Kevin Costner’s epic traditional Western series kicked off with Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, and as opposed to wrapping up any of its sprawling story, its ending led right into Chapter 2 in August 2024. Driven by a talented and star-studded cast of characters headlined by Costner himself, the four planned movies of Horizon: An American Saga will explore the lives of multiple generations of settlers and Indigenous people as they struggle to carve out lives in the American West before, during, and after the Civil War. Chapter 1 introduced most of the major players and locations.

Kevin Costner provided some insight on the ending of Chapter 1, and reinforced the notion that the saga will unfold steadily over the course of all four movies. As a result, most of the lengthy runtime of Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 is spent introducing the most important characters and story lines that will develop in the series. While most of the major stories are treated as separate journeys, many of the threads of what will eventually cause the stories to intersect can be found in Chapter 1.

Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 Ends With Footage From Chapter 2

One movie leads right into the next

Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 doesn’t provide much in the way of wrap-up, but instead dives right into a montage a few minutes long that includes footage from Chapter 2. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 were shot back-to-back, and with Chapter 2 set to release just a few weeks after Chapter 1 debuts, the movie closes with a massive tease of what’s to come. Several new characters are introduced in the footage, so it seems the setup isn’t quite done yet.

Interestingly, Chapter 3 has already started filming despite the box office haul from the first two chapters being completely unsettled. The box office prospects for Chapter 1 seem dismal, and if an audience isn’t built on the first part, Chapter 2 seems just as likely to fail. With millions of Costner’s own money already sunk into the production of the first two chapters, it remains to be seen if the final two chapters of the story can even be completed, which likely explains Costner’s insistence on teasing Chapter 2 at the end of Chapter 1.

What is Horizon?

A safe and prosperous destination in the west

The meaning of Horizon was more fully explored in Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 after being hinted at in the trailers. A flier continues to appear throughout the movie, in the hands of various (currently) disconnected characters, implying that knowledge of the town described in it is common. The flier tempts settlers with promises of a town in which they can be prosperous, and more importantly, they can live safely. If there is one point that Chapter 1 manages to make, it’s that American settlers on the frontier are anything but safe.

The flier being referenced or held by characters across multiple stories indicates that Horizon may be the major point at which the stories intersect. Whether they’ll find what they’re looking for is another question entirely, as the end of the movie reveals that the fliers are being printed back in the east by a man named Pickering (Giovanni Ribisi). It could be that the real Horizon is in fact the location being surveyed at the very beginning of Chapter 1, and therefore, there is no Horizon for the characters to find.

What Happened to Frances and Elizabeth Kittredge

They have already dealt with terror and loss

While it’s difficult to designate any character as the “main” character in a saga and a cast this expansive, Sienna Miller’s Frances Kittredge and her daughter Elizabeth (Georgia MacPhail) come awful close given their prevalence in the story that gets some of, if not the most screen time. After losing her husband, son, and most of their neighbors to a raid on their settlement, the two surviving Kittredges find their way to Camp Gallant and fall under the protection of Lt. Trent Gephardt (Sam Worthington) and Colonel Houghton (Danny Huston).

Frances sparks a romance with the chivalrous Lt. Gephardt while Elizabeth becomes somewhat of a camp mascot, acting as a bright spot for the U.S. Army soldiers at the camp. After the tragedy and loss that the two experienced, their life at the camp becomes one of the more positive stories in Chapter 1. However, when many of the young soldiers are called back east to fight in the ongoing Civil War, the safety of the camp becomes somewhat less certain. The movie ends with them still safe in the camp, but it seems as though that may be short-lived.

Why The Sykes Family Wants Ellen

Vengeance fuels the family

Jena Malone’s Ellen Harvey (a.k.a. Lucy) bursts into the narrative by shooting an unnamed man in his bed before riding away with her infant son, leaving him badly wounded but alive. Her story jumps forward at least a couple of years, as she now lives with a salesman (Michael Angarano) at what appears to be a trading outpost in the territories, with the insolent prostitute Marigold (Abbey Lee) under her roof. She and her partner are lured to what they think is a sale, only to be ambushed by the sons of the man she shot, Caleb and Junior Sykes.

The two men seek vengeance for the attempted murder of their father James Sykes, and although her specific motivation isn’t revealed, it’s clear that he had wronged her well before she shot him. Caleb is sent to fetch her son for further vengeance, where he unfortunately (for him) runs into Costner’s Hayes Ellison, who kills him in a gunfight. That turns the Sykes’ attention towards finding Ellison, and the movie ends with Ellen in their custody and Junior and his companions on the trail of Ellison.

