1923: Episode 1.2 and 1.3: “Nature’s Empty Throne” and “The War Has Come Home”
Sheridan's saga soars in craft, sinks deep into darkness.
Should You Watch It?
These two episodes are exactly what the premiere promised, and then some. Taylor Sheridan's writing stays sharp, the character arcs deepen naturally, and the cinematography — Montana peaks cut against African thorn trees — is genuinely breathtaking. The story never wastes a scene. If you're already invested in this family, these hours pay off.
But the content is heavier than the craft is polished. You'll get strong profanity across both episodes, a bedroom scene with explicit nudity, drunkenness, and violence that draws real blood — plus one deeply unsettling scene of a Catholic nun's lesbian predation toward a young Native girl in her "care." Alongside that darkness sits real moral substance: two strong marriages, positive references to God, and a hard-edged justice meted out to men who steal what isn't theirs.
This is television for grown-ups who can weigh both things at once — the excellence and the ugliness — without letting one blind them to the other. Watch it as an adult, not with your kids in the room.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESThe Dutton family's cowboys find Scottish sheepherders grazing on their Montana land — trespass that Jacob Dutton cannot let stand. Meanwhile, half a world away, Jacob's adopted nephew Spencer survives a leopard attack in Africa, then heads to Tanzania to hunt a man-killing hyena — but not before rescuing a young Englishwoman, Alexandra, from an arranged marriage she never wanted. Back home, a young Native woman named Teonna endures a government-run boarding school while her grandmother searches for a way out. Two very different frontiers, one family, and choices in each that will carry consequences.
Is It Any Good?
Four stars, and the show earns every one of them on craft. The writing stays taut, the editing wastes almost nothing, and the performances carry weight in every frame. The cinematography does double duty — sweeping Montana mountain passes in one storyline, the Serengeti's thorn trees and open plain in the other — and both look stunning. Character arcs keep moving rather than stalling, which is rarer in prestige television than it should be. The pacing is confident enough to let a line like Jacob's — "Easy wasn't in the job description" — land with real weight. This is a series firing on every technical cylinder; the only question is what you're willing to watch to get there.
The Worldview
This is a mixed worldview, and it knows it. Jacob Dutton sees the world as dog-eat-dog — men too greedy or too lazy to build their own lives, always ready to steal someone else's. That's the pagan current running underneath. But moral currents run just as strong: two genuinely strong marriages (Jacob and Cara, John and Emma), two positive references to God, and swift justice against men who move a neighbor's landmark — a consequence Scripture itself anticipates: "You shall not move your neighbor's landmark" (Deuteronomy 19:14). The show also lets its violence cost something; it shows a cycle of vengeance with no court higher than two armed men, which is its own quiet critique.
The series is honest, and uncomfortable, about the government boarding school program that abused Native children — and it locates the worst of that abuse in corrupt Catholic clergy, while giving a grandmother's preference for a Baptist school a sympathetic hearing. That's a hard history, faithfully rendered rather than invented. The show also voices real skepticism about "progress" — questioning whether modern conveniences make people freer or merely more dependent — a conversation Scripture would recognize.
What this world cannot supply is resolution to its own diagnosis of man's greed and violence. It sees the wound clearly. Scripture names the same wound and offers what the show cannot: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements
Strong mixed pagan worldview with pagan attitudes about survival, seeking pleasure and protecting your land and family from the violent, lazy greed of human beings mixed with strong moral, pro-family attitudes, including a biblical philosophy about the sinfulness of man, two strong positive examples of marriage between the patriarch and matriarch and the patriarch’s right-hand man and his wife, and two positive references to God in Episode 1.3, government mistreats American Indians by placing orphans and neglected children into government-funded assimilation boarding schools that abuse them, and the one bad example of a boarding school in the episodes is one that’s run by cruel Catholic priests and nuns, plus one of the nuns has a perverse homosexual lust toward the teenage girls at the school that’s shown in one scene in Episode 1.3, but there’s a reference to a Baptist day school for the Indian children which is mentioned as a preferrable situation by one Indian girl’s grandmother, plus the two episodes seem to have an ambiguous attitude toward free market capitalism (owning a ranch and protecting land/property are seen as positives, but one cowboy questions a 1923 salesman of electricity and two newfangled appliances, saying that if they start buying his electricity and renting such “conveniences,” people will be working for him rather than working for themselves), and there’s a reference to Darwin and evolution in one scene in Episode 1.3, put in the form of a question, and another character says people may have been living in Africa for a million years (in reality, the first two human beings began, at the very most, about 150,000 years ago, and probably less than 50,000, in the Persian Gulf area before the Great Flood covered the area with water)
