From the time her family leaves Fort Worth, Texas on their journey to Oregon, Elsa expects to live a life of adventure. This immediately gets her in trouble with her aunt, who doesn’t believe Elsa’s actions are particularly ladylike, but the younger Dutton doesn’t much care. To her, this migration is an outward symbol of the inward freedom she’s after, but she soon finds herself in a world of trouble. In the very first episode, Elsa is nearly raped before being saved by her father, and it’s then that she realizes how dangerous this journey will be.
Along the way, Elsa falls for a young cowboy named Ennis (Eric Nelsen), all while embracing the cowboy lifestyle as her own. After dancing around it for a while, the pair have sex one night after Ennis makes his intentions to eventually marry her, though he’s shot saving Elsa’s life from bandits before he can get the chance. Hardened by what’s happened, Elsa shoots Ennis’ killer and lies beside her lover’s corpse. It’s pretty terrible. But this isn’t the end of Elsa’s love life; in fact, she soon falls in love again, this time with a Comanche warrior named Sam (Martin Sensmeier).
Despite dying in Montana just before winter, ends with Elsa returning to the plains to be reunited with her husband Sam. It’s a strange ending given that most of the cast perish at the end of the show (and if not there, then in the flashbacks seen in ‘s fourth season), but feels on brand for Elsa’s journey. Just as she hoped to live beyond the confines that society put her in, so did she eventually escape them entirely in death. Her rebellious spirit likewise refuses to remain in the ground, and it’s her ghost that reunites with Sam in the afterlife.
It may have been a surprise to many who went on to watch , but Elsa returns for the second prequel, itself a sort of sequel that follows her aunt, uncle, brothers, and nephew as they work to keep the Dutton legacy alive. Of course, she’s never seen on screen — she’s dead after all, and she’ll stay that way. But Isabel May’s voice returns to narrate the events of this new Paramount+ series from the great beyond.
