‘Landman’ Season 2 Just Dropped Its Wildest Hour Yet — Gas Leaks, Power Plays, and a Very Chaotic Tommy

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Dec 1

Billy Bob Thornton as Tommy Norris and Andy Garcia as Gallino in Landman episode 3, season 2, streaming on Paramount+. **Photo Credit: Emerson Miller/Paramount+**

Season 2 finally finds its pulse in an episode that swings from cartel chess moves to oil-field terror and some of the strangest romantic tension on television.

Paramount+ has spent two seasons building the combustible world of Landman, but Episode 3 is the first hour this year that truly feels like the show firing on all cylinders. It’s messy, loud, often unhinged, and somehow the most confident installment of the season. The hour jumps between cartel diplomacy, blue-collar danger, and the kind of romantic subplots that can only exist in a Taylor Sheridan universe, where every drive turns flirty, every threat has corporate polish, and even a gas leak becomes a horror sequence.

The big headline is the return of Andy Garcia as Gallino — a performance so controlled and quietly predatory it almost resets the season’s power dynamics in a single boardroom scene. Garcia plays him as a man who doesn’t need to raise his voice to terrify a room; the way he delivers “Thomas” like a disappointed father is more chilling than any gunshot. When he tells Tommy he bet on the son instead of the father, it hits harder than any physical threat. It reframes Tommy’s entire emotional arc and exposes the show’s recurring tension: in Landman, masculinity and money are always tied to someone’s ability to keep up.

Mustafa Speaks as Boss and James Jordan as Dale in Landman episode 3, season 2, streaming on Paramount+. **Photo Credit: Emerson Miller/Paramount+**

But for all the cartel intrigue, the episode’s most gripping sequences come from the ground — literally. The gas leak storyline may be one of the show’s best set pieces, a tightly wound stretch that shifts into horror as the wind changes, the alarms go haywire, and the characters’ bodies react before their minds can catch up. Jerrell stuck on the tank, hacking and gagging as the fumes hit him, may be the most viscerally shot moment of the series. Dale swooping in for a last-second rescue cements him as the show’s under-sung MVP.

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Then there’s the Angela and Tommy of it all. Their energy — part romance, part chaos agent — gives the episode its most unhinged (and sometimes uncomfortably funny) beats. Angela’s hyper-charged flirtation, Tommy’s complete inability to handle technology, and the bizarre stop-and-start near-proposal all escalate into one of the strangest domestic scenes Sheridan has ever put on screen. The show knows exactly what it's doing: leaning into their dysfunction to highlight how fragile Tommy’s world truly is, especially as he keeps finding himself pulled between loyalty, ego, and a son who is increasingly becoming the center of the entire enterprise.

Demi Moore as Cami in Landman episode 3, season 2, streaming on Paramount+. **Photo Credit: Emerson Miller/Paramount+**

Cami delivers a surprisingly grounded emotional moment — a brief speech that cuts through the episode’s mania and reminds the audience that Landman is, at its core, about the people who get swept into the machinery of wealth and ambition. Her final scene, framed against the sound of coyotes, is haunting and eerie, the rare note of stillness in an episode determined to stay in motion.

By the end, Episode 3 feels like a pivot point. The stakes rise, alliances shift, and the show finally embraces the bigger, stranger tone that Season 2 has flirted with since its premiere. If this is the energy the rest of the season keeps, Landmanmay have finally found its swagger — even if its characters are barely holding onto theirs.