Why Marigold Left Hayes

She abandons Hayes and Sam

Ellison ran into Caleb Sykes on his way to visit Marigold, who was at Ellen’s house. As a result of the gunfight, he takes Marigold and Ellen’s son Sam away from the outpost and into the wilderness to escape the vengeance of the Sykes family. Over time he develops into a pseudo-father and husband, even though Marigold still sleeps with other men. At one outpost that they hide from the Sykes family in, one man offers/threatens to take her away with him when he leaves, but only gives her until the next day to decide what to do.

Marigold takes him up on his offer, leaving Sam in the care of a Chinese family that had been friendly to him earlier, and leaves Hayes with nothing more than a note. Marigold seems to be simply chasing the idea of greater prospects for herself, and has no problem abandoning Sam and Hayes to do it. It remains to be seen if she reappears in Hayes’ story or the overarching narrative at all, but if her screen time in Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 is any indication, it seems likely that she will.

Why Pionsenay Left His Tribe

The young warrior sought a different path

Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 does attempt to provide the perspective of the Indigenous people who live and hunt on the very land that the American settlers are attempting to claim for themselves. Owen Crow Shoe’s young warrior Pionsenay–who executed the raid at the beginning of the movie–provides a more militant perspective when he argues that his tribe of Apache (and Indigenous people everywhere) should defend their lands, as they will be forced to war with other tribes whose territory they will be forced to hunt if they allow themselves to be pushed out.

He is at odds with Gregory Cruz’s Tuayeseh, an elder of Pionsenay’s Apache tribe who argues that there is room for both, especially as their tribe is capable of surviving and thriving in the higher, more mountainous areas. This leads to Pionsenay taking like-thinking warriors with him and leaving the larger tribe to go continue to make war on the settlers. Pionsenay will almost certainly be responsible for run-ins with other characters from the saga, and the trailers indicate that Matthew Van Weyden’s wagon train might be next.

Where Van Weyden Is Leading The Wagon Train

He deals with unprepared settlers, the Indigenous, and the West itself

Luke Wilson’s Matthew Van Weyden was elected to lead a wagon train on the famous Sante Fe Trail, and Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 provides a glimpse of some of the more trivial problems that come with the job. It’s worth noting that Will Patton and Isabelle Fuhrman play Owen and Diamond Kittredge, and are related to Frances and Elizabeth (Owen is Frances’ father-in-law). They come into conflict with Ella Hunt and Tom Payne’s British settlers who are woefully out of their depth and ignorant of wagon etiquette.

Van Weyden is attempting to navigate the wagon train to a safe area where they can settle in the American Southwest. Unfortunately, Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 shows that the wagon train already has Indigenous scouts watching them, and the trailers and teaser footage reveal that not all the settlers that are part of the train will survive the journey. Van Weyden is knowledgeable and able to remain calm in the face of adversity, but he hasn’t faced the most dangerous elements of the journey yet.

Why The Raid Survivors Are Hunting Indigenous People

Vengeance and profit drive their journey

Several of the survivors of the raid from the beginning of Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 join up with some soldiers of fortune to form a posse in search of vengeance for the death of their family and friends. They are rebuffed by Lt. Gephardt upon their departure from Fort Gallant, as he knows that the soldiers of fortune will seek scalps of any Indigenous people (including Indigenous Mexican people) for profit, and are not actually driven by vengeance against one specific tribe, except for Etienne Kellici’s young man, Russell Ganz.

Their quest leads them to intimidate an Indigenous trader at a general store before attacking and scalping a group of innocent Indigenous women and children as soon as they are certain that the warriors are far enough away. Russell is hesitant to participate in any of it, despite the urging of his comrades. Their vicious attack will certainly have repercussions moving forward, perhaps for the remaining settlers and soldiers at Camp Gallant, which is in the region.

The Real Meaning of Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1

Hope for a better life inevitably breeds conflict

All the American settlers whose journeys are chronicled in Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 are driven at first by hope for a better life. However, the hope that fuels their march westward breeds conflict with the Indigenous people whose land they are attempting to claim, and with each other. The price of the freedom that people on both sides of the struggle for the American West in the period before, during, and after the Civil War is steep, and results in death and despair for all.

Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 doesn’t provide much in the way of resolution for any of its stories, but it does make one thing clear: creating the America of today was no easy feat. It required the blood, sweat, and tears of thousands of intrepid settlers who were willing to risk everything for the prospect of something better. It’s a return to the traditional Western themes of yesteryear, and it will be explored in much more depth across the next nine hours of Horizon: An American Saga, if it does in fact wind up produced.