It’s been quite a journey for Lawmen: Bass Reeves. After escaping slavery and becoming a U.S. deputy marshal, Bass Reeves (David Oyelowo) only had a few days of being the hero and hunting outlaws until the toils of the job caught up with him. He learned the hard way that most criminals are declared guilty and hung by Judge Parker (Donald Sutherland)—while the evil Esau “Mr. Sundown” Pierce (Barry Pepper) murders some wanted men before they even get to the courthouse. Is this justice? Or is Reeves just a “slave catcher” with a badge, as an outlaw called him in the last episode?
Either way, Reeves is out for revenge in the finale. Pierce’s musings haunt him—and he’s and has seemingly resigned to convince himself that he’s a good lawman because he killied a bad one. Even with his wife Jennie (Lauren E. Banks) pleading to him that he’s never home, he’s seeing red when he takes off in the morning. His trusty sidekick, Billy Crow (Forrest Goodluck), is at his side—as is fellow deputy Marshal Sherill Lynn (Dennis Quaid)—whom we haven’t seen in quite some time. Still, these two are pretty much the only friends Bass Reeves has.
At home, Edwin Jones’s (Grantham Coleman) plot of a Zion in Indian Territory is still cut short—after Esme (Joaquina Kalukango) left him. In fact, he doesn’t even appear in this episode. Neither does Sally Reeves’s (Demi Singleton) young love interest, Franklin (Lonnie Chavis), marking yet another B-plot that ends unexplored. Instead, Esme gives a speech to the church about starting up a political campaign to fight for their rights.
Returning from church, Jennie and the kids are surprised to find her former master’s wife on her front porch. Fun fact: she’s played by David Oyelowo’s wife, Jessica Oyelowo. Jennie painfully recalls the time she was forced to give birth in the storeroom, asking her former master just what in the hell she’s doing there. Rachel says that the law declares that her children come back to work for her. So, Jennie slaps her, calls her a devil, and tells her to get out of her home. “If we don’t fight back, they’ll take it if we let ‘em,” she later says to Esme. “And we ain’t gonna do that.” By the grace of Lawmen: Bass Reeves’s writers, nothing bad happens to the house while the hero is away.
We’re not so different, you and I, Bass Reeves. Take, for example, this dinosaur skull…
Lauren “Lo” Smith//Paramount
Back on the trail to Pierce’s compound, Reeves spots a dinosaur footprint. He doesn’t say a single word or react in any way. Not even an exclamation of “Whoa, WTF is that?!” I can’t imagine a lot of people knew about dinosaurs in the late 1800s, but maybe I’m wrong! (Google, can you tell me when common knowledge of dinosaurs began?) Pierce’s weird fantasy novel-esque monologue about giants’ bones in Episode Six makes a hell of a lot more sense now.
Inside Pierce’s large estate, I’m now half-prepared for the villain to tell our hero that he’s figured out how to reanimate a fossilized mosquito encased in amber by extracting their DNA, Jurassic Park-style. He even shows Reeves a menacingly large dinosaur skull sitting in his foyer. “You see my monster upon entry?” Pierce asks him. “Buried deep, like the secrets we keep. Giant beasts who once roamed freely, now resigned to the dark.” Now, face the wrath of my army of velociraptors, Bass Reeves!
Instead of a cowboy vs. dinosaur war—which would be awesome—Pierce just expounds empty ideology after ideology. He does reveal a devastating twist, however, as he hasn’t been killing the Black outlaws that are turned in at Fort Worth. Pierce has them work on his property as slaves. They avoid the noose that awaits them at the courthouse, he explains, even if it means going back to a life of cruelty and bondage. It’s pure evil. When Reeves calls him a monster, he agrees. “Well, yes,” Pierce says, slyly. “You should have known better than to take me for a fool.”
Will Bass Reeves finally find peace?
Lauren Smith//Paramount
The battle finally begins when Crow lands a surprise shot on one of Pierce’s henchmen. Reeves fights off another baddie—and the dual-wielding Pierce flees the scene. The two parties shoot it out under the cover of darkness, until Lynn catches his foot in a bear trap. He begs Crow to leave him there, telling him that he’ll make a great deputy marshal as he gives him his badge. Billy Crow then leaves to free all the men in Pierce’s custody. Emerging from the gunfire, Pierce steals Reeves’s horse and attempts to ride away. But Reeves is too quick. He picks him off from afar in a shockingly anticlimactic final showdown. Right before the killing blow, Pierce concedes to Reeves, “The legend is yours.”
Choosing to be the hero, Reeves gives Pierce’s money away to the captives. They’re all considered dead anyway, as far as the law goes. He lets them ride on into the sunset. Returning late in the night, he hugs his wife and tells her that “every part of me” is now home… “forever.” Then—I kid you not—he listens to her play the theme music for Lawmen: Bass Reeves on the piano, as scenes from the series flash by in his memories. After all that, he finally cracks a smile. It may not be the perfect ending for the legendary lawman, but it’s time to giddy-up on home now. You deserve it, Bass Reeves.
Josh Rosenberg is an Assistant Editor at Esquire, keeping a steady diet of one movie a day. His past work can be found at Spin, CBR, and on his personal blog at Roseandblog.com.
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