Western Romance
Sara & Isaac’s Slow Burn Romance Is ‘American Primeval’s Bleeding Heart
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for American Primeval.]
For anyone going into Netflix’s limited series American Primeval hoping for a happy ending, we encourage you to first crack open an American history textbook for a refresher on the myriad of reasons why that was never going to happen.
Settling the western half of the United States in the 1800s may have expanded the American dream from sea to shining sea, but it was a fraught endeavor that forcibly claimed the ancestral lands of native communities and sowed the seeds of a growing nation with the blood of its residents. From director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights), American Primeval is a fictionalized take on the true story of the Utah War, a brief conflict in 1857 between the volatile members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (also known as Mormons) fleeing religious persecution and the U.S. military sent in to enforce some semblance of law and order in the wild west. The series’ take on this war ends with a tremendous amount of bloodshed, and nearly every major character dead or displaced. So again, no happy ending to be found.
Matt Kennedy / Netflix
But far from the frontlines of that conflict, the show actually manages to offer audiences a glimmer of hope for the future and a little bit of romance — even if it is fleeting.
Over the six episodes, viewers ride shotgun for a perilous journey across the unforgiving terrain of Utah and Wyoming alongside single mother Sara (Betty Gilpin), her son Devin (Preston Mota), a wayward Shoshone teenage girl named Two Moons (Shawnee Pourier), and their rugged, Shoshone-raised guide Isaac (Taylor Kitsch). Sara is desperate to get her son to Crooks Spring, a small outpost where his father is stationed. But it isn’t until well into their trip that it’s revealed why she’s so adamant about the destination: They are fleeing a bounty put on her head for killing her abusive husband back east, and she believes the only safe place for her son is with his absentee father.
Isaac, already reluctant to traverse the dangerous wilderness for two strangers, pushes back on her persistence to go forward despite a cavalcade of hurdles on the road. He forcibly tries to drag them back to Fort Bridger where they first met, while she continues to defy his directions believing safety lies ahead of and not behind them. Within their fiery friction, Sara and Isaac forge a genuine but unspoken bond that becomes their lifeline as they endure more than a few traumatic events, including his near-fatal shooting and her sexual assault at the hands of inbred French settlers. By the time they have killed the bounty hunters on their heels and can finally head toward Crooks Springs, the two get a single moment to vocalize their burgeoning love for one another.
Within the brutality of the series, which is not lacking for graphic deaths and duplicitous schemes, the tender and tasteful connection between Sara and Isaac provides perhaps the only real innocence in a story without a moral compass. She is a woman frustrated by a life lived at the mercy of men, and he’s a man who has lost his entire family and seeks solace in solitude. They shouldn’t work, and they know they never can.
Courtesy of Netflix
She laments as much when she says wishes he could go with them to this version of civilization on the other side of their journey, while this man of few words musters agreement. But their fractured lives can’t be magically mended by what they want. The world and the west are too unrelenting for such pleasures. Instead, all they have are these moments, in between the traumas, where they can take refuge in one another in a way they haven’t allowed themselves in a long time.
It’s why the one kiss they share, before parting ways in the finale, is so resoundingly impactful. It is the inevitable apex of this romance. While we like to think that love stories are forever, sometimes they are just meant for the moment. That’s what Isaac and Sara were for each other, a way to get to the other side of this journey. There was no world in which these two could have intertwined their lives and expectations for the future outside of the context of their caravan to Crooks Spring. Sealing it with a kiss was the perfect way to let it live on as a memory, and not something they forced beyond what it could bear.
Of course, that isn’t the end of the story, though. In romantic comedies, a man might come to his senses and chase after the woman with whom he has found love. Isaac certainly does come racing back into Sara’s life mere moments after saying goodbye, but it’s to stop a loose-end bounty hunter from capturing her — and he takes a bullet to the chest for his chivalry. Isaac dies in Sara’s arms, the perfect place for the man who lost his will to live when he lost his family, and only found a new reason to keep going in this woman for whom he gave his life.
In a way, Isaac’s death answers the question of “what if?” for Sara. Had he merely rode away never to be heard from again, she might have spent her life wondering what it could have looked like if they had given it a chance. She doesn’t have to entertain such thoughts now. Instead, she’s left with the comfort of knowing she spent every second she would ever get with the brooding man that saved her life and her heart.
What did you think of Sara and Isaac’s relationship? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
American Primeval, Season 1, Streaming Now, Netflix
