In the case of thrillers, writers so often make it happen that characters who are accorded the least amount of presence as an active role in a narrative end up making the biggest impact in the end, and in the overarching storyline of Outer Range, the character of Rebecca Abbot has played such a role in the course of the first two seasons. Despite having a very brief appearance and limited interactions in the second season, Rebecca’s role in the lives of the Abbot family members and their future, as well as in the overarching storyline, is way more important than initially assumed.
Spoilers Ahead
What Was the Effect of Rebecca’s Disappearance?
The first time viewers meet the Abbots in season one, the members of the family are seen coping with the loss of Rebecca, the daughter-in-law of the elderly couple/head of the family, Royal and Cecilia. Since her sudden disappearance nine months ago, things have never been the same for any of them. Rebecca’s husband, Perry, is as bewildered as he is depressed. Their daughter, Amy, raised a number of questions regarding her mother’s disappearance, which remained unanswered. Rhett tries his best to cheer up his elder brother, Perry, and to help him move on, but to no avail. Royal, already burdened with financial troubles and needing to hide his personal secrets, struggles with a loss of faith after Rebecca’s disappearance, and Cecilia, unable to hold her family together, mentally falls apart.
In fact, it was Perry’s grief over Rebecca’s disappearance that Trevor Tillerson used to deal a low blow during their altercation, which sent Perry over the edge, and in the heat of the moment, he ended up killing Trevor. As a direct result of this particular incident, the Abbot family is further shattered, and a guilt-ridden Perry jumps into the sinkhole to escape this sordid reality. As it is revealed in the second season, as a domino effect of this decision, Perry unwittingly creates an alternate timeline, and Rebecca’s disappearance is the root cause of a monumental mess like this. In the final moments of the first season, we finally get to see Rebecca for the first time, and as she takes Amy along with her, away from the Abbots, She states to Amy that the reason for her disappearance is that she needed to hide, but we didn’t get to know the specifics until the recent release of the second season.
Why did Rebecca need to hide?
Even before the family came to terms with Rebecca’s loss, Amy went missing, which turns out to be a severely agonizing ordeal for Abbot Matriarch Cecilia. Eventually, during the course of the second season, as she seeks help from the church congregation to search for Amy, she is shocked to learn that Amy was last seen accompanying Rebecca. Cecilia decides to share this news with Royal and admits to a secret that she had been hiding for a long time as well, which she now believes led to Rebecca fleeing from the Abbot family.
Cecilia reveals that Rebecca was cheating on Perry with a certain Lewis Mays, and she got spooked after Cecilia learned about her affair and brashly confronted Rebecca about it. Cecilia feels that, fearing repercussions, Rebecca fled from the family in fear, and as later Autumn rightly remarks, she had taken Amy with her not out of a sense of parental concern but simply to spite her in-laws. This is further proven as Rebecca turns Amy against the Abbots by lying to her. Contrary to what viewers might have assumed about her from the conversations of Abbot family members, Rebecca turns out to be a really petty person. Her act of selfishness not only broke the Abbots but, as we learn further, changed the course of the future in a massive way.
Another important aspect to remember is that the series led viewers to believe it was Rebecca’s upbringing that led to the creation of the dark future where Amy turned out to be Autumn. This theory gained weight due to the fact that the women’s wellness center where Rebecca and Amy lived had major cult-like vibes. However, the second season ended this speculation by making Autumn abduct Amy from Rebecca.
What Happened To Rebecca?
Rebecca’s act of taking Amy from her grandparents had inadvertently caused Autumn to get a hold of Amy, as otherwise it would have been impossible for her and Billy to take Amy from the Abbots. After learning about the location of Rebecca’s wellness center, Autumn manages to manipulate her way into the institution and wastes no time threatening Rebecca into handing Amy over to her. In order to set things in motion to bring about the twisted future she belongs to, Autumn needs her past self, Amy, whom she believes to be an integral part of the entire convoluted scenario. As Rebecca decides to skip the conversation and leave, Autumn shares Amy’s memories of the separation involving both her parents, which stops Rebecca right in her tracks as she has no choice but to acknowledge that both Amy and Autumn are the same person.
Autumn further threatens to reveal Rebecca’s selfish motives to Amy, which prompts Rebecca to send Amy with Autumn. However, before leaving, Autumn smears some of the strange sinkhole mineral on Rebecca’s mouth, which triggers an ominous vision in Rebecca’s mind—where she is present as one of the brainwashed cult followers of Autumn, the Mother Time.
