Who is the villain in Ransom Canyon? Season 1 hid its answer behind a business deal

The villain is Davis Collins (Eoin Macken), Staten's former brother-in-law, who spends the season fronting for a utility company trying to buy up the canyon. Then the finale reveals who's actually holding his leash.

Davis Collins and the pipeline

Davis runs the Bar W Ranch, is deep in debt, and has quietly aligned himself with Austin Water & Power, which wants a pipeline through Ransom and the ranch land to go with it. His ex-wife Paula Jo (Meta Golding) sits on the AWP board, which is the part he doesn't advertise.

The show is not subtle about it. He's dressed in black for most of ten episodes, he's competing with Staten (Josh Duhamel) for Quinn O'Grady (Minka Kelly), and his schemes are the through-line:

• The land grab — pressuring Staten and Cap Fuller (James Brolin) to sell to AWP.
• The con — helping Yancy Grey (Jack Schumacher) get out of prison and installing him at Fuller Ranch to work an angle on Cap's property.
• The sabotage — his own son Reid plays a recording of Paula Jo plotting to poison Staten's wells.
• The provocation — in the finale, Davis picks a fight with Staten specifically to collect the bruises.

The finale twist

Those bruises are evidence. If Staten can be shown to be unfit, he loses his position as trustee of the Double K Ranch, and the land can be sold out from under him.

Davis then climbs into a car to display his injuries to his partner in the scheme: Senator Sam Kirkland (Brett Cullen), Staten's own father. The man trying hardest to sell the canyon is the family patriarch, working through the in-law nobody trusts anyway. That's the cliffhanger the season ends on.

So who killed Randall?

Margaret Brigman (Sarah Minnich), the sheriff's estranged wife, was behind the wheel — driving home from an affair with Kit Russell (Casey W. Johnson). Kit tried to take the fall and was arrested for it, and friends helped hide the truck. Sheriff Dan Brigman (Philip Winchester) works out the truth and arrests his own wife on manslaughter charges in the finale.

Cap Fuller dies in the penultimate episode. Yancy, the drifter everyone suspected all season, turns out to be Cap's biological grandson, and is left at the altar when a woman claiming to be his wife shows up.

Does Davis come back?

He doesn't. Season 2 arrived on Netflix on July 23, 2026 with eight episodes, and Deadline reported that both Eoin Macken and Andrew Liner, who played Reid, are out with no explanation given. Brett Cullen's senator is still on the cast list.

For the record: Ransom Canyon's second season was shot in Albuquerque and around northern New Mexico for a reported $50–70 million. None of it is filmed in Texas Hill Country.