Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for the 1923 Season 2 finale.
Well, this is it, folks. Despite Paramount billing 1923’s Season 2 finale as a “season” finale rather than a “series” finale, this two-hour chapter feels more definitive than we were led to believe. As Dutton patriarchs Jacob (Harrison Ford) and Cara Dutton (Helen Mirren) take their final stand against the villainous Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton), “A Dream and a Memory” ends with copious amounts of bloodshed and warfare.
‘1923’s Season 2 Finale Begins With Everyone Fighting for Survival

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The two-hour finale opens with Cara on the Dutton porch as men guard the home. Zane (Brian Geraghty) wants her inside, but she says she’ll get indoors once the shooting starts. Elizabeth (Michelle Randolph), however, is worried about Jack (Darren Mann), who never returned home after the previous episode. At the train depot in Livingston, Jacob and Sheriff William McDowell (Robert Patrick) continue to wait as Jacob grows suspicious of some of the men standing around. In the nearby hotel, Ellie Creighton (Sarah Randall Hunt) finds Banner (Jerome Flynn) in the dark, and he admits that he is not a good man. He doesn’t consider himself a bad man either, but he’s not straight-up evil like Donald Whitfield, noting that he is a vile man who rejoices in the suffering of others. Banner decides that he cannot continue looking his son in the eye here and decides that they are going to leave.
Meanwhile, in Wyoming, Alexandra (Julia Schlaepfer) suffers through the cold. She searches through Hillary’s (Janet Montgomery) belongings and finds some valuables, even removing her dead friend’s gloves to help keep herself warm before getting out and running through the snow to pull a lighter off Paul’s (Augustus Prew) corpse, lighting a fire inside the car to keep warm. At Whitfield’s place, the villain continues to inflict torturous pleasure on Mabel (Virginia Gardiner), as he and Lindy (Madison Elise Rogers) burn her with hot tea. Further south in Texas, Marshal Mamie Fossett (Jennifer Carpenter) and her men find Pete (Jeremy Gauna) and Kent’s (Jamie McShane) bodies, putting two and two together that Father Renaud (Sebastian Roché) was Kent’s murderer. As this goes on, Jacob continues to wait for the train as it approaches. Banner and his family soon arrive, hoping to escape to Portland. Banner tells Jacob that Whitfield is only the first of the Duttons’ problems, and notes that one day they will lose their land. Jacob tells Banner that he won’t be getting on the train because he needs to finish what he started. Banner pleads for his family’s safety, and Jacob obliges.
Spencer and Alex Reunite as War Begins in the ‘1923’ Season 2 Finale

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On the train, Spencer (Brandon Sklenar) starts talking with a young boy seated in front of him about the buffalo outside their window. The kid wants to trade his knife for Spencer’s lion’s tooth, and Spencer notes that it was something he wanted to give to his son one day — but then decides to trade anyway. In Texas, Fossett finds Renaud and Runs His Horse (Michael Spears) also dead. From afar, Teonna Rainwater (Aminah Nieves) observes them before taking aim with a rifle. Fossett and company pursue her as she rides off on horseback. Teonna shoots one of the marshals off his horse and is quickly surrounded. Fossett and the remaining marshal, Two Spears (Dougie Hall), apprehend her, but not before Teonna shares the heartbreaking truth about her past at the Indian school and what drove her to murder.
At the Dutton Ranch, Whitfield’s men arrive and ignite the bloody land war. Indoors, Cara hears gunshots and prepares to cover the Dutton men from up high as the cars pull in. Zane and his few hands take out the drivers, and a firefight ensues. Unfortunately, more cars arrive, and Liz and Alice (Joy Osmanski) are ordered to hide in the basement. Two of the Duttons’ crew climb onto the roof to get a better vantage point as Zane and Cara take the men out one by one. At the train station, Jacob eyes Banner, and the two wait for the train to arrive. However, more of Whitfield’s men begin to show up, and Jacob’s forces are soon surrounded. Meanwhile, in Wyoming, Alex continues to kindle her fire and has used up as much paper as she can. With nothing left to use, she begins to burn Cara’s letters to Spencer as well. She cries out to God, wondering what sort of divine plan would allow her and Spencer to love and then lose it. Just then, she hears a train coming and braves the cold once more. Desperate, she sets the whole car on fire, which catches Spencer’s eye. Turns out this is his train.
Spencer runs to the back of the train just in time to jump off, reuniting with his wife in the snow in a beautiful answer to her prayers. Spencer picks up Alex and carries her to the train, which has reversed course to them, learning in the process that he is to be a father. A doctor soon inspects Alex, who has severely frostbitten fingers and toes. They remove her clothes in an effort to get her warm, and the doctor reveals that Alex was only minutes away from death when Spencer found her. As they begin to warm her, Alex confirms she’s six months along in her pregnancy, and the doctor tells Spencer not to get off the train in Livingston but to go on to Bozeman instead, where the doctors there can be of more help.

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“We Find a New Level of Strength From Her”: ‘1923’s Julia Schlaepfer Discusses the Process of Making Season 2’s Brutal Ellis Island Episode

Schlaepfer also discusses how Alex’s pregnancy raises the stakes and her character’s epic Dutton romance.

