‘1923’ season 2 Première explained by Helen Mirren, Harrison Ford

Spoiler alert: This message contains spoilers from “The Killing Season”, the season 2 premiere of “1923”, which is now streaming on Paramount+.

Anyone who steps on the porch of the Dutton Clan should have a good reason to be there. If they don’t, they are certainly greeted by the barrel of a shotgun.

That is how things took place at the end of season 1 of Paramount+’s’ 1923′, when Cara (Helen Mirren) and Jacob Dutton (Harrison Ford) finally came face to face with Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton), the merciless businessman trying The Yellowstone Ranch steal them away from them. At the time, Cara managed to calm down the locked and loaded distance between the men, but at the end of the premiere of season 2 of this week, it is she who pulls the trigger on another unexpected guest. Her target: a hungry mountain lion that hunts for her quasi subsidiary-in-law, Liz (Michelle Randolph).

Although the intruder was not a former James Bond this time, the predator at her door is a sign of what is coming in season 2 of the “Yellowstone” prequel. The Duttons are confronted with their toughest winter ever: not only are they taken away from money and resources while trying to avert the hostile acquisition of Whitfield, but they are forced to sell most of their herd and live from what they can do themselves hunt.

“Handing a gun in that area was an absolute need to survive,” says Mirren Variety. “And we have a situation in this season in which the Duttons in fact die from the hunger and everyone around them, people and wild animals, are all after the same means. They fight nature, as well as humanity. It’s just a matter of survival. ‘

The Faceoff between Cara and De Leeuw is an unmistakable callback to the series premiere, who opened with Cara who heed down a man in what initially seemed to be a callous act of violence (but is later unveiled as a retribution for a murder attack on her family). Then Cara’s Killshot was followed by her shouting of pain over her terrible circumstances. But that struggle has hardened her, and the woman who holds the gun this time is more stoic about her murder.

“It’s something she just has to get used to (against season 2),” says Mirren.

Another bit of irony underlines the moment that Cara’s cousin Spencer (Brandon Sklenar) – on whom they count to save the Yellowstone – for years in Africa to come and save a big game hunter. It is a talent that clearly runs in the family. But subjecting the mountain Leeuw on her sidewalk is only the start of what Cara and the Duttons are opposite the home front this season, while the premiere closes with a choir of wolves that cry at an uncomfortable distance. Whitfield is not the only one who recognizes the weaknesses of the family. The wilderness also stalks the besieged duttons like a limpy gazelle ripe for picking.

“The challenges of nature are matched by the challenges of humanity,” adds Ford. “That pressure is intensively and intensively on the Duttons this season. The lives that these people live are weak. It is something we don’t understand in our contemporary life. The details of how many rougher and more difficult these lives were only a hundred years ago. “

Jacob is not at home when Cara celebrates the big cat on the porch. He is in Bozeman in support of his loyal Ranch foreman Zane (Brian Geraghty), who was brutally beaten by the police last season when his Asian American wife Alice (Joy Osmanski) was arrested for violating Montana’s Anti-Miscenation Law-one Of the many Cruel Tactics Whitfield used to weaken the duttons. Between the hard winter, the grim reality that is confronted with his allies and the pressure of the bank threatening to hand over his country to his enemies, Jacob has the world on him in season 2. There is a fight in front of the bow and the hesitation From Jacob to accept the change Times probably not his ally in it.

“Jacob is still on a horse,” says Ford. “He still lives that life, he protects that life. He does not know the life that comes from electricity and from telephones in your home and all these conveniences that initially seem like conveniences. Then, as we discover when technology comes into our lives, this changes our lives. But not always for the better. ”

Nevertheless, there is a fleeting moment that suggests that Jacob may be open to answering the call of one harbinger of the future – a landline. Before leaving the house in the premiere, Cara claims that she would have more peace of mind if he could call her when he comes to the city safely, instead of worrying from the moment he leaves until he returns. In Bozeman, he opposes a new telephone booth and also admits that there is someone he would like to call. Could the audience see the wish of Cara and the Yellowstone gets his first phone at the end of the season?

Ford avoids that question playfully and noted that accepting such technology is a smooth slope. “He does not realize that if he gets a phone, he will eventually take selfies with him,” says Ford.

Although the future is certainly a stressor in the ancient ways that hold the Duttons for the precious life, it is impossible to deny that their greatest threat is the deteriorating attacks of Whitfield. The audience knows that his morality got dry a long time ago, as is apparent from the two sex workers he kept imprisoned. In the premiere of the season it is revealed that one of them, Lindy (Madison Elise Rogers), has taken on the role of lover and intern in the ways of his sadistic impression. The other woman, covered with eyelashes from a belt, is held in the cupboard until the couple wants to play their twisted power dynamics.

Both Ford and Mirren warn that the endless agents of Whitfield and the lack of morality will continue to bring a different kind of beast to the door of the duttons.

“The size of his influence, the bizarre construction of his mind, what we have seen of his personality, makes him an exceptionally powerful villain,” says Ford. “A villain is someone who has no moral compration, and that is always the most dangerous animal.”

For Mirren, the cunning and cruelty of Whitfield is a timely example of power corrumpation absolutely.

“Harrison is absolutely right,” she says. “It is the lack of conscience or moral code, combined with energy and intelligence and ambition. It is absolutely deadly. It is brutal and there are now such people abroad in dominant positions. “