{"id":171005,"date":"2026-03-21T23:00:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T23:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/171005\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T23:00:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T23:00:13","slug":"the-madison-season-1-ending-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/171005\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Madison\u2019 Season 1: Ending Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

Between funerals and flashbacks, The Madison<\/a> moved from Montana to New York City and back again, and introduced Michelle Pfeiffer as the matriarch of a wealthy family brought low by tragedy. Or, exactly the kind of centerpiece character Madison creator-writer Taylor Sheridan<\/a> loves for his stories. And especially so, considering this series began life as Yellowstone<\/a> spun out. Remember all of the drama<\/a> surrounding star Kevin Costner and his contract? We were actually glad, once The Madison appeared and it wasn\u2019t connected to the Duttons.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Presented in two three-episode blocks, and quickly renewed for a second season, The Madison began with a shocking plane crash, brought a New York City family to Big Sky Country via private jet, and set to shocking their systems with fly fishing, outdoor plumbing, and folksy neighbors offering help. But how did The Madison end? What happened to Kurt Russell on The Madison? And as Stacy Clyburn, did Michelle Pfeiffer stay in NYC? Or did she end up back in Montana as a resident of the Madison Valley? Decider has your answers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

***Do not fish here if you don\u2019t wanna catch Madison spoilers!***\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

First: Did Taylor Sheridan Really Start The Madison By Killing Off Kurt Russell And Matthew Fox?<\/p>\n

Yep, totally. Episode 1<\/a> of The Madison introduces Kurt Russell and Matthew Fox as Preston Clyburn and his younger brother Paul Clyburn, who find as much time as they can to fly fish for Yellowstone cutthroat trout amid the sparkling waters of the Madison River. Paul has made the riverside plot of cabins they purchased together his year-round home. But for as much as Preston loves the freedom, natural allure, and fishing of his time in Montana, his life is in New York City with Stacy (Pfeiffer), his wife of 39 years. Preston is Stacy\u2019s center, the love of her life. But she never got down with roughing it out west.<\/p>\n

\"THE<\/p>\n

When the call comes in from a forestry officer in Idaho, where Preston and Paul died after their Cessna crashed during a huge storm, Stacy is utterly devastated. But she gathers her daughters Abby (Beau Garrett) \u2013 divorced with two little girls \u2013 and Paige (Elle Chapman) \u2013 married to Russell (Patrick J. Grant) \u2013 for a private flight from their ritzy life in NYC to the wide open spaces of Montana. In her husband\u2019s cabin, as she reads the journal she didn\u2019t know he kept, Stacy realizes the place meant even more to him than she thought.<\/p>\n

Sounds like Stacy\u2019s fam were fish out of water in Montana.<\/p>\n

For sure. Paige and Russell leave their common sense in SoHo, and are repeatedly stung by hornets<\/a>. Abby tries to expand the food horizons of her daughters Bridgette (Amiah Miller) and Macy (Alaina Pollack), but they poo-poo elk sausage for breakfast and declare the local favorite of \u201cIndian tacos\u201d as racist. And with the journey west only causing outbreaks of bickering and even physical fighting, Stacy is dismayed to learn that Preston\u2019s untimely death has only drawn out her family\u2019s longstanding differences.<\/p>\n

Wow. Was there an adjustment period?<\/p>\n

Well, Stacy herself begins a pretty intensive \u201cback to the land\u201d movement. The Madison frequently features her in flashback conversations with Preston \u2013 which are a great showcase for Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell\u2019s chemistry \u2013 and we learn a lot about their life together. But in Montana, with every page of Preston\u2019s journal she reads, this New York City lady becomes more enamored of her husband\u2019s way of Out West thinking. She screws down his greasy Simms fishing cap on her expensive salon blowout, locates all of the beautiful spots from where he sent her photos, and not only decides to bury Preston\u2019s body on the Madison River land, but that she will stay there, too.<\/p>\n

\"THE<\/p>\n

And Stacy isn\u2019t the only one enjoying some local seasoning. The sparks are immediate when Abby meets Madison County sheriff\u2019s deputy Van Davis (Ben Schnetzer), and they choose a \u201ckiss first, details later<\/a>\u201d approach to their New York-meets-Montana meet-cute moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So was Preston\u2019s Montana funeral full of private jets and rich guests from Back East?\u00a0<\/p>\n

No way. It\u2019s just Stacy and her family, Deputy Van, Stacy\u2019s neighbors at the riverside camp, Cade Harris (Kevin Zegers) and his wife Kestrel (Danielle Vasinova), and a whole lot of empty space, none of which can hold Stacy\u2019s heartbreak or her giant sense of disillusionment over what Preston\u2019s death has displaced. She barely makes it through the ceremony before declaring that the entire family will fly back to New York City.<\/p>\n

OK, what is The Madison Ending Explained? Does it happen in Montana or New York City?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what\u2019s up. Stacy accepted what Preston loved about the Madison Valley, and allowed the place into her heart, something she could never do when he was living. But she still felt like the family could find their closure in New York City. Stacy goes to see a slick therapist \u2013 Will Arnett<\/a> as Dr. Phil Yorn \u2013 and both Paige and Abby re-enter their lives, to varying degrees of success. While they grieve, they can\u2019t seem to process their father\u2019s death without creating more trouble for themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Stacy\u2019s friend Liliana (Rebecca Spence) plans a memorial service at the Clyburns\u2019 lush white marble townhome, it\u2019s exactly what Stacy did not want. She can\u2019t bear the crush of disingenuous well-wishers when all she\u2019s thinking about is the loss that ripped her apart. With some encouragement from her therapist \u2013 \u201cGive it,\u201d Yorn says; as in permission to herself \u2013 she leaves her phone and family, hops in a Yellow Taxi, and high-tails it alone back to the Madison Valley.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cade Harris, her cowboy neighbor out there, isn\u2019t sure what to think when he discovers her stretched across Preston\u2019s grave. But while she\u2019s still wearing her outfit from the memorial service in New York, it seems like Stacy\u2019s return has made her ready to become a Montanan. Back east, Abby\u2019s filing a missing-persons report on her mother. But out west, Stacy Clyburn is no longer a visitor. There, she feels closest to her center.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"THE<\/p>\n

Like we said, The Madison has already been renewed for Season 2<\/a>. And honestly, its six-episode first season felt more like a prelude. Now that we\u2019ve officially met Taylor Sheridan\u2019s latest TV family, we\u2019re interested in what they will do next, now that their New York horizons have been Big Sky expanded.<\/p>\n

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social<\/a>) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Between funerals and flashbacks, The Madison moved from Montana to New York City and back again, and introduced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69815,69816,66965,69817,57773,9,24,55,54,56,36622,32061,35688],"class_list":["post-171005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-ben-schnetzer","tag-elle-chapman","tag-kurt-russell","tag-matthew-fox","tag-michelle-pfeiffer","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-recaps","tag-taylor-sheridan","tag-westerns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}