The Duttons Take Back What’s Theirs in ‘1923’s Powerful Season 2 Finale

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At the ranch, Zane tells Cara that their enemies’ plan is to wait to attack again until nightfall. The train arrives in Livingston, but it’s late. Whitfield’s men assemble outside, and Jacob prepares for battle. Banner leaves his family, telling them to get on the train and start their lives over without him. As the train comes to a halt, Spencer sees the armed men waiting outside and prepares for a fight. Whitfield’s men begin to fire, and a fight brews. Spencer helps Banner’s family onto the train before he saves Jacob’s life. Banner is shot by McDowell, but dies only after Jacob tells Banner that he has his word that his family will get out safely. The Dutton patriarch has been wounded in the gunfight, but gets on the train anyway, where Spencer introduces him to Alex. She tells her husband that “war is what he came home for,” sending him to go fight for their family while Jacob stays behind with Alex to proceed to the hospital in Bozeman. Through narration, Elsa Dutton (Isabel May) notes that Alex had previously feared that she wouldn’t see Spencer again, but now that she has, she knows it’ll be enough even if he doesn’t survive what’s coming.
At the ranch, nightfall comes, and Whitfield’s men attack with a machine gun for cover. The ranch house is shot up and soon set on fire. Zane puts it out but is wounded as the men enter the house. Liz helps Zane by killing the men in pursuit, only to be saved by the foreman in the nick of time. In Bozeman, Alex is loaded into the ambulance, and Jacob insists on riding with her. At the ranch, Spencer and his men arrive and hear the firefight, so he orders them to turn their headlights off in order to sneak up on the others. The tide turns as Spencer kills the man laying down heavy fire with the machine gun. Soon after, he and his allies flank Whitfield’s fighters, and the tide is turned as Spencer almost singlehandedly kills every one of the attackers. Cara tenderly reunites with her nephew, but Jack is still unaccounted for in the aftermath. Spencer asks who the leader of this group was, and is finally filled in on Whitfield. Soon after the battle, the Dutton ranch hands make the devastating discovery of Jack’s body in the woods.
‘1923’ Season 2 Ends on a Somber Note, but Offers Hope for the Future

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At the hospital, Jacob is supporting Alex, who is in the process of giving birth prematurely. Miraculously, the baby boy, whom she names John after Spencer’s fallen brother, lives, and Alex is overjoyed to hold him. When the doctors try to prepare her for surgery to amputate her frostbitten appendages, Alex refuses at the cost of her own life, instead choosing to remain with her child, who would likely die without care from her. Alex asks Jacob to tell Spencer why she chose to sacrifice herself for her child, and he insists that she can tell him herself. Soon after, Spencer and Cara arrive, and Spencer goes to see his wife and child. In the room, he meets his son, and Alex tells him that she refused to give in to the doctor’s demands. “I would never trade what we made for me,” she tells Spencer as he lies with his family, together for the last time.
The next morning, Spencer wakes up, and Alex is dead. He calls for Cara and tells her that he doesn’t know what to do next for baby John. Thankfully, Cara does. Spencer also tells Jacob that he wants to meet the man who killed his wife, and they leave to pay a visit to Whitfield. Walking right into his mansion, Spencer shoots Whitfield and kills Lindy, letting an injured Mabel go. Jacob tells Whitfield that he plans to make an example of him, and Spencer blames him for killing Alex before shooting Whitfield in the head. Afterward, Jacob and Spencer burn the mansion to the ground. Down in Texas, Teonna is brought to trial for three counts of murder, but the prosecution has no witnesses or evidence concerning the charges. Thus, the motion is dismissed, and Teonna is free to go. Unsure what else to do or where to go, Fossett sends Teonna off with a horse and a gun. Two Spears tells her that it was right for her to fight back, but Teonna notes that it cost her everything. “Always does,” Two Spears replies.
At the Dutton Ranch, a funeral is held for Alex and Jack, and Spencer watches as an eagle flies overhead. Later, Cara feeds young John as Liz decides to move on to Boston, as she’d resolved before. She promises to write, and Cara struggles to look at her because the young woman reminds her of Jack. At the corral, Spencer asks Jacob to join him in the Crazy Mountains, but his uncle refuses, instead deciding to retire so he can spend time with Cara and young John while pondering the meaning of life. On the porch, Cara asks Jacob what Alexandra was like, and Jacob beautifully but succinctly describes her: “If a shooting star could talk.” As 1923 concludes, Elsa Dutton’s narration reveals that her youngest brother never remarried, though Spencer did have another child with a widow. The series concludes 45 years later, with an older Spencer lying down at Alex’s grave, only to reawaken in an afterlife with his wife, made young again. “Took you long enough,” Alex tells him. Together they dance, and their dreams of a shared life together are made new.
1923 is available for streaming on Paramount+.

1923

1923 ends with an explosive finale that offers glimmers of hope in the midst of heartbreak.

Release Date

2022 – 2024

Network

Paramount+

Directors

Guy Ferland

Pros & Cons

Spencer finally returns home, but it’s his reunion with Alex that makes tears flow and breaks hearts.
Whitfield gets what he deserves, and Banner finds small redemption.
The mystery behind the next John Dutton is officially solved.

Did Alex really have to die? After all that?