‘Landman’ Season 2 finale: Kayla Wallace takes control in Rebecca’s ‘life ruiner’ moment with cops

Warning! Detailed spoilers included

Kayla Wallace’s Landman character, Rebecca Falcone, had one of the most memorable moments in the Season 2 finale. The most satisfying thing to watch with Rebecca is the way she operates in a room full of people, oftentimes a room of men, who underestimate her, and the intelligent and savvy lawyer is ready to humble them.

In the final episode of Season 2, Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) and Angela’s (Ali Larter) son Cooper (Jacob Lofland) finds himself facing a possible murder charge, after he beat up a man named Jonathan “Johnny” Reasner, a pipeline supplier who assaulted Ariana (Paulina Chávez). When Rebecca learns what happened with Cooper, she heads to Odessa PD to handle the situation.

It starts with Rebecca being shown surveillance camera footage of Cooper slamming Johnny to the ground and punching him repeatedly. Rebecca asks the detectives to rewind the footage by 30 seconds, and when there’s pushback that the footage 30 seconds earlier isn’t relevant, Rebecca is more than ready to make her case.

“Everyone with a law degree in the room, raise their hand. Oh, it’s just me? Back it up and play it,” she says, and the footage shows Reasner hitting Ariana in the face and starts removing her clothing when Cooper arrives.

Rebecca always comes prepared, so she asks one of the detectives about his previous involvement in a shooting with a man with a pipe wrench, questioning his use of force for shooting the man 11 times.

“Let me explain what will happen if this department charges my client. I will go to the family of this man and file a civil suit for wrongful death times ten based on this department’s now established policy of holding untrained citizens responsible for knowing when a threat of violence has been eliminated,” Rebecca says to the detectives. “Then I will go through every officer-involved shooting in this county and file a class action suit on behalf of the family members of every suspect killed in a similar fashion. I will use your prosecution to bankrupt this county and every one of you. And the more you prove your case, the more you prove mine.”

“Think real hard before you charge the man who saved the 22-year-old widow from rape in a back alley with murder. … But, if you do. What’s the saying you guys use around here? ‘Fuck with the bull and get the horn.’ It’s a zero-sum game for me, gentlemen. I am a life ruiner. You go after that kid for saving his fiancée’s life? Ruin lives is exactly what I’m going to do. Starting with yours.”

Kayla Wallace as Rebecca Falcone in Landman Season 2 streaming on Paramount+ (Emerson Miller/Paramount+)
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‘She’s aware of everything at all times’

Reflecting on her work on the show, the Canadian actor highlighted that it’s a lot of fun to play a character that’s intelligent and so cunning.

“She’s aware of everything at all times, and she will use any piece of information to further herself in her cases or her career, all the time,” Wallace told Yahoo Canada. “She’s just always gathering information and storing it in her back pocket, and then using it as a weapon later on.”

“It’s a lot of fun to play somebody as smart as she is. It’s a lot of work because you have to know your stuff. You have to know your stuff back and forward, and what it means, and the ins and outs of it. Rebecca is pretty strong, and she’s just a blast to play.”

But breaking down the layers of Rebecca’s personality, her softer side really came out when she met Guy Burnet’s character, Charlie, a geologist for M-Tex.

“His character is so opposite from who Rebecca is. He’s one of those happy-go-lucky guys, … and right when Rebecca kind of needs that, he’s plopped next to her on the plane,” Wallace said. “She’s so used to being in control, and then all of a sudden she’s in this guy’s bathroom and … is hungover and piecing the night together.”

While there was a significant shift in Rebecca and Charlie’s relationship after she got angry when he oversold his ability to find oil in the Gulf gas rig to Cami Miller (Demi Moore), we’ll have to wait to see if there’s a reconciliation in Season 3.

Colm Feore as Nathan, Kayla Wallace as Rebecca, Billy Bob Thornton as Tommy and Demi Moore as Cami in Landman Season 2, streaming on Paramount+ (Emerson Miller/Paramount+)
(Emerson Miller/Paramount+)More

Wallace also loves her scenes with Billy Bob Thornton in Landman and hopes for more in the future.

“I’ve loved working with Billy these past two years. My first scene that I shot in Season 1 was with him,” Wallace said. “Particularly the Rebecca and Tommy characters, I loved that there was such a conflict, just in personality, right off the bat. It just gave so much room to play within that.”

“[Billy Bob Thornton] is such a down-to-earth, grounded, thoughtful, human being. We’re so lucky to have him as the lead of our show. I hope for more and more Tommy and Rebecca scenes.”

‘Landman’ Season 3: Kayla Wallace wants to meet Rebecca’s mother

With Landman gaining a devoted fanbase over its two seasons, Wallace shared that a significant factor in the show’s success is the distinctiveness and robustness of the characters Taylor Sheridan created.

“Every character is so robust and loud and extravagant in who they are,” Wallace said. “That just makes for a great story as is, but then Taylor writes these amazing conflicts and these ups and downs within this world.”

“And then on top of that, you’ve got such an amazing cast that it’s a dream to go to work every single day and play off of these characters, a lot of them that are so opposite from one another.”

But looking to the upcoming Season 3 of the Paramount+ hit, there are still a few things Wallace wants to explore with Rebecca, and at the top of the list is Rebecca’s relationship with her mother.

“I get really curious about who her parents are,” Wallace said. “I get curious about who her mother was and what that relationship was like. We know that her dad, he’s also in business. … But I want to know her relationship with her mother, and what that was like, … [because I really] think that creates so much of who a person can be.”