The 53-year-old actor played Monty Miller in the Taylor Sheridan-created series, the owner of a Texas oil company dubbed M Tex.
The main character Tommy Norris – played by Billy Bob Thornton – was the ‘landman’ – essentially Monty’s right-hand man.
Monty’s health was failing towards the end of the season, as it was revealed he had five heart attacks and underwent his third bypass surgery.
While Monty recovered from the bypass surgery, one of the season’s final shots showed him seemingly flat-lining, surrounded by his wife (Demi Moore) and daughters.
It was never fully revealed that Monty had died in the finale, though Hamm confirmed in a wide-ranging interview with The Hollywood Reporter, while also praising his co-stars.
The fate of his character Monty isn’t entirely surprising, from a logistical standpoint, since Hamm already has a lot on his plate.
He not only stars in Apple TV Plus’ The Morning Show, but has a lead role in another show from the streamer, Your Friends and Neighbors, debuting April 11.
‘Part of it is that my other commitments don’t really allow me to be a series regular on another show,’ Hamm admitted.
‘I’m very happy that they asked me to do this, but I’ll tell you exactly what it was — it was the ability to work with Taylor (Sheridan) and Billy Bob (Thornton),’ he admitted.
Hamm added, ‘Those are guys whose careers I’ve been really paying attention to. They’re just working at the top of their game.’
‘I knew the show was going to be good; I didn’t know it was really going to spark in the culture the way it has, and that part of it is even better,’ Hamm said.
He added, ‘It’s always fun to be a part of the conversation when you’re in something that people really respond to. I’ve had that on a couple of occasions.’
Hamm also said his final scenes in the hospital were, ‘not fun,’ though he added it was ‘outstanding’ being there with Moore and Thornton.
He said they were, ‘a spectacular group of people,’ though he hadn’t realized at the time that was the first role he was killed off in his illustrious career.
‘You know, I can’t remember it either. My sister texted me and she said, “I can’t believe I had to watch you die on screen.” And I was like, “Haven’t you seen that before?” And she was like, “No!”’ he admitted.
Since Monty clearly realized he was not long for this Earth, he spent his final days putting Tommy in control of M Tex.
When asked how he sees Tommy taking over his character’s company, Hamm continued praising the show and Sheridan’s writing.
‘That’s another one of the things that I think makes the show so truly wonderful on so many levels: There’s a delightful ambiguity to a lot of it and there’s also a metaphoric resonance to it. The writing works on several levels,’ he said.
‘Part of what I really like about the relationship between Billy Bob’s character and my own is that we both started in kind of the same place, and those two roads pretty seriously diverged. That happens sometimes, and that’s a real difficult thing to manage. It’s a hard thing to see a friend that you know go a different way. It’s a challenge to navigate,’ he added.
Paramount Plus has yet to renew Landman, though given its strong debut – 14.6 million viewers in the first seven days – it certainly seems possible.