REVIEW: ‘The Abandons’ Highlights Why We Love Family Drama

Netflix is no stranger to Westerns. From The Harder They Fall to American Primeval and Song of the Bandits, the streamer has a Western for every genre fan. And now, we can add The Abandons to the list. Created by Kurt Sutter (who also served as writer on the series), who also served as showrunner for Sons of Anarchy and Mayans M.C., the Netflix Original series is focused on two matriarchs in the Washington Territory in the 1800s. 

Built on a foundation of family rivalry, The Abandons focuses on the matriarchs of two very different families. Constance Van Ness (Gillian Anderson) is the head of Washington Territory’s richest family. They’re a family built on their wealth and privilege, but bound by blood.

On the other side, there is Fiona Nolan (Lena Headey), the head of a found family of orphans and outcasts bound by love and necessity who live on a ranch, titularly called “The Abandons.” Her one family is made up of many,, and she navigates that without forgetting how important it is to hold them together.

The two women find their fates linked by two crimes, an awful secret, a star-crossed love, and a piece of land with silver underneath. Similar to Sutter’s other television series, The Abandons is all about the tensions that uniquely arise in families, what they show to the world, and the bitter rivalry that springs up when threatened.

Focused on showcasing the Old West as both a land of possibility and renewal for Fiona and her family, Sutter’s vision also includes what Westward expansion meant for capitalists and the rich as much as those looking to start again. 

The Abandons thrives because of its leading women, Lena Headey and Gillian Anderson.

Lena Headey is the pinnacle of what I imagine a woman in the West would be. She’s assertive, brash, and has been to Hell and back. The pain that she has experienced is equal to the love that she feels for the found family around her, and she will go through anything to ensure that they are protected. 

Headey knows how to play bad well, but with Fiona, she plays a woman who balances between “letting it go” and “going for the throat,” so much so that she sometimes edges more on morally gray than she does completely good. But that is what makes her compelling as a character and, more importantly, it’s what makes her human. 

While Fiona may see the world in shades of gray or justify her actions because of what she views as good for her, not the whole, those around her feel the love. But as the bodies rack up around her, even if they deserved it, she has to confront the reality that her actions are putting the people she loves in danger. 

And the ensemble cast that makes up those people is just as strong as she is. With Dahlia Teller (Diana Silvers), her brother Elias Teller (Nick Robinson), Albert Mason (Nick Robinson), and Lilla Bell (Natalia del Riego) standing out the most. For Dahlia, the inciting incident in The Abandons revolves around her.

While the rivalry has already been festering with the Van Ness family hoping to buy or take the land that Fiona’s family lives on, sexual violence pushes Fiona over the edge. When Dahlia is assaulted in the barn, Albert and Lilla look to save her. 

Albert has a gun pointed at Willem Van Ness (Toby Hemingway), Constance’s son, who stalked Dahlia in an attempt to exert control over her after she rebuffed him in town. But Albert is a Black man pointing a shotgun directly at the son of the richest family in the West; it won’t go well, even if it were to defend Dahlia.

Willem taunts Albert to do it, provoking him, knowing that if Albert pulls the trigger, he is ending his own life. But that doesn’t matter because Dahlia stabs Willem with a pitchfork. Shocked but understanding, the family closes ranks around the situation, hoping to save Willem before they’re punished.

But when they leave him with Fiona and Dahlia, he doesn’t see the next day. Believing that men like Willem shouldn’t be allowed to live to harm more women, Fiona finishes the job. Fiona Nolan will do anything for her family, but more importantly, she won’t suffer men who harm women. Still, Dahlia carries the guilt of his death, even if it was self-defense at first. However, one thing is clear: Fiona is Dahlia’s adoptive mother, quick to anger, and not able to let men abuse her.

The Abandons is a series that thrives on bouncing back from pain. More importantly, while other shows about Westward expansion ignore race and its impact on settlement, this series engages with it. It’s central to why ___’s family looks the way it does. Yes, there are four families with property along a shared river, but they are on one land; they are one group, and they make decisions together. 

