The Abandons’ ending was centered around the final confrontation between Fiona, Constance, and their respective families. Fiona owned the titular patch of land in the Hollow where she lived with her found family: Elias, Dahlia, Albert, and Lilla. And the eyes of the Van Nesses, that is, Constance, Willem, Garret, and Trisha, were on it from the beginning, because it was supposedly full of silver. Since Constance couldn’t acquire it legally, she’d cause these “natural disasters” and “random attacks” on Fiona’s property in the hopes that it’d force her to sell off her land. Fiona’s neighbors at the Hollow, Quentin, Walter, and Winston, were also being harassed by the Van Nesses through similar methods. Hence, Elias wanted the four families to join hands and put up a united front against Constance in order to bring this nonsense to an end. But things got complicated when Willem raped Dahlia and, in retaliation, Dahlia stabbed Willem in the stomach with a pitchfork. Initially, Fiona decided to get him fixed up and return him to Constance. However, she chose to kill Willem, as Dahlia’s assault reminded her of her abusive husband and she knew the law wouldn’t punish him. Therefore, she hid his body underneath the grave for Walter’s dog, and commenced an elaborate game of smoke and mirrors to delay the inevitable. Deep down, Constance knew that her son was gone, and yet she engaged Fiona on her own terms to see if she could choke her out. That said, once Willem’s body was discovered, all bets were off, and Constance had Dahlia kidnapped and brought to the Van Ness estate so that Fiona would show up to save her, thereby allowing Constance to put Fiona in the ground. Did Constance’s plan succeed, or did Fiona come out on top? Let’s talk about the finale to find out.
Spoiler Alert
Garret Found Willem’s Body
Since Constance’s former right-hand man, Jack, had warned Fiona that Constance was about to descend upon the Abandons because she had refused to give away a major chunk of the land to her for silver mining, Fiona and her family decided to spend the whole day preparing for the impending battle. Constance was plotting with the Native Americans to attack the Abandons, but once Willem’s body was found, she took matters into her own hands. In order to confuse the Van Nesses, Fiona had dressed a soldier, who had been killed in action, in Willem’s clothing and accessories. Initially, they fell for it, but later on, Constance came to the conclusion something was amiss. On top of that, even if that body was that of Willem’s, the way it was found, his death couldn’t be connected to Fiona and her family in any concrete manner. That said, Constance had a feeling that Dahlia was the one who had murdered Willem, and that the other families at the Hollow had helped Fiona and her family hide the body; she just had to find out where it was. The weak link here was Winston’s daughter, Samara, especially because she had taken a liking to Garret. Hence, Garret exploited Samara’s sentiments and told her that he had found out that Winston was a former criminal, but if he gave up his plot of land to Constance, then that truth would stay buried. When Samara saw that her dad was willing to stand beside Fiona regardless of the cost, she went to Garret and told him the location of Willem’s body in the hopes that losing the land would finally motivate Winston to put down his gun.
In the meantime, Walter was preparing for the worst. He was certain that Constance would win the fight against the people of the Hollow, and since his family’s and his dog’s bodies were buried in that land, he wanted them to be moved somewhere proper so that their remains wouldn’t get desecrated by the mining operation. When he went to remove his dog’s corpse from its grave, Garret and his men arrived there, supposedly killed or brutally maimed Walter, and then took Willem home. Trisha had seen Garret and Constance’s ugly side, and she knew that they were working with a bandit named Roache to empty the Hollow. Hence, she wanted to inform the sheriff about her family’s transgressions. Constance kept her subdued with the help of her opium and put her under house arrest. Yet, Trisha tried to free herself and tell the truth to the authorities so that the families in the Hollow didn’t end up losing their land to a bunch of murderers. That attitude of hers changed when she saw Willem’s body lying on the table of her house and learned about the fact that the people of the Hollow, including the love of her life, Elias, had worked together to keep her brother’s corpse hidden all this while. She still rode all the way to the town, Angel’s Ridge, not to inform the sheriff about her family’s crimes, but to confront Elias regarding his betrayal.
Elias Broke Up With Trisha
Given how Willem wasn’t some innocent guy, and he had been killed for raping Dahlia, Elias straight-up told Trisha that Willem got what he deserved. People can’t choose who they fall in love with, which is why Elias and Trisha were in this complicated romance. The power dynamics between their respective families were lopsided. On top of that, Willem had committed a crime against Dahlia. Since Willem was dead, I suppose Elias thought that the proverbial scales had been balanced and it was fine to further his love life with Trisha. He knew that the day would come when the truth about Willem’s death would surface and his relationship with Trisha would be blown to smithereens. He just wanted to bathe in Trisha’s love until that happened. And, well, when that dreaded day arrived, Elias decided to be honest regarding his feelings for her and her family, because that’s the only thing that he could do in that situation. Before riding back to the Hollow, Elias left behind his coat, and Trisha took it and wore it while walking around Angel’s Ridge to process her complicated feelings for Elias. On one hand, she was angry at Elias for not informing her what had happened to Willem, and on the other hand, she understood that Elias and his family had no choice but to kill Willem after what he had done to Dahlia. We didn’t see her arriving at any kind of conclusion in this season of The Abandons. Maybe if the show gets greenlit for a second season, we’ll see what Trisha and Elias will do about this romantic conundrum.
