Series / Frontier (2016)

Frontier is a Canadian-American series starring Jason Momoa as Declan Harp, a brutal Cree-Irish fur trader consumed by a need for vengeance against Lord Benton (Alun Armstrong) for the murder of his wife and daughter. It also follows characters from all of the various factions seeking to dominate the fur trade in the Disputed Territories of the New World in the late 18th century.

In Canada, the show was commissioned by Bell Media for their local version of Discovery Channel as that channel's first original scripted series. The show is distributed internationally by Netflix.

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This show provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: We don't know what actually happened, but Grace outright hates her father. She directly disagrees with people when they say that they would like to meet him, and refused to take any of his personal effects after he died. When she is told that she is a remarkable woman and therefore he must have done something right, she acknowledges that who she is now does come in part from how he raised her, but that doesn't reflect well on him.
• Accidental Murder: In the first season finale, Lord Benton shoots Father Coffin when he tries to intercede. It is this formal charge of murder that Chesterfield uses to usurp his position as governor.
• Action Girl:
  • Sokanon is Harp's number two and his premier tracker and fighter.
  • Grace prefers to work as a businesswoman, but gets dragged into the fights around her bar and the fort as the series progresses.
  • Mary, to her early horror but later apparent satisfaction, winds up killing multiple men who try to take advantage of her and other girls.
• Affably Evil: Cobbs Pond is a sociopathic murderer that seems to revel in the sound of bones cracking and admits to gouging his first crush's eye out with a spoon, yet remains polite towards everyone he meets and will compliment you regardless of if he is holding you at gunpoint or you've just had him arrested.
• The Alcoholic: Father Coffin, the town priest at Fort James, is a drunk. This makes him both easy to bribe as well as inherently untrustworthy.
• Almost Dead Guy: After Wahush is shot in the second season finale, he lives just long enough to warn everybody that the redcoats are coming.
• Anachronism Stew: Though ostensibly set in the late 1700s, there are many elements that wouldn't appear for decades later or in some cases had disappeared earlier.
  • Captain Chesterfield has a beard, despite the fact that all British soldiers of the era were clean shaven and facial hair wouldn't start to become acceptable in the British military until the 1830s.
  • Dialogue frequently uses terms that either weren't coined yet, or were in use but with a different meaning. Grace refers to a character as "paranoid," a term that wasn't coined until 1848. In the same scene she uses the phrase "self destruct," which was in use by then but only in technical writing; it wouldn't enter everyday vernacular until the 1960s with NASA.
  • Some redcoats are seen donning shakos, which debuted in 1790 in Hungary and were adopted by other nations in the early 1800s. Shakos largely replaced tricornes, which most of the redcoats do (correctly) wear. The shako wearers also have uniforms that are much closer to the Napoleonic Wars era.
  • Many extras and a few named characters wear top hats, the earliest known top hats were made in 1796 but wouldn't become popular until the 1830s.
  • The intro has several tin soldiers with flags, most of them are incorrect for the era:
    • The Redcoat's flag has the Northern Irish cross, which wasn't added to the Union Jack until 1801.
    • The Declan figure has a Métis flag, which didn't debut until 1814.
    • The Frenchman's flag is correct assuming the series takes place before the Tricolour was adapted, but the French had been out of the picture in Canada for decades by the time the series takes place.
  • Jason Momoa's real life tattoo sleeve is visible on Declan when his shirt is off. While the shark tooth motif was certainly in use on Hawai'i (where Momoa is from) at the time, there's no way a Canadian would have a tattoo of one, especially since its a symbol of family.
• And Now You Must Marry Me: Captain Chesterfield decides that he wants Grace to be his wife after they've both overthrown Lord Benton, a suggestion that she is not at all amenable towards. She does agree to signing a marriage contract, but since she refuses to share his bed they both keep going back and forth trying to blackmail and outmaneuver each other.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: The Russian bounty hunter tracking Harp in season two makes a repeated point that he will kill all of Harp's friends to get to him. When they are actually fighting and he seems to have the upper hand, he tells Harp that all of his friends' deaths are now on his head for losing.
• Animal Theme Naming: Declan Harp is nicknamed 'the (black) wolf', and he gives the same name to the fur trading company/gang that he leads. When he adopts a huge fur coat, he physically resembles a wolf even more.
• Antagonistic Governor: Lord Benton is a high-ranking member of the Hudson's Bay Company whose personal vendetta against Declan Harp leads him to usurp control of Fort James and take control of the region. He tries to incite the local factions into open warfare against one another and dominates the locals to such an extent that even the HBC begins to question his methods. He is ultimately relieved and arrested by his own subordinates and shipped back to London in the brig.
