“The Madison” Drops First Three Episodes Of The Season – Read Our Full Recaps
on Mar 14, 2026
The Madison Premiered On Paramount+ On Saturday, March 14
Over the last decade, Taylor Sheridan has been taking over television with shows like Yellowstone, 1883, 1923, Marshals, Landman, Tulsa King, Mayor Of Kingstown, Lawmen: Bass Reeves, and Lioness. Now, he is adding one more show to his arsenal: The Madison.
The show was first announced as a Yellowstone spinoff in 2023, but when the trailer was released in February 2026, producers announced it was actually not in connection to the Yellowstone world at all.
The cast includes Michelle Pfeiffer, Kurt Russell, Matthew Fox, Patrick J. Adams, Elle Chapman, Beau Garrett, Amiah Miller, Kevin Zegers, Rebecca Spence, Alaina Pollack, Danielle Vasinova, and Will Arnett.
SPOILER ALERT! This contains spoilers for the first three episodes of The Madison.
Episode 1
The episode begins on the gorgeous Madison River, which runs through Wyoming and Montana. We see brothers Preston (Kurt Russell) and Paul Clyburn (Matthew Fox) fishing as they talk about their lives and how they want to spend the remaining years they have.
Paul has relocated to the Madison River full time, but Preston, who longs to also, has to return to his bustling life as a financier in New York City, where he lives with his wife Stacy (Michelle Pfeiffer). Their adult daughters Abigail (Beau Garrett) and Paige (Elle Chapman) also live in the city.
Preston reveals that Stacy never comes to the country with him, even though it’s his dream to move there for his final chapter.
We quickly learn that Abigail is going through a divorce and is a mother to two daughters, Bridgette (Amiah Miller) and Macy (Alaina Pollack).
Paige is married to Russell (Patrick J. Adams.
Unfortunately, one of Paige’s first scenes involves her walking down a busy NYC street in the middle of the day when she is sucker punched and robbed. The ordeal leaves fellow NYC-ers unfazed and they go about their day as though a major crime has not taken place right in front of their eyes.
She goes straight to the well-to-do family’s personal surgeon to get her cheek stitched and asks her mom where she can safely walk in the middle of the day.
“You can’t. That’s the whole point,” Stacy replies.
The entire family goes to a nice restaurant where it is hard to pry people away from their phones, which along with their conversation, sends Stacy into a frenzy where she ends up slamming her hand on the table, quieting the entire restaurant.
Back in Montana, Preston is still dreaming about relocating to the country with his brother, who owns a plot of cabins near the river. He reveals that he’s brought up his dream of wanting to move there with Stacy, but she has never had any interest in joining him.
Even though he knows his daughter was mugged, he decides to stay with his brother one more day because Paul planned a trip to an area called the Big Lost. Paul is a Cessna pilot with access to his own plane, so he had every squared away.
After an incredible day fly fishing and experiencing the life of the quiet outdoors, Preston tells his brother, “I don’t ever want to leave.”
As viewers, we see storm clouds approach, and we get a very bad feeling as their plane heads right towards the clouds. Paul and Preston try to get over the fog, but around 25 minutes into the episode, they seemingly crash, with Preston yelling, “Stacy!”
As Pfeiffer’s character is at lunch with her NYC friend, she receives a call from a Forestry Officer who informs her of the plane crash and that Preston and Paul did not survive. Her devastation and shock felt so real that it brought tears to our eyes.
Stacy and the family travel to Montana to identify Preston and Paul and while one daughter is convinced there’s a chance it could not be them, everyone else has faced the reality that their patriarch is gone.
The family is appalled by the lack of indoor plumbing that the cabins have, but after a while, Stacy is finally honoring her husband by revealing she will be staying, telling her daughter, “I’m gonna finally see this place.”
“I should be happy he died out here, doing what he loved,” Stacy said.“Not tethered to some hospital bed. He died living, not existing.”
She reads a diary that Preston kept, which he describes a beautiful valley that he named after Stacy. She decides that he will be buried there.
