“Landman”: Billy Bob Thornton Finally Reveals the Dark Truth of His Character’s Abusive Childhood in Heartbreaking Scene

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Landman season 2, episode 4.

Landman fans have a new understanding of Tommy Norris after this week’s episode.

Billy Bob Thornton plays the oil executive in the hit Taylor Sheridan series, and his complicated life makes a lot more sense after his revelations in the Dec. 7 episode.

After attending his mother’s funeral, Tommy had lunch with his family and friends, which included his estranged father, T.L. (Sam Elliott). When Ariana (Paulina Chávez), the girlfriend of Tommy’s son Cooper, expressed her confusion at the group’s mood, Tommy got real about his relationship with his mother.

“I remember coming home from school and finding her naked, face down in the bathtub. I was 14 years old,” Tommy told the table in an intense scene. “Dad, he was working on offshore rigs in Louisiana. I pulled her out by the hair, and I called the ambulance, and they walked me through CPR ’til she puked water in my face while I was blowing air in her lungs.”

“And she sat up, and she looked at me like I was a stranger, and then she pulled her leg back, and she kicked my nose through the back of my head,” Tommy continued.

“Then she got up and walked into the kitchen and made herself another f——- drink. I went and put everything I owned into a backpack, ’cause a backpack’s all it took. [I’ve] never been back in this town since — ’til a week ago.”

Tommy summed up his feelings about his mother’s death when he told a shocked Ariana: “There was no miracle involving my mother other than her managing to die of old age … I didn’t come here to mourn her passing, honey. I came here to celebrate it.”

Later on, Tommy’s heartbreaking confession brought a heartfelt moment for him and his daughter, Ainsley (Michelle Randolph).

He found her crying on the couch, still ruminating on the shocking story she’d heard about the grandmother she never met, which prompted yet another confession from Tommy. “I had a sister, and she died from SIDS at 4 months old,” he told his daughter, referring to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

That detail made Ainsley cry even harder, and Tommy explained how his sister’s death led to his mother’s addiction. “The loss broke her,” he told Ainsley. “It just snapped her in two. I think she was just so scared to feel any kind of love again after that that she drugged and drank her soul to death.”

“My poor father, he was scared to death of her. He would spend a whole year at a camp and not come home once, just send the checks,” Tommy said of T.L. “He wasted his life hiding from her.”

Ainsley labeled the whole family saga “tragic,” and Tommy agreed, as he told her, “It’s my tragedy honey, not yours.”

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Out of the heartbreaking confession came a sweet father-daughter moment for the pair. “I have to say, there’s not many people on this planet that care enough to cry over something that somebody else went through,” Tommy told Ainsley. “You’ve got a big ‘ole heart beating under that hood, baby.”

Ainsley was quick to give her old man the credit. “I got it from you,” she said.

New episodes of Landman premiere Sundays on Paramount+