Billy the Kid stands as one of the most enduring figures from the Wild West, despite his untimely demise at the tender age of 21. His legend, however, has flourished in various media forms, from the romanticized dime novels to the recently debuted eight-part origin story on Epix, which premiered on May 24, 2022. Despite its ill-fated start, the series matures alongside Billy into a decent, albeit overly familiar, exploration of the West.
The premiere, however, is a tale of two halves. It's bookended by its most intriguing scene, in which a more mature Billy confronts a bounty hunter who seeks to cash in on his bounty. The rest of "The Immigrants," on the other hand, feels like a fast-paced version of 1883. As Billy (played by Jonah Collier as a child) and his family—his Irish mother Kathleen (Eileen O'Higgins), his father, and his brother Joe (Leif Nystrom)—migrate westward in the rickety wagons of a one-eyed horseman, they face a series of hardships: swollen rivers that disrupt their convoy and send their worldly possessions bobbing away, errant shots from horse thieves that pick off their companions, and McCarty Senior's deepening depression. Before long, young Billy has lost everything—and almost everyone—he loves.
It's midway through the second episode when Billy's journey transforms into a more compelling narrative as he becomes Tom Blyth, a figure shaped by his experiences, which include every man they meet in the intervening five years trying to rape his mother. The promised utopia of the unsettled West turns out to be a con, and while Kathleen works herself to death while Joe hacks his lungs up with tuberculosis, Billy becomes involved with gambling dens, cattle rustling, and a conspiracy explained to him by a journalist named Ash Upson (Ryan Kennedy) about several secret cabals known as "rings" puppeteering the development of the frontier.
Much of this version of Billy the Kid plucks from real history, albeit with some necessary tweaks. The Santa Fe Ring was a real group of attorneys and land speculators who accrued great influence and fortune through political corruption and fraudulent land deals. And much of Billy's story has been filtered through this lens, with many incidents that Billy is known for—such as the attempted burglary of a Chinese laundry and a prison escape—being framed as punishment for his relationship with Upson. The goal is to paint Billy as a sympathetic figure driven to wrongdoing by his circumstances, and while one could quibble with the historical accuracy of this approach, it creates a more interesting and sympathetic protagonist. The series' exploration of secret societies and its story of Billy's growth into an outlaw remain to be seen, but it's not a bad idea overall.
However, Billy the Kid's array of ideas is not exactly overflowing with novelty. The majority of them are recycled concepts borrowed from elsewhere, and even after the five-year time jump, it feels like he's treading through familiar, well-trodden territory. Blyth excels as the stoic youngster who has been hardened by great loss and hardship, but he's slowly blending into the classic cowboy mold, lacking a truly unique trait that sets him apart. The upcoming episodes will truly need to delve into his reluctance as an outlaw and how it contrasts with his skills as a gunman, in order to craft a character that is compelling and idiosyncratic enough to live up to his lofty legend. You can stream Billy the Kid Season 1 exclusively on Epix.
