Where does The Abandons take place? Setting of the Netflix series explored

The new Western drama series The Abandons on Netflix is set deep in the past. It is set in the rugged frontier days of the mid-19th century. The story unfolds in the Washington Territory around 1854. In the show, two very different families, one of wealth and power, the other of orphans and outcasts, clash over land, survival, and identity.

The land they fight over lies within this early version of the American frontier. At that time, the Washington Territory was still raw and wild, not the modern state we know of.

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The world of The Abandons: Frontier life and conflict

In The Abandons, the Washington Territory of the 1850s feels wild and unsettled. There are no neat towns, no paved roads, and law and order are fragile at best. The land is mostly open plains, rough ranches, rugged terrain, a true frontier world. This gives the show a gritty, real feel of danger and struggle.

One side of the story centres on Fiona Nolan, a woman who cannot have her own child. Instead, she builds a "found family" by adopting orphans. Her group, known as "The Abandons", works hard to build a home on the frontier land.

Constance Van Ness is the other end of the spectrum; she is a powerful matriarch who comes from money and has both social status as well as financial means to back it up. She is the head of a privileged family who feels entitled to the land Fiona claims as home for herself and her adopted children. The battle over the land, the battle for identity, the battle for what is family, creates the conflict that drives the story.

In addition to being a mere setting, the raw emotions of fear, hope, desperation, and loyalty give the story a depth that allows for the use of a wild geography, the uncertainty of law, and a rural location to shape the characters and their choices. Many of the characters find themselves faced with decisions that ultimately force them to fight for survival and find themselves having to make extremely difficult choices in order to do so.

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Where was The Abandons filmed, and where is it set?

Though The Abandons is set in 1850s Washington Territory, the actual filming took place far away, in southern Alberta, Canada. The crew used areas around Calgary, Alberta, and nearby regions to recreate the frontier world of mid-19th-century America.

The main filming was done on a special ranch set known as the CL Western Town, located about 35-40 minutes from downtown Calgary. This set has plains, old-style buildings, ranch houses, and open lands, which are perfect to stand in for a frontier town called Angel's Ridge in the series.

Other neighbouring regions were utilized during the production of The Abandons, including Stoney Nakoda & Kananaskis Country, both of which feature beautiful landscapes such as mountains, trees, rivers; all these elements add life to the picture's wild west feel.

Shooting for the film started in May 2024 and finished at the end of October 2024. The filmmakers chose to use Alberta instead of Washington State for both practicality as well as availability of landscape-type locations (film sets), easy access to rural locations (less populated), etc.

So while the story claims a place in the American Washington Territory, a rugged frontier in the 1850s, the real-world backdrop comes from Canada's landscapes. The magic of film makes those Alberta plains and mountains look like 19th-century America.

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Why does the setting matter for The Abandons?

Using a setting like the Washington Territory in the 1850s gives the story a sense of danger and freedom at once. Characters live close to nature, they face harsh weather, isolation, and uncertainty. There is no easy law to protect them and this rawness shapes personalities and decisions.

In such a world, family means more than blood. For Fiona Nolan and her adopted children, what they share is love and shared struggle. They build a home out of hardship. The frontier becomes more than land, it becomes hope, identity, and struggle.

The contrast with Constance Van Ness's family, wealth, privilege, and entitlement becomes sharp in this environment. Power plays, greed, social unrest, class divide, all these feel more real when the world itself is tough. Also, the remote landscape allows the story to explore dark themes like violence, betrayal, survival, and desperation. There is no easy escape, no safety net, and the characters must rely on themselves. That heightens drama, emotion, and moral choices.

The Abandons' settings are timeless; the universal themes of emotion, desire, friendship, love, and family remain unchanged across centuries. The Abandons also represent the limitlessness of humanity, as a new era to come after mankind was created in his own image and then fell into sin. It portrays life on the fringes of society in the 1850s, when danger was more intense and more numerous than it is today.

The creation of The Abandons occurred mainly in Alberta, Canada, while its storyline belongs to the American West. The Abandons uses the environment created by a new way of life in a new and unknown land, with little or no laws, to examine what a family really means, and how far someone will go to protect his or her own.