Ransom Canyon Boss Explains Emotional Cliffhangers and Teases Who Has the Most Work to Do in Season 3

Warning: The following contains spoilers for Season 2 of Ransom Canyon. Read at your own risk!

The cowboys are up to even more drama in Season 2 of Ransom Canyon. Staten (Josh Duhamel) seems to have finally taken full control of the Double K and landed the girl of his dreams. He and Quinn (Minka Kelly) spent most of Season 2 going back and forth about whether they were ready to be together, and they finally decided they were at the end of the season, so Staten offered her a key to the ranch. That’s great timing because she just sold her lavender farm and needs a place to live while she works to turn Ransom Canyon into the ultimate country music destination of the Southwest. 

While Quinn and Staten have found their way to even ground, the same can’t be said for the other couples. Yancy (Josh Schumaker) will need to pull up his bootstraps and make better choices in Season 3 — which has not yet officially been ordered by Netflix — if he wants to earn back Ellie’s (Marianly Tejada) trust. His conwoman ex-wife showing up at their house led Ellie into premature labor. She and the baby made it through the traumatic birth, but it was a wake-up call for the bartender. Now that she’s a mom, she’s thinking about what romantic future is best for her daughter, and Yancy’s troublesome past isn’t making him a candidate to be father of the year. 

Across town, Lauren (Lizzy Greene) is getting into a mess of her own. Watching her mother go to prison after covering up the hit-and-run death of her friend hit Lauren hard, and she’s no longer the bubbly cheerleader we first met at the start of the series. Lucas’ (Garrett Wareing) rising star and multiplying opportunities to leave Ransom Canyon did not help the simmering tension between them. So it’s not really a shock when Lauren ends up in Kit’s (Casey W. Johnson) arms instead. She’s now dating her ex-boyfriend’s brother, who was having an affair with her mom during the aforementioned hit-and-run. That’s messy — and we love to see it. 

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TV Guide caught up with executive producer April Blair to talk about these big revelations and what fans can expect from Ransom Canyon going forward. 

Quinn and Staten decide to give it a go, officially. What have they learned this season that makes this time different from their past attempts at a relationship?
April Blair: I think that Quinn has always looked at all of the obstacles as a sign that something’s wrong, or that it wasn’t meant to be. Fate has sort of dealt them a bad hand over and over. In this season, I think they both learn and come to the idea that fate knew exactly what it was doing. Everything is just as it was meant to be. They weren’t meant to end up together back in high school. They were meant to find each other right now. This is the perfect time. Everything they’ve learned about themselves and the experiences they’ve had have led them to a place where they’re perfect together, versus the universe keeping them apart. Fate had a plan. 

We see Staten hand Quinn a key to the Double K, but they don’t make it into the trustee meeting. Why didn’t you want to show us what happens at the vote? 
Blair: We shot it, but it felt less satisfying. It felt like ending on a plot thing. That earlier scene in Episode 8 where Sam and Staten sit and Sam says, “It should have been you.” — I felt like everyone knew what was going to happen. Sam was going to withdraw himself because he’s been driving this whole thing. Once he says, “It should have been you, and I’m going to tell them that tonight,” it wasn’t much of a cliffhanger. I really wanted to end on the emotion of it. We’ve been watching Staten fight for this ranch for two seasons and it is sort of inevitable. I wanted to end on the emotional cliffhanger of now what for Staten and Quinn? The easy part is falling in love and deciding to be together, but that’s when the real work starts to happen. What’s in store for them now just felt more satisfying. We’re in the writers’ room for Season 3, though, so definitely all those hanging bits about the ranch and what happened will get answered. 

Did that scene between Sam and Staten mean they’ve officially buried the hatchet or is there more work to do there?
Blair: I feel like Season 2 is a really big exploration of Staten contending with this father-son dynamic. By the end, when they sit down, and Sam is like, “I love you, son,” and Staten says, “I love you, too,” it means they’ve come full circle. It’s not that they won’t have story moving forward, but I think their big relationship conflict has been put to bed. 

We get one episode to hang out with Steve Howey, who is playing this mysterious other Kirkland brother who has a big say in what happens to the ranch. Have we really seen the last of him?
Blair: No. He’s the poet woodsman who is going to appear when Staten needs him. He’s almost like this mythical creature in the woods that Staten goes and visits. It’s definitely not the last we’ll see of him, but Levi will come when he’s needed, and he’s a touchstone for Staten. 

