The first season of Amazon’s The Outlaws had a bit of an identity crisis. Was it a serious thriller with silly characters or an ensemble comedy trying to be a crime drama?
Season 1 of The Outlaws ended on a somewhat unsatisfying note, with the group finally showing solidarity but their lives still in very real jeopardy. In hindsight, the episode that ended that season feels more like a typical midseason finale, offering a tiny taste of what the characters could accomplish together while raising the stakes in the story to come.
While this shift in tone makes season 2 of The Outlaws a significantly less funny experience, it does deliver an extremely compelling, tense narrative, darker than just about anything Merchant has worked on so far. As crime thrillers go, The Outlaws checks all the boxes and offers a little something extra with the humor Merchant and the cast provide along the way.