Every Longmire Season Ranked Worst To Best

After the triumphant revival of Season 4 on Netflix, "Longmire" began to experiment a little more with what it could accomplish outside of the constraints of a cable broadcast. In Season 5, episodes became longer, and the writers began to emphasize serialized character development as opposed to episodic procedural cases.

This led to many changes on the show that critics appreciated, but a few consequences that fans took issue with. In Season 5, mercenary for hire Hector (Jeffrey De Serrano) returns, Walt defends himself against a murder investigation, and Jacob Nighthorse (A Martinez) is shown to be uninvolved in the death of Walt's wife. In a positive review, IGN said, "That's the tense through-line here and it works to create the show's most character-driven season to date." These conflicts lead to a show that's "confident enough to really embrace Walt's flaws as a stubborn lawman who, perhaps, was born in the wrong century."

While allowing the show, and Walt, to become more nuanced is ostensibly a good thing, it did have one unintended side effect. Many fans suddenly found the show's central character to be remarkably unlikable, with commenters on Reddit noting that he came off more like a jerk than the headstrong hero they had rooted for. However, episodes like "Chrysalis," where Walt helps unravel the case of a young girl and her missing father, showed that "Longmire" still had plenty of enjoyable stories to explore.