WARNING: Spoilers for Outer Range episodes 5 and 6.
Imogen Poots's Outer Range character, Autumn Rivers, has always been a mysterious presence, ever since she showed up in the first episode asking to camp out on the Abbott family's land. She is highly interested in the giant hole that has appeared on the west pasture and has embroiled herself in all sorts of business with each of the family members. Though Autumn's true motives are still unknown, she might actually be antagonizing Royal Abbott (Josh Brolin) because she really needs his help.
Autumn's meddling began in Outer Range episode 1, "The Void," when she pushed Royal into the west pasture hole after he dumped Trevor Tillerson's body into the same hole thinking it would just disappear. Clearly, Autumn believed the same because she was surprised that Royal came back. In episode 6, "The Family," Royal continued his efforts in trying to get Autumn to leave him, his family, and the hole alone, but this only made Autumn that much more determined. She revealed that the hole is filled with the physical form of time visible to the naked eye — time formed into a tangible dimension, much like length, width, or height.
While the inky, black mineral and Outer Range's time travel haven't been thoroughly explored just yet, Autumn seems to know much more than she lets on. She has an obsession with finding out more about the void, almost winning Royal's entire west pasture in a game of poker, and what Royal experienced falling through it and then coming back. Her desperation and experimentation with the void show how badly she needs Royal's help and perhaps even discreetly reveals the rules to time-traveling using the void.
Royal's Time Travel Secretly Revealed How The Void Works
Royal Abbott's trip to the future potentially revealed a lot about time travel in Outer Range, namely that getting pushed or thrown into the hole takes the person to the future — while jumping in takes them back to the past. Royal was pushed into the void by Autumn, whereupon he traveled many years into the future, and he returned to his time by intentionally jumping back into the hole. While the time-travel rules of the void haven't actually been defined yet, there seems to be a certain consistency among the things that have traveled.
The only other things that have traveled through the void and therefore through time, are Trevor Tillerson's dead body and the buffalo that wanders the streets and west pasture of the Abbott land. Royal personally threw Trevor's body into the void and it reappeared a few days later on the mountain in the same condition as when Royal tried to dispose of it, as confirmed by Sheriff Joy's coroner. The buffalo has fletched arrows sticking out of its side, so it was presumably being chased by hunters before falling into the void and thereby traveling to the Abbott Ranch. Similarly, the rumored mastodons Sheriff Joy hears about could have wandered into the hole and traveled to the future.
Autumn Is From The Future And Needs To Go Back
Royal knows almost nothing about Autumn and her secret benefactor, but much of her behavior indicates that Autumn is actually from the future and needs Royal to help her with time travel through the void in order to get back to her own time. If Autumn actually did jump into the void, she would have traveled backward in time from the future to arrive at the Abbott Ranch and Royal's time. This explains why she was surprised to hear about Royal's presence the next day because she expected him to travel to the past, as she did. It is clear that Autumn pushed Royal because she was experimenting with the void, but his return proved to her that she will be able to get back to her own time, and she knows he actually did travel to the future because Trevor's body was found by Amy Abbott (Olive Abercrombie) a few days after it was thrown into the hole.
The reason Autumn needs to return to her time was also revealed in the latest Outer Range episode. Autumn told Royal she is going to do "wondrous things" and "help people" using the void and her knowledge of its mineral. Royal's trip to the future showed Autumn leading a group of people clothed in yellow while armed men guarded or attempted to harvest the mineral. Perhaps Autumn wants to use her newfound understanding of the void to change her own future.
Autumn's Name Reveals Why She Needs Royal's Help
Autumn's name is another big clue as to why she needs Royal's help to time travel. Autumn, the season, is also known as fall, and this indicates that Autumn Rivers has to fall into the void in the west pasture instead of jumping. She wants Royal's help to do that, but Royal has his own theories about Autumn and he cheated her out of her necklace in a game of poker to do some research of his own.
After Royal crushed Autumn's necklace to free the time minerals trapped inside, he went to confront her at the site of the void in the west pasture. Her first words of the episode to him were "You gonna push me in?" Now that she knows she has to fall into the void, rather than jump, in order to travel to the future, she has been goading and aggravating him in order to get him to push her into the hole as she did to him in the first episode. Royal, however, didn't take to her tactics and drove her out of his west pasture and burned her campsite to the ground.
As Outer Range closes in on its season finale, more details about the secrets of the hole and its time-traveling rules are to be expected. Josh Brolin's gruff rancher refuses to be a pawn in Autumn's game and while he had a king in his sleeve for the poker game, Autumn looked to have an ace now with her mysterious benefactor. While the status of a second season of Outer Range is currently unknown, there's certainly more supernatural for the Abbotts to uncover.
Prime Video releases new episodes of Outer Range every Friday.