A dangerous tornado whirls into town in Ransom Canyon episode 7, “By the Grace of God” — and there’s plenty of drama and surprises blowing in alongside the stormy weather.
With the residents of Ransom forced to shelter in place during the emergency, we see several unexpected tornado twosomes forming… including some much-anticipated movement in the will-they-won’t-they connection between Staten (Josh Duhamel) and Quinn (Minka Kelly). We also get some shocking new details about Randall’s car accident — and who else might’ve been out there that night.
Here’s everything that went down in Ransom Canyon episode 7.
Reid’s regrets
We kick off the episode with Reid (Andrew Liner) swimming at home, intercut with flashbacks of that Ford pick-up being rescued from the bottom of a lake. As the sheriff told Staten, the truck matches the fender piece found at the crash site earlier in the season. The VIN was scrubbed in what looks like a pro job before the vehicle got dumped, but it’s under the Bandera jurisdiction now.
When Reid comes inside, Davis (Eoin Macken) asks him why the sheriff requested an off-the-record conversation with the two of them that afternoon? Reid doesn’t have an answer for him and, frankly, Davis probably doesn’t want to really know.
The Collins men head to meet with Sheriff Dan (Philip Winchester). Davis tries to paint the conversation as if they’re merely there to admonish Reid for underage drinking, but the sheriff questions where Reid was the night his cousin died. Davis is angry he's interrogating them about such a painful time for their family, but Reid starts talking.
That night, he and Tim (Niko Guardado) were shooting bottles out in the countryside and waiting on Randall to join them. When it was clear Randall wasn’t coming, he says the boys went home and played video games until they got the call about the crash.
Sheriff Dan asks why Reid initially told him he was with Lauren that night, but Davis stops things before his son can respond. He wants Paula Jo, who's a lawyer, involved. The sheriff agrees that’s a good idea since he has security footage of Reid leaving a truck the exact make and model as the one they just pulled out of the lake.
They’re interrupted by emergency alerts, but we get more of Reid’s haunting flashbacks as the episode goes. We see him getting a call from an unknown caller and telling Tim, “Change of plans” before they race off in the truck. Reid later takes the blue Ford truck from a garage and tells Tim they have to dump it. It’s clear these memories are paining the teen, as Lucas (Garrett Wareing) clocks and tells Reid that the reason he's so upset is because ultimately he's a good person.
Yancy's redemption
At the dance hall, Ellie (Marianly Tejada) is being cold to Yancy (Jack Schumacher) — he asks her why she stood him up for dinner the night before and she unloads all of the intel she got from Freddie. She knows that Yancy stole from a farm he previously worked at in Tennessee, which landed him in jail for three years; she also knows that Cap (James Brolin) is his grandfather and he's trying to pull a job on grandpa.
Furious and heartbroken, Ellie says she's done with him, and she'll tell Cap everything she found out unless Yancy walks out the door once the storm passes and never returns. Panicked, Yancy tells Davis that Ellie knows the truth about him — however, she still doesn't know about Davis's involvement, much to his relief. Davis tells him to do exactly as Ellie said, to disappear once the weather calms.
However, that plan changes when the men run into Cap, who's been trying to get a hold of his wife Ruth at the assisted care facility. He's dead-set on driving out himself to rescue her, a stubbornness that prompts Davis to question why the old guy doesn't just sell his land and whisk Ruth off to Florida for retirement, where it's warm and not tornado-y. Cap proclaims that Davis is not a real rancher — Fuller will work on his ranch until the day he dies. When he's gone, the courts can decide what becomes of the land. Yes, to the fellas' shock, Cap doesn't have a will, which means his ranch will automatically go to his next of kin, i.e. Yancy.
Later, when Ellie is looking for Cap, they realize he and his truck are missing — he went to go get Ruth. Yancy is ready to set out into the storm after him, though Davis tries to argue there's no point getting himself killed out there after the old man. But as Cap is driving down the road near the facility, he sees a truck trying to get his attention — it's Yancy there to rescue him.
The next morning, when the storm is over, Ellie rushes down to High Plains Regional, where residents from the assisted living facility were transferred during the tornado. She finds both Cap and Ruth safe and well, thanks to Yancy, who she pulls into a big hug.
Quinn's realization
Before the storm touches down, Quinn desperately searches for her dog, Biscuit, when Staten pulls up with her — he found her out near the highway. He helps Quinn secure the rest of her animals and then the two are forced to take shelter at the house as the tornado gets closer.
She gets a call from Davis, who isn't all that jazzed to hear she and Staten are alone together. The latter also gets in some jibes at Davis's sake, prompting Quinn to get real about what's been going on between them. She calls Staten out for declaring his feelings to her at the rodeo and then sleeping with Paula Jo the very same night. He says his heart was broken, but she proclaims he has broken hers a hundred times over the years. He knows she's only pretending things are right with Davis; he doesn't make her laugh, he declares.
Later, the power goes out, but Quinn lights candles and Staten scrounges up some batteries for the radio. "Tonight, Tonight" by The Smashing Pumpkins starts playing, which brings them both back to high school. Via flashback, we see a young Staten go over to Quinn and his future bride Amalah (played by Reese Witherspoon's daughter Ava Phillippe) — he's there to ask Quinn to dance but Amalah thinks he's asking her, so she pulls him out onto the dancefloor.
Back in present-day, a loud thunderclap prompts Quinn to seek comfort in Staten's arms. Dancing slowly, he reveals he meant to ask her to dance all those years ago. After a season's worth of tension, the two characters finally kiss and get intimate.
Lauren's rescue
Prior to the tornado, Lauren (Lizzy Greene) has been at the dance hall getting new waitressing gig there. However, when Lucas rushes from his trailer home to find her at the height of the storm, he realizes they're two ships passing and she's now stuck at his house with his older brother Kit (Casey W. Johnson).
Though Lauren and Kit have a lot of animosity between them — he still doesn't approve of her relationship with his brother — she manages to convince him they should head to the high school to take shelter. But when he rushes to go help a pregnant neighbor into her car, a tree crashes through the window of Lauren's vehicle and injures her leg. Left without a mode of transportation, Kit pulls her out of the car, and they instead hunker down together back in the trailer.
Kit cares for Lauren's wounds, a skill he later reveals is a product of the domestic abuse he suffered at the hands of his father. He didn't tell anybody because he didn't want to risk him and Lucas getting put into the system. He's grateful that his old man never laid a hand on his younger brother thanks to Kit's interventions. The surprising duo shares a moment, bonding over their trauma and abandonment from their respective parents.
The next morning, they — and thankfully all of the characters — have managed to weather the storm and emerge safely. Lucas rushes over to help Lauren with her injuries and give an update to her father.
But that's not the last we see of Kit. As the episode ends, we see Reid finally realize he needs to come clean with Sheriff Dan about what happened on the night of Randall's death. We flash back to the accident and see that the mysterious figure at the wreck wasn't Reid after all, but Kit. He phones Reid and proclaims: "Time to make good on that favor." Surprise!
All 10 episodes of Ransom Canyon season 1 are now available to stream on Netflix.
