutes. Taylor Sheridan directed the first two episodes, Stephen Kay directed episodes 3 to 5 and 8 to 10, and Michael Friedman directed 6 and 7. Billy Bob Thornton plays Tommy Norris, the man who keeps M-Tex Oil's West Texas operations from coming apart, with Jon Hamm as the company's CEO Monty Miller, Demi Moore as Monty's wife Cami, Ali Larter as Tommy's ex-wife Angela, Jacob Lofland as his son Cooper and Michelle Randolph as his daughter Ainsley.

The recaps below are built from the episode transcripts, not from memory. Every quote on the linked pages is verbatim, and the details that come from outside the show, like the geology and the real companies, are checked against sources.

The season in one paragraph

The pilot opens with Tommy negotiating with a cartel over a road on an M-Tex lease, and it ends with a blowout that kills the whole Medina crew. Cooper, on his first day, is alive only because he was sent to the truck for a pipe wrench. The next several episodes are the aftermath: the settlement offer to the families, Rebecca Falcone's work as M-Tex's lawyer, Angela and Ainsley moving into Tommy's life, and Cooper falling for the widow of one of the men who died. The cartel pressure keeps rising until the National Guard is called in, and it costs Tommy a beating at the hands of a cartel enforcer before Gallino steps in and settles it. Monty is in the hospital for a third bypass in episode 9 and ends the season on life support, waiting for a donor heart, with Tommy running the company under his will.

Episode guide

Who dies in Season 1?

The deaths that define the season are in the pilot. Armando, Luis and Elvio Medina die in the blowout that ends episode 1, which is what episode 2 is about. When Nathan asks which of them died, Tommy answers "They all died." Elvio's widow, Ariana, becomes the center of Cooper's storyline.

Monty does not die in Season 1. He is alive when the finale ends, on life support and waiting for a donor heart. His death has already happened by the start of Season 2, when a lease partner tells Tommy that Monty is dead and that his wife now runs the company.

How the season is built

Season 1 runs on three tracks that keep crossing. The first is the patch, where a fatality is a legal and financial problem as much as a human one, and Tommy and Rebecca spend episodes 2 to 6 on settlements. The second is the cartel, which is a business counterpart to the oil companies and is dealt with by negotiation until episode 8, when the National Guard changes the scale. The third is the family, where Angela, Ainsley and Cooper are all trying to work out how much of Tommy's world they want.

The finale is where the tracks meet. Tommy's speech to Gallino, about how far the industry can escalate, is the counterpart to the settlement talk of the first half, and it ends the cartel storyline for the season on an arrangement instead of a victory. In the same episode Monty's will hands Tommy the company and the $160-million-plus Wolfcamp farm-out.

Where it leaves Season 2

Season 1 ends with Tommy president of M-Tex, an uneasy working arrangement with Gallino, Cooper and Ariana together and Cooper starting to put lease deals together on his own. Season 2, episode 1 picks up from there, and the Season 2 guide covers the rest. For the full Season 1 cast, see the character guide and the who plays who table. For everything about Season 3, start with the filming updates.