Stacy also gathers the entire family in the cabin to watch Preston’s favorite movie, A River Runs Through It.
It seemed fitting that Episode 1 was later dedicated to the movie’s star, Robert Redford, who died on September 16, 2025.
Kurt Russell also sticks around in the form of flashbacks. He’s already filmed Season 2, which they had to move around for him, so we know this isn’t the last we will see of him.
Episode 2
Stacy makes some big decisions in Episode 2, titled “Let the Land Hold Me.” She is making funeral arrangements for Preston and Paul, knowing exactly where she wants to bury them, in the valley that Preston spoke so highly of.
She finds out from the town’s local mortician that if she buries them in the valley and it is bought by someone, the future owners have the right to exhume their bodies. To prevent this from happening, Stacy decides to buy the land.
To make things even more permanent, she makes the decision to sell her New York City penthouse and move to Montana on the ranch that Preston built for their family (although she realizes this over time).
Flashbacks not only give us more screen time with the incredible Kurt Russell, theya lso paint a picture of what Preston was telling Stacy over the phone and in his diary, to what Stacy is seeing in realtime.
Back at the cabins, Russell and Paige get stung by hornets and the aftermath is hilarious to the family, showing that you can still laugh when you are grieving.
We also meet Cade, a local rancher played by Kevin Zegers. It’s clear that the locals respect Cade and we can tell right away, he will be an integral part of the Clyburn’s new story.
We started off the episode not understanding why Stacy, a city woman who has refused to join her husband in the country in their 39 years of marriage, has chosen to live out her years in the countryside. But by the end of the episode we do. She finally wants to honor her husband by letting him live in the place he dreamed of for decades, while also staying near him. Maybe she will discover more about him along the way.
Pfeiffer should be commended for her raw performance in this show. We can feel every bit of emotion through the screen.
Episode 3
Warning: this episode contains suicidal ideation.
In the third episode of The Madison, we learn a lot more about Abby, whose divorce from her husband and her subsequent life choices are questioned.
In flashbacks, we don’t see the fallout of her marriage from her perspective, we see it from the viewpoint of her parents talking about their daughter’s split and what it could mean for the entire family.
While the husband might do well for himself, Preston and Stacy bankroll Abby’s life and they discuss cutting her off financially and forcing her to figure it out herself after leaving her husband. They struggle with the decision because their two granddaughters are also part of the picture.
It seems Abby has always been a bit of a wild child and even being an adult with children does not stop her, as can be seen in a scene where she gets in a physical fight with her sister, Paige, followed by a screaming match in a truck with her mother.
The screaming was brought on by Stacy’s ultimatum: Abby and the girls can live on the ranch or she will cut them all off financially. You can tell this pains Stacy, as she has so much love for her daughter and grandchildren.
Abby also begins a romance with a sheriff’s deputy named Van Davis (Ben Schnetzer). Although it feels rushed, the season is only six episodes, so Sheridan was forced to hurry up this story line. It also is ironic that in the episode where the topic of msot conversations are Abby’s bad decision making, she begins a new romance with a character who is seemingly beloved by the townspeople and the Clyburns.
Van is a great addition to the story, as he has also lost his spouse in an accident, so maybe in future episode, he can sort of guide Stacy through her grief.
Stacy is still really going through it and can’t figure out how to manage her grief. So much so that when she finds a gun in Paul’s truck, she contemplates using it on herself.
Luckily, rancher Cade sees this and stops her. He reveals that three of his family members have taken their own lives. The scene is achingly beautiful, showing us that Cade is multi-faceted and will be a huge support to Stacy and the family in times to come.
Stacy asks her firend Liliana, who was there when Stacy received the call about Preston’s death, to come visit. She is a reminder of all the Stacy is choosing to leave behind in New York City, but also a good support for the grieving widow.
The show will continue to explore Stacy and her family’s grief and their next chapter in Montana. The final three episodes of The Madison will premiere on Paramount+ on Saturday, March 21.