The “haves and have-nots” focus of The Abandons is always on visual display.

With stones and bones, the families cast lots to decide on how to proceed together. They do everything as one, for better and for worse. But their bond goes far deeper than just sharing the same river. Still, the fact that they aren’t blood means that each of the characters carries their own secrets from pasts that the others don’t know, and the Van Ness exploit that. 

On the opposite side of Fiona, there is Constance Van Ness. Played by Gillian Anderson, she’s really the only actress I can think of who meets Lena Headey’s grit and determination that we see in this series. Where Headey’s Fiona is an Irish woman ready to fight herself, Anderson’s Constance is prim, proper, and just looking for the right person to fight her battles for her. 

But between the two of them, as their families clash, it’s an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force. Constance is capable and filled with her own venom, and more often than not, her propensity for violence is higher than that of anyone else we see in The Abandons.

Constance has power and money at the center of who she is. She wants the land to keep building her empire, and her children fall in line beneath her. Spoiled by their mother and their money, even when ignorant, they can’t seem to fall on the right side.

Instead, their own reach for power means that they either orchestrate and prop up their mother’s crimes, which include slaughtering all of The Abandons’ cattle, poisoning crops, killing a dog, and more, or they turn their head. If they don’t see it, they don’t have to believe it. 

But as Constance gets closer to discovering the role that Fiona played in her son’s disappearance, that eye of anger turns onto everyone on the land. And the Van Ness family doesn’t care about who they harm to get their revenge. Specifically, while The Abandons is made up of Mexican, Black, Native, Irish, and other families and people, Van Ness uses her connections with local tribes to set them up, harnessing racism to fit her need for an eye for an eye. 

Set in Washington Territory, The Abandons seeks to paint a picture of the time and place through family ties.

The conflict we see in The Abandons may lean toward melodrama. Still, it also focuses on making mountains out of molehills and pushing the conflict larger and larger until no one can avoid the fallout.

In all of that, the series also captures romance and racial tensions in the West, and does so without beating its audience over the head with morality. Instead, all of that is baked into the characters, their actions, and the larger world they live in. 

The Abandons isn’t perfectly paced, and some of the dialogue may feel off (along with the accents), but the story is something to sink into. The dueling women, Lena Headey and Gillian Anderson, bring an electric chemistry to the series that’s hard to beat. Additionally, the series captures the “Old West” in a way we don’t often see it. 

Production design and costuming are also key elements that bring The Abandons to life. By exploring two families, the atmosphere in both the Van Ness home and Fiona’s is first built by the production design, which is even carried into the costuming. 

For Constance’s family, the set for their house and their costumes are decadent. Layered with wealthy signifiers, large and overbearing, both the set and costumes mold the Van Ness family into Washington Territoy Vanderbilts. 

On the other hand, Fiona’s family is marked by clothes shared among them. The women wear clothes that make work easier, sometimes fitting them just slightly too big. The men are never entirely clean of dirt caused by work, and their home, while sparse, is lived in and loved. The Abandon’s visual storytelling fills in gaps left by the script for characters and leaves a significant impact. 

The Abandons is just too short, like many Netflix Original Series.

Unfortunately, as the series begins to explore more storylines, we’re left just as Albert and the woman he meets in town, and Lilla’s guilt for not being with her people begins to surface. And on the otherside of the rivalry, we’re stopped just before finding more about how Jack Cree (Michael Greyeyes) came into Constance Van Ness’s employment and why he’s so loyal, the series just ends. 

The Abandons feels like a Part 1, which means there is a bit of emptiness to the story being told, at least until we see what happens next. Like many Netflix series, this one is just too short, stopping right as it’s hitting an apex. That doesn’t mean it’s bad; it just means that I need more for both good and bad.

Ultimately, The Abandons tackles subject matter other Westerns ignore, using it to shape its story and, more importantly, its relationships. A Netflix original, it’s the leading women who make this series the standout it is, and its fearless embrace of the thorny side of history makes it a period drama that just works.

The Abandons is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix.