Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Betty Gilpin, Dane DeHaan, Saura Lightfoot-Leon, Joe Tippett, Lucas Neff, Derek Hinkey, Shea Whigham, Kim Coates

Director: Peter Berg
Released: 2025

Mood: If the world seems like it’s falling apart and you need to put on a Western that’s so good you’ll completely forget to doomscroll.

There’s a difference between civilization and civilized.

Jeff Bridger (Shea Whigham)

It’s been a hot minute since I reviewed a Western TV show, and HOT DAMN! I’m so glad I’m returning with American Primeval. This limited Netflix series has:

• The grit and unflinching brutality of Deadwood
• The ‘landscape-as-a-character’ quality of 1883
• The dramatic flavour of Godless

It’s terrifically, awfully gory. I had to look away a couple of times, and as someone who has literally never lost her appetite from anything on my TV screen, that probably means more sensitive viewers should be careful. The Netflix advisory on the first episode says it all: “Gore, language, sexual violence, smoking, suicide, violence.”

I was entertained by every single moment of American Primeval’s six episodes, which I binged in two days and could have finished in just one, except my husband didn’t want to watch it so I had to switch to something else in order to cohabit the living room. But just one week later I bribed him to watch it with me so I could see it again.

Watch. This. Show. Light spoilers ahead.

American Primeval takes place in 1857, highlighting some of the most controversial elements of the Utah War, from the Mountain Meadows Massacre through to the Mormon acquisition of Fort Bridger. To this day, there’s a lot of disagreement over how all of this went down – but screenwriter Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) gives one hell of a perspective.

Sarah Rowell (Betty Gilpin) is trying to reach the West with her son Devin (Preston Mota). When she gets to Fort Bridger she finds out that their guide has already left. She immediately starts hunting for another guide, eventually harassing Jim Bridger (Shea Whigham) into bringing her to meet rugged loner Isaac (Taylor Kitsch), but he refuses.

Sarah then turns to Mormon pioneer Jacob Pratt (Dane DeHaan) and his wife Abish (Saura Lightfoot-Leon), and hitches herself to their wagon train. This is the beginning of the end for like 90% of the characters, because nearby are Mormon Church president Brigham Young (Kim Coates) and his militia led by Wild Bill Hickman (Alex Breaux) and James Wolsey (Joe Tippett). And strangers are NOT welcome on their turf.

American Primeval is a dramatic Western canvas for a talented group of actors to explore the most extreme facets of human existence. Bravery. Cowardice. Selflessness. Greed. Perseverance. Faith. Violence. Fanaticism. It’s all here, and it’s all done well.

• Fun Fact #1: The set builders created Fort Bridger using only used tools that would have been available in the 1800s.

Sure, these characters could do with more depth. And yeah, there are some predictable tropes. Like the strong white guy raised by Natives, or the rebellious young white girl who gets kidnapped by Natives but quickly takes to their way of life, and suddenly their chief and warriors all trust her opinions.

I questioned some of the characters’ choices, too, but it never snowballed into anything more than a passing thought because I was too busy hanging onto the edge of my seat. Your brain doesn’t have much time to be bothered by the few things lacking, because it’s receiving a steady stream of gripping, brutal action and stunning scenery.

• Fun Fact #2: American Primeval was shot in New Mexico over 130 days, and the cast endured severe weather conditions ranging from freezing to blazing heat. Only two days of filming took place indoors.

Honestly, I wouldn’t trade a single second of American Primeval’s bloody action for anything else. The show delivers exactly what it promises – a fast-paced, riveting plot, lots of twists and turns, and rich ‘feels like you’re there’ production quality.

There are a LOT of great performances in American Primeval. Too many to detail them all. Here are my personal favourites.

• DANE DEHAAN, holy shit. I knew he was something special in The Kid. His performance as Jacob defines the expression ‘tour de force’. He takes us on a roller coaster from sweetness to disturbing to utterly mad.
• Taylor Kitsch is physically reminiscent of Christian Bale in Hostiles, with a slightly softer energy. He delivers everything you want in a Western lead, from strength and skill to a slow-burn emotional arc. No notes.
• At first Sarah’s desperation feels like way too much, and she frequently causes harm by refusing to listen, but Betty Gilpin expertly peels back the character’s layers and delivers some truly powerful scenes, especially in that darkly horrific third episode.
• From his first moments on screen as Wolsey, Joe Tippett radiates a suspiciously mild manner that belies a deadliness below the surface.
• Shea Whigham as Jim Bridger has a grizzled charm that could work in any Western.

Also noteworthy are Derek Hinkey as Red Feather, Irene Bedard as Winter Bird, Lucas Neff as Captain Edmund Dellinger, Alex Breaux as Wild Bill Hickman, and Shawnee Pourier as Two Moons.

Kim Coates is good as Brigham Young, but he feels slightly miscast and the role is pretty one-dimensional. Coates is quite a bit older than the real Brigham Young was, and he looks and sounds so much like a villain that you instantly dislike his character. The real Young was a sweet-faced redhead who became the Mormon Church’s president AND the first governor of the Utah Territory before he was 40. Imagine how much more shocking his acts in the show would have felt coming from someone who looked genuinely friendly.

And finally, I’m still on the fence about Abish. We need strong women in Westerns. But although Saura Lightfoot-Leon is clearly talented and I appreciated Abish’s resilience, she often felt too modern. And what ultimately put me off of the character was that Abish KNEW she was being hunted and people would die protecting her, and instead of choosing to let that happen to the military, she brought it down on the Shoshone.

I’m insanely glad I finally upgraded to an HDTV before watching American Primeval, so I could appreciate every detail of the cinematography. You can see every fleck of dirt, every frozen moustache damp with snot, every pore, and so many flies. It makes the third episode particularly grisly, with its almost supernatural sidetrack into a caravan of severely deformed French bandits.

But even with a brand-spanking-new TV and the volume up high, it was often really hard to hear many of the male characters. I’m not sure if they were all mumbling into their beards, inadvertently adding a mumble to their drawls, or what, but that was kind of annoying.

Overall, American Primeval is an outstanding first Western of 2025. It gives you a bold perspective on real events, authentic characters and landscapes, and non-stop action – all bundled into six easy-to-digest episodes. I will definitely watch it many more times.

For the history-loving Western fans out there, I seriously recommend reading up on both the war and the massacre. You can still fully enjoy American Primeval without knowing anything about it, I had no clue about any of it beforehand. But it makes it even more fascinating. Here’s a collection of facts I rounded up for those who’d rather get this intel without leaving this review.

• The Mormons had faced mob violence and persecution prior to the Utah War, which is what drove them so far west and partly why they were so riled up at this point in time. Not an excuse, but it adds context.
• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints issued a press release about American Primeval being “dangerously misleading,” stating, “the Church has long acknowledged and condemned this horrific tragedy. It has also taken significant steps to uncover and share the full truth of what happened and promote healing.”
• But in fact, the LDS Church didn’t officially acknowledge any part in the Mountain Meadows Massacre until 2002, when evidence finally made it impossible to deny, and they didn’t issue an official statement until 2007 – a whopping 150 years after it happened. They also went on record saying that their ‘statement of regret’ should not be taken as an apology. So saying that the church has “long” acknowledged their part is a bit of a stretch.
• Only ONE man was ever arrested, tried, and convicted for the massacre. John D. Lee was arrested in 1874 and executed in 1877, 20 years after the killings.
• Although the bloodbath hits hard and fast in American Primeval, the massacre took place over five days and concluded on a dark date – September 11. The Mormons rode in with a white flag, offered to escort the wagon train to safety, then separated the men from the women and children and proceeded to slaughter every man, then every woman and every child old enough to give testimony.
• Brigham Young framed the Paiute people for the massacre, both indirectly (the Mormons under his leadership scalped and raided the pioneers to make it look like the work of Natives) and directly (in a report by Young to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs).
• Young is never accompanied by women in the show, but the man had 56 wives and 57 children, with over 30,000 descendants today.
• Wild Bill Hickman, who really did do a lot of murdering at the command of Brigham Young, was the great-great-grandfather of popular Sci-Fi author Tracy Hickman (of the Dragonlance books).
• Jeff Bridger didn’t sign over Fort Bridger to the Mormons. He was arrested for selling booze and weapons to the local Indigenous folk, escaped, and didn’t return for awhile. During his absence, Young took over the fort and claimed he bought it from Bridger’s partner, Louis Vasquez. Bridger’s name was signed on the deed as well, even though he wasn’t even in the territory at the time.