• Anti-Hero: Declan Harp isn't afraid to kill, steal, and threaten people in his quest to bring down Lord Benton.
• Any Last Words?: When Benton thinks he has finally captured Harp, he tells him to choose his words carefully because they will be his last. Harp only asks Benton if his son truly is alive, but slits Benton's throat before he has a chance to offer any answer.
• Artistic License – History: Some of Elizabeth's dresses have incredibly modern features, like this one◊. The illusion neckline was not exactly a staple of 1700s fashion.
• Asshole Victim:
  • The English soldier who killed Michael's friend in the first episode is randomly stabbed to death by someone he bumps into several minutes after arriving in the new world. Nobody cares, up to the point that when Michael tries to explain that it wasn't his fault, Lord Benton explicitly says that he doesn't care.
  • We don't actually see any problematic behavior because of his We Hardly Knew Ye status, but after Mr. Carruthers is murdered his widow says she is glad he is gone because of his personal and professional failings, and now she can run their company properly. Nobody seems to mourn him at all, and he is only ever mentioned afterwards when the investigation into his murder is used for advantage by one party or another.
• Attempted Rape: Victoria is brought into the Alehouse as a prostitute against her will, and fights back against her first "customer". Aware of her struggles, Mary sneaks into the room and kills the assailant.
• Authority in Name Only:
  • Elizabeth Carruthers needs a husband to be the public face of her company after she takes over in the wake of her first husband's death. She goes to the two Brown brothers in jail and offers to pay their debt provided they sign over control of their company and one of them agrees to marry her and serve as her puppet.
  • It happens to Douglas Brown again in the second season finale. After Elizabeth is murdered, the Carruthers & Co. company is legally transferred to his ownership, but Elizabeth's will specified that it be run according to Josephette's instructions via her lawyer's Power of Attorney.
• Bad Boss:
  • Lord Benton revels in exercising his power over those under his authority, including petty acts of violence for no reason. This leads to some of them defecting to the other side and others rising up from below.
  • The HBC redcoat Wadlow seems to have learned his training from Benton well, as he kills one of his own soldiers who brought word of Harp's approach.
• Badass in Distress: Despite his admirable prowess as a fighter, Declan Harp has to be rescued from the clutches of Lord Benton twice in the space of a few episodes. Once from a torture chamber and again from the gallows.
• Betty and Veronica: Michael Smyth starts the series attracted to Clenna Dolan, an Irish girl he knew in London who is unaccustomed to the new world, but after he joins up with Harp's band he grows closer to Sokanon, a native warrior, hunter, and tracker. Appropriately, the Betty and Veronica in this case are a blonde and brunette, respectively. Michael seems to choose Sokanon after Clenna says that she cannot live in the wild with him, but soon after Sokanon leaves him when she realizes that he will not choose the Cree cause over the Black Wolf company/gang.
• Bounty Hunter: With the 200 pound bounty on Harp's head in season two, bounty hunters begin congregating on Fort James and hunting him in the wild. The most persistent and dangerous of them is a giant Russian — nicknamed "the Siberian" — who chases Harp from Fort James to the Inuit lands in the North to Montreal and back to Fort James.
• Bullying a Dragon: Elizabeth Carruthers decides to deliberately antagonize Samuel Grant by having his closest associate arrested after scuppering their deal with the Marquis and then rubbing in his face how pathetic he is despite knowing that this is a man who doesn't shy away from things like murdering his competition. Predictably, he kills her in a frothing rage after she beats him over the head with a candle holder.
• Butt-Monkey: The Brown brothers, Malcolm, Cedric, and Douglas. They start the series nearly bankrupt and forced to accept a large investment from Samuel Grant, and after that they are continuously manipulated, abused, and degraded by all parties. By the end of the first season one of them is dead, they have lost their company, and of the two survivors one of them is forced into marriage with Elizabeth Carruthers and the other has been reduced to pitiful make-work in the Carruthers factory.
• Casting Gag: Katie McGrath's Elizabeth Carruthers has a noted anti-Irish sentiment and speaks of Dublin as a "dirty little rathole". Katie is, herself, Irish and went to college at Trinity College in Dublin.
• The Cavalry:
  • Sokanon and Clenna when they bust Declan and Michael out of the magazine.
  • The gallows scene in the season one finale. Father Coffin slips Declan a razor to cut his bonds and free himself from the noose, then Michael and Sokanon set off a huge mass of gunpowder and the barmaids distract the gathered soldiers with random gunfire, giving Declan a chance to escape.
