Centering around “two strong-willed women” played by Game of Thrones alum Lena Headey and The X-Files‘ Gillian Anderson as they “battle for supremacy on the lawless frontier” of the 1850s Washington Territory, per the show’s official description, The Abandons‘ star-studded cast wasn’t enough to resonate with fans and critics, including The Daily Beast‘s Nick Schager who slammed the production as a lesser version of Yellowstone.
“Kurt Sutter’s series is a pretender through and through, piling on clichés without any sense of authenticity, rhythm, or originality,” Schager wrote of The Abandons‘ first season. “Yellowstone’s writing is hardly assured, but Sheridan at least knows how to push buttons,” he continued. “The Abandons, on the other hand, has nothing to say about anything other than that pre-Civil War America was a down-and-dirty place where the sole thing more important than family was land ownership.” As such, Schager speculated that “few will want to stick around this Western territory to find out the next hackneyed steps it intends to take.”
Time’s Judy Berman had an equally cynical view of Sutter’s latest TV offering. She denounced The Abandons as “everything wrong with TV in 2025.” Taking care to complement Headey’s performance as Fiona Nolan, Berman roasted the series’ “unmemorable” characters and “cobbled-together” clichéd Western plotlines that “any potential viewer has almost definitely seen before.”
These Scathing Reviews Come More Than A Year After Sutter Left The Series
It appears that Sutter also had strong feelings about the series. The Sons of Anarchy creator made headlines after he abandoned The Abandons a few weeks before production was scheduled to wrap in Calgary in October 2024. The TV mogul remained tight-lipped about his reasons for leaving, but sources close to the series told Variety that “creative differences” between Sutter and Netflix fueled his decision to exit the production.
After watching a “rough cut of the first episodes,” per the outlet, the streamer felt that the series’ first installment, which reportedly clocked in at a roughly 1 hour and 40 minute runtime, should be divided into two, a decision that necessitated the filming of several more scenes. After Sutter’s departure, the series’s higher-ups, Otto Bathurst and Rob Askins, managed the rest of the TV program’s production. In its entirety, filming of The Abandons lasted from May to October 2024. The show was originally set to start production in 2023, but was delayed due to union strikes.
The Abandons‘ first season is currently available to stream on Netflix.