In the time it took for Elias, Fiona, and Albert to get the arms and ammo for their fight with the Van Nesses, Roache and his men had kidnapped Dahlia and taken her to the Van Ness estate. When Constance laid eyes upon Dahlia, she was seething with rage, and she took out her anger on the girl by slashing her face with a knife. That was odd, because Constance was hurting a woman who had already been hurt by her son. Being a woman herself, Constance should have understood what Dahlia must’ve endured at Willem’s hands, and even though her son was dead as a result of his horrendous actions, she shouldn’t have sought to avenge him. That said, I guess Constance wasn’t looking at this whole situation through an empathetic or nuanced lens. She had proof that Willem had been killed. She knew that Dahlia was the culprit. She knew the four families of the Hollow had worked together on the cover-up. And this was her opportunity to take down Fiona and capture the Hollow and turn it into a silver mine. She didn’t care if her son was guilty and Dahlia was innocent. She was struggling to sink her claws into that patch of land, and since an opportunity had presented itself, she was ready to make the most of it under the guise of doing right by Willem. Or it’s possible that Constance’s motherly instincts kicked in and she chose to ignore the fact that Willem was a rapist so that she could avenge her son.
Fiona or Constance Died
In the ending of The Abandons, Fiona took the bait and surrendered to Constance. While she negotiated for Dahlia’s life, Elias, Albert, Lilla, Quentin, and Winston mounted an insane assault on the Van Nesses and their men. Afraid of catching one of Winston’s bullets, Constance abandoned the battlefield and ran into her home. That’s when Quentin and Elias pulled up with a carriage full of inflammable material and pushed it into Constance’s house, setting it on fire. During this maneuver, Roache shot Quentin but only injured him. Winston shot at Roache, and the bullet hit him in the leg or somewhere near his abdomen, which prompted him to flee the scene. Fiona, her family, and most of her allies were alive and safe, but something came over Fiona, which forced her to go into the burning house to make sure that Constance was dead and had no chance of hurting the people of the Hollow again. When Fiona encountered Constance, she was seemingly trying to save her money and property papers from being destroyed in the fire. This underscored the fact that money and power mattered more to her than her own life.
The Abandons ended on a cliffhanger where it wasn’t revealed if it was Fiona coming out of the burning house after killing Constance, if it was Constance coming out of the burning house after killing Fiona, or if it was someone else entirely. If the show ends up getting greenlit for a second season, we’ll know the correct outcome. Until then, all I can do is speculate and analyze the meaning of those final moments of the show. So, Kurt Sutter and his writing team took a very convoluted approach to make the point that ego and stubbornness are what kill us all. In the Western genre, we have seen men do this all the time. When a similar story unfolds through the perspective of women, the results are not all that different because the aforementioned character traits are not limited to a gender. Constance had expanded her empire so much that, until and unless she owned and mined every square inch of Oregon, she wouldn’t be able to make a profit. Who knew? Maybe she was already making a profit, but it was her greed, which she presented to the people as the need to develop Angel’s Ridge, that was compelling her to keep digging up the land in search of silver. She didn’t care how it impacted the lives of the people living there or how she was destroying all the memories that the people of the Hollow had built there. Yeah, sure, she gave Fiona a chance to convince the four families of the Hollow to sign on the dotted line and abandon the land for a fair price. However, nothing about that was fair. I think she did that to simply appear like a reasonable person, as her real goal always was to punish Fiona and her band of misfits for killing Willem and covering up the murder. As for the heinousness of her son’s actions, as mentioned before, she didn’t really see it as an issue, as it gave her the avenue to one-up Fiona, who had been a thorn in her side for quite a while. Coming to Fiona, should she have cut her losses and left the Hollow? At least then all that carnage could have been avoided.
Objectively speaking, yes, maybe Fiona should have taken the deal and left the Hollow along with the rest of the families. However, if you put yourself in Fiona’s shoes for even a second, you’ll understand why she did what she did. Her actions were born out of hubris, but that hubris wasn’t hollow. She had built that life on the Abandons with her own bare hands. Why would she let go of it? Because there’s a slim chance that the land will yield silver? What’s the use of that valuable metal when the real treasure for her is her family and friends? Fiona had spent a major chunk of her life running from one place to another, and she thought she had finally found a home for her loved ones and herself in the Abandons. She had reached that age where she didn’t want to keep running. Therefore, her actions are totally understandable. In an ideal world, both parties should have come up with an amicable solution, but the show is set in the Wild West; hence, here we are. As for the characters’ fates, I think both Fiona and Constance made it out alive. Their conflict is the best thing about the show. So, Sutter and his writers won’t kill either of them any time soon. We just see one of them coming out because the show wants us to think that only one of them will survive. That said, I feel that Fiona is going to exit the burning house first, and then Constance is going to come out after her. I have seen theories that maybe both Constance and Fiona are dead and that’s actually Trisha, who had returned from Angel’s Ridge and was probably taking a nap after her exhaustive crying session and was woken up by the fire. Well, until Season 2 of The Abandons arrives on Netflix, I’ll say that even that’s possible. What are your thoughts on the show, though? Let me know in the comments section below.