• The Chessmaster:
  • Grace shows shades of this, trying to manipulate all the affairs of Fort James from behind the scenes. She only gets moderate success, though, given Lord Benton's mounting fanaticism which cannot be adequately predicted or manipulated. She ultimately loses control completely when Chesterfield takes over in the second season, as his obsession with her means that there's nothing that can be done to control him.
  • Lord Benton becomes this in the second season. While locked in the brig of a ship heading back to London he deduces that the cabin boy Chaulk is actually a girl, as well as the fact that some of the crewmen were pressganged into service. He uses this information to manipulate the separate factions of the crew into killing Everton — the only person aboard who knows first-hand the things that Benton has actually done — and then staging a mutiny against the captain. The season closes with him having taken command of the ship and using its crew for his own revenge against Harp.
• City Mouse: Clenna was born in Dublin and spent most of her life living in London, so she is completely unprepared for the wild life of the frontier. She ultimately decides that it's too much and she cannot suffer the hardships, not even to be with Michael.
• Coitus Uninterruptus: When Grace comes back to Fort James and finds her Alehouse has been turned into a brothel in her absence, she storms into Chesterfield's room where he's having sex with Imogen at that moment. He doesn't let her presence interrupt him and just continues his business in front of her.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Lord Benton has a fearsome reputation as a torturer, which he justifies as a necessity for gaining information. Upon capturing Declan Harp, Benton spends several days torturing him in private for no other reason than to break his spirit.
• Comforting the Widow: After Samuel Grant has Mr. Carruthers murdered, he sends one of his associates to visit Mrs. Carruthers at the funeral to offer to buy her company. When they meet in person he also offers marriage, since the time in general and fur trade in particular is male-dominated and would have no place for a woman to run a company alone. Elizabeth Carruthers points out that it shows particular effrontery to approach a widow actually at the funeral, let alone when you're the one who made her a widow. She rejects his offer and instead arranges a marriage to one of Grant's other victims to satisfy the period norms while retaining control over her company.
• Conversation Casualty: In the final scene of season three, Benton has been monologuing with Harp until Harp reaches up and slits his throat.
• Cycle of Revenge: Declan Harp's vendetta for Lord Benton's slaughter of his family is the driving force of the series. In the second season, an Inuk father tells his daughter a story about how revenge is cyclical and can only be broken by forgiveness, but Harp cannot understand it because he does not speak Inuktitut.
• Damsel out of Distress: Sokanon finds out that Native girls are being captured by a Christian cult for conversion, then sold off to hunters and brothels. She's captured herself and taken to one of these convents after she tries to convince the ring-leader's wife to leave him. Michael Smyth tries to help her when he discovers what happened, but Sokanon already manages to kill her captors and free all the girls before Michael can even get there.
• Decapitation Presentation: After their fight, Harp holds up Wadlow's head, which is still trailing Wadlow's entire spine that Harp ripped out of his body.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Elizabeth Carruthers, despite being a sympathetic character and semi-protagonist, has a noted anti-Irish sentiment as a high-class Englishwoman.
• Depraved Homosexual: Gay characters Samuel Grant and Cobbs Pond go from wealthy fur traders to raging murderers.
• Disposable Sex Worker: Discussed Trope. Lord Benton is pretty blunt about how little he cares about the prostitutes he brought over from England when he issues Imogen an Implied Death Threat. As he points out, since he already willfully sacrifices the men under his command, how much does she think her own life is worth to someone like him?
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: When he comes across the party of redcoats holding Grace, Harp tells them who he is and that if any of them leave now he will let them go with their lives. One redcoat actually does try to run away, but gets a knife in his back from Wadlow.
• Dying Alone: Grace's father reached out to her when he was on his deathbed and asked her to come visit him. She chose to stay in Fort James. It turns out to be a lie. He returned to Britain, and later becomes a captive of Lord Benton. When he does actually die, it's in an attempt to protect his daughter.
• El Cid Ploy: Technically, the Alehouse is licensed to Grace's father, who has left it in her stead while he is in Montreal. Unbeknownst to most is the fact that he actually died several years back, which Grace kept secret because the HBC will not allow a woman to hold the license herself. When Chesterfield is making her life difficult and says that he should have her father declared legally dead given how long he has been absent, Grace journeys to Montreal ostensibly to contact him, but actually to get some of his effects so that she can forge a letter pretending he is still alive and letting her run the business in his name.
• Epigraph: Every episode is preceded by a quote that comments on the nature of power, perseverence, or a man's soul. While they all sound like they could have been written specifically for the time and place of the series, the sources actually vary from politicians and writers to modern celebrities and musicians, including Elie Wiesel, Nelson Mandela, Beyoncé, and Ice-T.
