I didn’t blink when I saw Yosemite. I flinched.
Because in Netflix’s Untamed, the park isn’t a backdrop—it’s the predator. Sure, the series offers your expected eye-candy panoramas, but the teaser image of Eric Bana, brooding in ranger green, says it all: this is not another cozy park ranger procedural.
It’s The Revenant with paperwork.
And that’s no accident.
Mark L. Smith—yes, the guy who co-wrote The Revenant, a movie that turned snowdrifts into existential dread—returns to the wilderness with Untamed, a six-part series aiming to drag viewers kicking and screaming through the shadowy heart of Yosemite. But this isn’t a nature doc gone wrong. It’s a character-driven mystery that laces majestic views with bloodstains, trauma, and the kind of silence that screams.
“Everyone thinks of Yosemite as this beautiful place with all the vistas and all the scenery, but we were trying to touch on the dangers that are just beyond that,” Smith told Netflix.
Translation: This is not your family’s Ken Burns special.
Enter Eric Bana as Kyle Turner—a National Park Service special agent, hunting a killer in terrain where nature obeys no badge. He’s not alone: Sam Neill’s stoic chief ranger, Lily Santiago’s rookie cop-turned-mama-bear, and Wilson Bethel’s lone-wolf wildlife officer round out a cast of walking contradictions. Every character is stitched together by secrets—personal, professional, and prehistoric.
And yeah, there’s a brutal death.
But this isn’t about whodunnit—it’s about what the wilderness does to you when you’re forced to look inward.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
We don’t go to national parks for safety. We go because they remind us we’re not in control. That somewhere between the scenic lookout and the souvenir shop, we’re still animals. Untamed taps into that. And unlike other glossy “first look” photos, the one Netflix just released doesn’t sell the show’s beauty—it sells its weight.
Think True Detective in hiking boots.
Think Wind River with a federal badge.
Think therapy session with bears.
That might sound bleak. It is. But it’s also honest. And rare.
The photo shows Bana’s character standing rigid among the pines—not conquering them, but dwarfed by them. It’s Yosemite as antagonist. And that reframes everything.
So here’s the question:
Will audiences tune in for a thriller where the villain might be grief? Or guilt? Or the fact that this time, the park isn’t saving you—it’s watching you unravel?
Would you risk a six-hour hike through your own past?
Drop your boots in the comments.