Foul Language
Eight obscenities (including four anachronistic “f” words), one GD profanity and two light profanities in Episode 1.2 and 11 obscenities (including two “f” words), one GD profanity and five light profanities in Episode 1.3
Violence
Strong violence with some blood in Episode 1.2 includes a man is attacked by a leopard, but he fends off the big cat (cuts with dried blood are shown afterward), leopard attacks another man, and the man’s throat is ripped open by a leopard (mangled throat shown with blood), a man pistol whips another man (some blood on his face), young woman at a Catholic boarding school for American Indians fights a physically abusive nun and is put into a punishment box outside overnight, the nun the young woman fought later beats her with a ruler and threatens her life if she ever hits her again, nuns slap girls at the boarding school for making mistakes, a small gunfight breaks out when cowboys find sheep herders attacking the boss’ son on the family’s land, the father puts hanging ropes around the Scottish leader and four other men and leaves them there hanging for dear life onto their horses, another scene shows the sheep herd leader escaping the hanging rope but the other four men lost their horses and are hanging dead from the tree while he escapes, and strong violence with blood in Episode 1.3 where an angry elephant turns over a jeep with a man and woman in it before he shoots and kills it, the man shoots many lions from the branches of a tree during the night before vehicles arrive to rescue them, a gunfight occurs between the Duttons, his men and the sheepherders from Episode 1.2 (the leader of the sheepherders brings a machine gun) where two men are killed, one wounded man has to be operated upon, a young woman suffers a gunshot wound to the stomach and is being operated on, several sheepherders are shot dead, older woman kills wounded man after she runs after him into the woods (he went for his gun while she had to reload her shotgun)
Sex
Lesbian behavior in one scene in Episode 1.2 where a Catholic nun gets excited while washing the upper chest area of a young American Indian woman in tub who’s just been brought into a bunkhouse area of a boarding school on the prairie after Indian woman was beaten and deliberately left in a small punishment shed outside for two or more days but older nun enters and stops it, and Episode 1.3 has a scene with strong passionate kissing between an unmarried young man and young woman who are undressing each other in a hotel room (flashes of partial female nudity are shown as the kissing continues, but no actual intercourse is depicted), and an engaged couple passionately kiss each other outdoors, and fornication is implied and briefly mentioned later, but not shown
Nudity
Upper male nudity in Episode 1.2 and two or so brief flashes of upper and rear female nudity in Episode 1.3 in an implied fornication and depicted kissing scene with partial explicit nudity, and some 1920s dresses are quite revealing
Alcohol Use
A man drinks whiskey to ease the pain of some bloody wounds, lots of people drink in an underground tavern, and some are clearly drunk, a young man and woman drink in an underground tavern and seem a bit tipsy, an engaged man and woman drink hard liquor to ease their fear of impending death
Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse
Some smoking but no drugs;
Miscellaneous Immorality
An Scottish man, having cut his neighbor’s fence under cover of darkness, grazes his sheep with his men on the neighbor’s land with no intention of telling him about it, but neighbor and his men find out and capture the men and kill a few and take the sheep to give to the Indians on the nearby Indian reservation, plus an engaged young woman in an arranged marriage flirts with an unmarried man who seems a few years older than she, and she shortly runs off with him, but they get engaged quickly.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
Jacob's punishment of the trespassing sheepherders sets off a cycle of violence with no court higher than the two men facing each other. Where does Scripture point us when we're wronged, and how does that differ from taking justice into our own hands?
Deuteronomy 19:14 · Romans 12:19Jacob and Cara, and John and Emma, are shown as two strong marriages inside a violent, uncertain world. What holds a marriage together when everything else is falling apart?
Ecclesiastes 4:9–12 · Ephesians 5:25The series shows real abuse at a government boarding school run by corrupt clergy, alongside a grandmother's preference for a different, gentler school. How should the failures of people who claim to follow Christ shape — or not shape — our view of Christ himself?
James 1:27 · Matthew 7:15–20Cara questions whether "progress" and convenience are worth what they cost people's independence. What's the trade-off between comfort and self-sufficiency, and what does Scripture say about contentment?
1 Timothy 6:6–10 · Philippians 4:11–13The Final Word
These are two of the best-made hours of television you'll find this season — and two of the hardest to sit through. Sheridan and his cast never stop earning your attention; the content never stops asking for your discernment. Our answer stands: worth watching — adults only. Choosing something for the whole family tonight instead? Start with our latest family-friendly picks.
