TrendPulse

'The Madison' Finale: How Montana Ending Sets Up Season 2

Source: The Hollywood ReporterView Original
entertainmentMarch 22, 2026

The Clyburn family of 'The Madison,' played by (left to right) Alaina Pollack, Beau Garrett, Amiah Miller, Michelle Pfeiffer, Patrick J. Adams and Elle Chapman. "We all clicked so well. We really worked together and it felt so lovely," says Pollack, 11, of the new family created by Taylor Sheridan.

Emerson Miller/Paramount+.

Logo text

[The story contains major spoilers from the season one finale of The Madison.]

The Madison has brought a new family to the Sheridan-verse. And after the conclusion of its first season, the story of the Clyburns is only just getting started.

The grief drama from Yellowstone hit-maker Taylor Sheridan introduced viewers to the Clyburns when it plucked them out of their New York City comforts and plopped them on an uncomfortable yet transformative six-episode tour through their grief in Montana.

Related Stories

TV

'The Madison' Was a Leap of Faith for Michelle Pfeiffer

TV

'The Madison' Is a Standalone Series in the Sheridan-verse -- Unrelated to 'Yellowstone': "Demanded a Lot From Everyone"

The first season was given an unusual release, as it streamed in two parts over the last two weekends on Paramount+, like two mini-movies — which is how the story could be viewed. The second season has already been filmed and is in the can, awaiting an official release date from the streamer, and the cast, in conversations with The Hollywood Reporter here, makes it clear that Sheridan plans to continue.

“They’re hoping for season three,” star Michelle Pfeiffer tells THR.

No official announcements have been made, but Sheridan usually gets what he wants.

The Madison was a leap of faith for Pfeiffer when she signed on to play Clyburn matriarch Stacy. She didn’t have a script or much of a character description after leaving an early 2024 meeting with Sheridan at his Texas ranch when he pitched her the series in person — nor did she have a scene partner. Kurt Russell, who would eventually sign on to play her husband, Preston, was in production on his Apple series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and wasn’t available when season one was set to begin in the fall. So Pfeiffer and Sheridan pitched to Paramount that they move forward with a second season, and that Russell film all of his season one scenes when they return one year later, in 2025, to make season two.

That meant Pfeiffer would film the entirety of season one without Russell, their scenes cut together in the edit. “I was not happy about that,” Pfeiffer recently told THR with a laugh. “It was touch and go if they were going to make [Kurt’s] schedule work. But Taylor was insisting it was going to happen, so I just decided, ‘OK, it’s Kurt.’ And because I know him, that was pretty easy to conjure up.”

Michelle Pfeiffer as Stacy Clyburn. “I wonder if they would do a theatrical release because it is so sweeping,” says the actress, who credits 1923 star Helen Mirren for helping her commit to the project.

Emerson Miller/Paramount+

The series proves to be a Pfeiffer vehicle as she steers her fractured, privileged and often out-of-touch family through their stages of grief after Preston’s sudden death. After Preston and his brother Paul, played by Matthew Fox, tragically die in a plane crash while at their Montana home to open the series, Preston’s children (played by Beau Garrett and Elle Chapman; with a son-in-law played by Patrick J. Adams) and grandchildren (played by 11-year-old Alaina Pollack and Amiah Miller) travel with Stacy to the cabin in the mountains that Preston loved his entire life, but a place that the rest of his family had never visited.

“That’s often how people die in airplanes, when an emotional factor makes their decision-making,” Fox, a pilot himself, tells THR. “He only gets his brother out there for a couple weeks a year. He’s flown him to this special place. It bothered me that Paul was a little nonchalant about the weather that was moving in, but I justified i that he’s just trying to give his brother the very best birthday gift he possibly could.”

After many hurdles for this fish-out-of-water family and self-proclaimed “city mouse” Stacy — ranging from outhouse attacks by hornets, elk dinners that nearly undo the family and many, many lessons in empathy and readjusting preconceptions — Stacey ends the first season deciding to live at the Montana home that has now been imprinted onto her soul. After burying her husband there and holding a memorial in New York City, she leaves the city without any word to her family and arrives at Preston’s final resting place in Montana. When she is found by cowboy Cade (Kevin Zegers), she tells her friendly neighbor that she could use a hand getting settled, as she plans to stay for a while.

The ending sets up The Madison to return the series to the mountains as