Outer Range and its Spooky Hole renewed for a second season at Amazon

Today, in spooky sci-fi hole news: Amazon has announced that it’s renewing its Josh Brolin semi-Western Outer Range for a second season.

This is per THR, which also reports a major behind-the-scenes change for the series, about a Wyoming rancher (Brolin) whose life gets very strange, very fast, after an inexplicable, possibly magical hole suddenly opens up on his land. Specifically, the show’s getting a new showrunner, in the form of Luke Cage and Inhumans alum Charles Murray, who’s taking over the role from the first season’s Zev Borow. (Borow will remain on the series as an executive producer.)

In addition to Brolin, Outer Range stars Imogen Poots as Autumn, a drifter who camps out on Brolin’s ranch, and who seems to have a strange connection to the Spooky Hole. (Nobody on the show calls it that, unfortunately, but we’re hoping it’ll catch on.) Other co-stars include Lili Taylor, Tom Pelphrey, Tamara Podemski, Lewis Pullman, and Noah Reid.

We weren’t especially enthused about the first season of Outer Range, drubbing it for trafficking in some of the weirdo mysticism-meets rural charms of a Twin Peaks, but without that show’s more rigorous approach to getting really and truly weird. The series didn’t fare much better with other critics, garnering mostly mixed reviews despite the obvious allure of a big, Spooky Hole.

It’s worth noting that it definitely took Amazon a minute to move on this renewal: Open Range debuted back in April, and finished its first season in May. Streaming makes these sorts of timelines fuzzier, sure, but the company presumably had all the data it was going to get on the show months ago—which might explain the showrunner switch, if behind-the-scenes issues were holding up its possible return.