And it’s safe to assume that Staten giving Quinn the key means she’s moving to the Double K? She’s giving up the lavender farm?
Blair: Yeah. She sold the farm to free her mom. It gives her mom the opportunity to make different decisions and to live her own life. She can now achieve her dream and get the little beach house in Encinitas and be her own person, finally. Quinn is setting her free and opening a new door for herself in the process by buying the Lone Star and deciding to build something bigger. 

Quinn and Staten are going into Season 3 in a pretty good place, but Yancy and Ellie are the complete opposite. Can you elaborate on what about Ellie’s last encounter with Sydney made her so anxious about committing to Yancy? 
Blair: It’s what Yancy brings with him. In Season 1, he brought Freddie and the danger. Then Sydney comes in and upends their lives in a lot of ways. I don’t think Ellie is worried about herself or her own safety, but it’s about the baby. She’s been pulled toward bad boys her entire life. We’ve established that Yancy is the main bad boy, and once this baby is born, Ellie realizes that she’s been making those choices about who to be with from her heart. Now that there’s another person that she’s responsible for, she’s going to have to start using her head. The end of the season really represents that. Kai is standing on the porch. He’s the one she called to protect her. The conflict between Yancy and Kai on the porch is a harbinger of what’s to come for her. That choice represents her being torn between safety and the excitement that makes you weak in the knees. The choices you would make before you have a child would be different. 

There’s been a lot of implying about Ellie and Kai’s past together. How would you define that relationship?
Blair: Justin, who plays Kai, came up with this backstory in early Season 1 that Kat was Ellie’s original bad boyfriend. He tells Sydney in Season 2 that he was in juvie and that he’s a reformed bad boy. He did reform and turn his life around. He went to the police academy, and then Ellie lost interest. She likes her men to have a little bad boy streak. That’s what she’s drawn to, so there’s a lot of potential in Season 3 to put her at a crossroads with that. 

Yancy is also at a crossroads. He can really try and prove that he’s the guy Ellie and the baby need, or he can work with Freddie on uncovering this oil. What do you think will be driving him most?
Blair: It’s really going to be about moving forward from Season 2 and winning his family back, but he’s not going to be the guy who just grows corn and sells it. He’s lost his family, but there’s the potential for oil under his land. In trying to win his family back, I don’t think he always goes about it in exactly the right way. What he thinks will win them back isn’t necessarily the thing that will win them back. His drive is a treasure hunt, and he’s thinking if he can get rich then he’ll be worthy. All Ellie wants from him is love and stability, but he’s off on another great adventure trying to win her back. It’s sort of misguided and it gives them challenges moving forward. 

They aren’t the only couple with challenges. Can we talk about Kit and Lauren getting together this season? When did you first notice the chemistry between them, and was it the storm episode in Season 1?
Blair: Yes. It was not written to be like that. In our mind, Kit had always been a little antagonistic to Lauren. They always had this tension, and we wanted them to kind of bury the hatchet during the storm. When I got the first cut, we hadn’t aired the first season yet, and I was like, “Oh, there’s real chemistry here.” You could just feel it watching that episode and seeing how things turned with them. Then it started bubbling up. There were all these sparks and chemistry there. When we started the Season 2 writers’ room, I said I wanted to do it. There’s something really interesting there, and it gives a really messy complication for Lauren and Lucas. The more complicated, the better. Then Season 1 aired and everyone sort of clocked it, so I was glad I wasn’t the only one. 

What would you say is the major difference between Lauren’s relationship with Kit and the relationship she had with Lucas?
Blair: Lauren and Lucas are kind of a mirror image of Quinn and Staten. They had to have other loves and other lives before they could be ready to be together. It depends on how many seasons of stories we get to tell, but I think that Lauren and Lucas are probably meant to be together in the future. But they need to have other loves first. They need to have different experiences. Kit represents something in her that is a little darker and a little more emotional. Lucas fell in love with the cheerleader it-girl, and then she became none of those things. His star seems to be rising, and she’s feeling a very different way. She is just relating to Kit more. 

She’s a little tortured this season with the ramifications of the end of last season. She makes one joke about Kit and her mom, but I think they are almost trauma-bonded. He went through it and was in jail. Her mom was thrown in jail. I think they understand it on a different level. They have that connection, and it’s not necessarily about having slept with her mom. It’s about having gone through a darker period. They get each other a little more right now. 

Ransom Canyon Seasons 1 and 2 are now streaming on Netflix.