Paramount+ has officially greenlit a third season of *Landman*, the show where Billy Bob Thornton growls at oil rigs and somehow everyone in America nods along like this is a nature documentary.
Congratulations to the twelve million people who watched season two and immediately forgot everything about it except the part where somebody yelled about a pumpjack.
For the uninitiated, *Landman* is what happens when you take *Yellowstone*, remove the horses, and replace them with mineral rights paperwork.
It's a show about the oil business in West Texas, which means 40% of the runtime is people saying "acreage" with varying levels of menace.
The other 60% is Thornton's character, Tommy Norris, delivering monologues about how the world runs on crude while sipping whiskey in a truck that costs more than your 401(k).
The show pulls numbers that make streaming executives weep with joy, mostly because it's the only program on television that both your uncle and your climate-anxious cousin can hate-watch together at Thanksgiving.
Paramount reportedly sees it as a tentpole, which is a fancy word for "we'll keep making this until the oil runs out or the actors unionize, whichever comes first." What can we expect from season three?
If the pattern holds, roughly seventeen subplots involving land disputes, at least one character getting threatened with a lawsuit, and a shocking amount of screen time devoted to explaining what a "mineral estate" is.
There will be a woman in a blazer who is definitely not to be trusted.
There will be a scene in a diner where two men stare at each other for four minutes.
Somebody's daughter will make a terrible decision.
And Tommy Norris will fix it by being grumpy and correct, which is apparently the entire appeal of prestige cable drama in 2025.
The real question is whether *Landman* has anything left to say.
Season three is presumably about... more expansion?
Look, the show's thesis is essentially "oil is complicated and the people who drill it are complicated too," which is the dramatic equivalent of a LinkedIn post from a petroleum engineer.
But it's well-acted, the cinematography makes West Texas look like a Cormac McCarthy novel, and Billy Bob Thornton could read a phone book and make it sound like a threat.
Set your calendars, dust off your "I'm just here for the land deals" t-shirt, and prepare for another round of characters explaining why the Permian Basin is basically Game of Thrones with more fracking.
It won't win any awards for subtlety, but it will absolutely win the award for "Show Most Likely to Be Watched on an Airplane by a Guy in a Corporate Polo." **Our take:** *Landman* season three is the television equivalent of a gas station hot dog — you know exactly what you're getting, it's probably not good for you, but you're going to consume it anyway.
The show has perfected the art of being aggressively watchable while saying almost nothing, which is honestly a skill.
Final Thoughts
Here's hoping season three finally explains what happened to the son from season one, because we're still waiting.