Spencer Dutton sets sail to save his family in the return of the celebrated Yellowstone prequel.

While Yellowstone fans await news of the franchise’s future, Paramount plans to fill in the gaps of the Dutton clan’s past. 1923—the prequel starring Brandon Sklenar, Harrison Ford, and Helen Mirren—finally returned for season 2 this Sunday morning.

It’s been a little over two years since the streaming hub for Taylor Sheridan’s cavalcade of ideas debuted its second Yellowstone spin-off. When season 2 begins, the picturesque Montana cattle ranch is now covered in blankets of snow.

Just as the temperature drops, the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch faces death once again. It’s up to Spencer Dutton (Sklenar) to save them.

“I’ve been waiting for this for a couple years now,” Sklenar told me over Zoom earlier this week. “I’m just excited to get it out there. I’m really proud of it and I know people are going to love it. It’s well worth the wait. [Sheridan] wrote something really special, and everyone involved was at the top of their game. We all care deeply about it, and I’m sure you can feel that in it.”

You can read our full interview here. Now, let’s run down 1923 season 1 for a moment, before discussing the season 2 premiere—which I think is Sheridan’s darkest work yet.

Who needs John Dutton? Harrison Ford is our Dutton family patriarch.

What Happened in 1923 Season 1 Again?

Sklenar plays Spencer Dutton, the estranged nephew of the 1920s-era Dutton patriarch, Jacob (Ford). He was hunting big game in Africa like Kraven the Hunter before Jacob Dutton (Ford) and his wife Cara (Mirren) wrote a letter asking him to book it back home. An evil mining magnate, Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton), partnered with a rowdy group of Scottish shepherds led by Banner Creighton (Jerome Flynn). The goal? Turn the Dutton family ranch into a tourist destination. It’s what the villain always wants on Yellowstone, right? Pave paradise and put up a parking lot.

In an early-season shocker, Creighton’s men killed John Dutton Sr. (James Badge Dale) and badly wounded Jacob. The murder complicated all chance of the grown-up Dutton Sr. from 1883 having a direct lineage to Yellowstone‘s John Dutton (Kevin Costner). If another Dutton in 1923 is his grandfather, it’s either Jack Dutton (Darren Mann), John Sr.’s only son, or Spencer. (More on that later.)

Elsewhere, 1923’s first season also focused on Teonna Rainwater (Aminah Nieves). Most likely the ancestor of Yellowstone’s Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham), Teonna spends the first season is a near-constant state of torture. She’s on the run from a tyrannical school for girls on the Indiana reservation that seeks to assimilate Native Americans into American society. The sadistic Father Renaud (Sebastian Roché) runs the boarding school, which strips the young women of their heritage and treats them with intense cruelty. Though Teonna was able to escape in season 1, she’s still far from safe.

Lauren Smith/Paramount+//Paramount
Esquire’s “Baddest Dutton of Them All” takes to the sea.

Spencer Dutton Sails the High Seas

After fighting every animal on planet Earth to make it back home in season 1, Spencer is still far from landing on American soil when season 2 premieres. A comedy of errors placed him and his new wife in the direct path of her former betrothed while they were booking passage on a ship. The man challenged the ripped Dutton hunk to a duel, so Spencer threw him overboard to his death. It seemed a bit unnecessary, but it was clearly much easier to kill a guy and get away with it a hundred years ago!

Now, Spencer’s taken up residence on some criminal tugboat. He leaps into heroics one night when an unruly passenger begins sexually assaulting one of his other bunkmates. This is also far from the only sexually explicit scene in this premiere, as the episode seeks to paint Timothy Dalton’s villainous Donald Whitfield as a man who engages in sex trafficking.

Anyway! Spencer Dutton beats the living hell out of the ship’s rapist and then the captain performs the coup de grâce with a bullet to the head. Enough of that nonsense. Later, Spencer talks the victim down from the ledge. “If you jump from this ship, then I didn’t save you,” he tells him. Sidekick acquired.

For some reason, his new buddy comes up with the idea that Spencer should fight the other passengers for some extra cash. He needs the money if he wants to make it to America, so the duo creates a fighting ring to rake in the dough. “Unless, they try to steal it from us while we’re sleeping,” Spencer reminds Mr. Sidekick. Hopefully, Spencer finds a way back to Montana in one piece.

Teonna on the Run

Father Renaud and Marshal Kent (Jamie McShane) are still on the hunt for Teonna Rainwater. They kill two Native American men and run their horse straight into a child during their search. It’s brutal.

Teonna is miles away from their hunt. She’s under the protection of her father, Runs His Horse (Michael Spears), who is the current chief of the Broken Rock Reservation. They’re also accompanied by Pete Plenty Clouds, played by Jeremy Guana from American Primeval. Plenty Clouds and Teonna begin their relationship in the premiere, potentially kicking off an ancestry that leads to Thomas.

Trae Patton/Paramount+//Paramount

Back in Sussex, England, Spencer’s wife, Alexandra (Julia Schlaepfer) is desperate to reunite with her lover in America. “I’m running out of time,” she says. Then, she motions to her stomach. Uh-oh, Spencer. You’re a father.

Alex begs her friend to sell her jewels and book her passage to America—on second class, if she must. She can handle herself. “I know not the path nor the manner with which I will find my way to you,” she writes in a letter to Spencer, “but it is time the journey begin. I will enter the port in New York and then seek passage by train to Montana.” Alex, that sounds like you do know both the path and the manner with which you will find him. But… Okay!

Don’t Mess with Helen Mirren and Her Shotgun

As if the Duttons didn’t have enough enemies, a rogue mountain lion appears on their porch one morning. It scurries off after Jacob points his pistol at it. “What are you doing standing on the porch, scowling at the mountains?” Cara asks him. Cougars in Yellowstone? Rad.

Netflix’s American Primeval, a similar series about the Wild West that aired earlier this year, seemed to take the cue that audiences would love a more violent version of the Yellowstone prequels. They were right. Now, 1923 is here to clap back.

In the morning, Cara brandishes her shotgun and blasts two good ones into the mountain lion. Then, she steps outside to hear the wolves howling all around them. It’s hunting season, folks—and the Dutton family ranch is the prey.