• Enemy Mine:
  • In the season two finale, Harp and Chesterfield need to team up after Benton kidnaps Grace. It is revealed in season three that the alliance actually only lasted mere minutes, as Harp threw Chesterfield off of the cliffs they were last seen standing upon.
  • In season three, Lord Fisher offers Harp the chance to resume working for the HBC if he will testify to the company about Lord Benton's actions. Harp predictably tells Fisher that he will never work for the company again, but Fisher still offers him a Mercy Lead after he kills Benton.
• Establishing Character Moment: The series opens with Declan executing three prisoners with a knife, then letting a fourth run back to Fort James to let them know who did it.
• Eternally Pearly-White Teeth: Averted. The European characters in particular are suffering from a lack of dental hygiene.
• Excrement Statement: After Imogen has just had sex with a handsome English sailor in his bunk, she comes across her deposed former master Lord Benton locked up in a cell on the ship. He pleads for her to help him escape, but instead she urinates in front of him as retaliation for all the abuses she previously suffered from him.
• Faux Affably Evil: Benton is able to put on a show of being charming when he wants to but it’s all an act
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Michael is this from the Hudson Bay Fur Company’s perspective
• Get It Over With: After finally killing Benton, Harp tells Lord Fisher to have his men finally end it. Fisher in turns gives Harp a "head start" in return for getting rid of Benton.
• Harmful to Minors: When Harp kills two bounty hunters that tracked him down in the far north, the little Inuk child he had been staying with comes around the corner just in time to see the final killing blow. Harp is distraught when he realizes that she saw it.
• Hate Sink: Lord Benton consolidates all of the vices and character flaws that the other villains have individually. He is greedy, brutal, crude, gluttonous, classist, and self-centered. Eventually he is deposed by his own men because even they cannot tolerate him anymore.
• Husky Russkie: The Russian Bounty Hunter known as 'the Siberian' is the biggest person in the entire series, towering over even the large Declan Harp.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: At the tense standoff between the Black Wolf traders and Cobbs Pond, Clenna accidentally shoots Wahush when he ran up to warn everybody that redcoats were approaching.
• Indian Maiden: Sokanon is a native Cree warrior and tracker in the Black Wolf gang, conventionally attractive, and becomes an eventual love interest for the Irish immigrant Michael Smythe (following in the footsteps of her late sister, who married the half-Irish Declan Harp).
• Intimate Healing: While Michael and Sokanon are tracking a hunter through the winter woods so he will lead them to their boss, they have to stop for a moment when he builds a campfire. They can't build a fire themselves because the smoke would give them away, so she tells him to cuddle up to her for warmth. Doubles as a Ship Tease.
• In with the In Crowd: When Samuel Grant sees that a French Marquis is taken with the cleaned-up Clenna, he recruits her to help him secure an exclusive trade deal. To do so, he and Cobbs Pond train her in the proper styles and behavior of a high-class woman to pass her off as a lady. She agreed for a promise to return her to London afterwards, and for the immediate pleasure of a nice warm bed and hot food after working the Carruthers factory.
• Just Between You and Me: After spending several days torturing Declan Harp to death for his rebellion, Lord Benton decides to gloat about having his wife and son murdered to "teach him a lesson", including a salient detail that Harp didn't know yet: his wife was pregnant.
• Killed Offscreen: Chesterfield, after an implied truce with Harp standing on a cliff at the end of Season 2. He dies offscreen, as Harp reveals at the beginning of Season 3 he immediately threw Chesterfield off said cliff.
• Kissing Cousins: During dinner Captain Chesterfield tells Grace that he used to lust after his cousin when she was bethrothed to another man. His father marked him with a hot iron after finding out that he sneaked into her bedchambers one time.
• Lack of Empathy: Benton barely seems to register other people exist, let alone have feelings apart from his wants.
• Language Barrier: Declan Harp stays with an Inuit father and daughter for a while at the beginning of season 2, but they can communicate only through a very few shared words because Harp does not speak Inuktitut. Leads to an ironic moment after a story that the father tells the girl about revenge being cyclical and that the only way to break the circle of revenge is with forgiveness.
  Declan: "I bet it's a good story."
• Love Cannot Overcome: Michael allows himself to be dragooned into Benton's war against Harp for the sake of Clenna, and when she is brought to Fort James as leverage he hopes to rescue her and live off the land with Harp's band. Clenna, however, cannot tolerate the hard life in the wild and plans to return to London at the first opportunity. When Michael refuses to return to London and Clenna refuses to go into the woods, they go their separate ways.
• Madonna-Whore Complex: The owners of the Alehouse have to get Captain Johnson in a compromising position with one of the tavern girls in order to blackmail him. The problem is that he's a deeply Christian man, so Imogen taking the direct "whore" approach just leads to Johnson getting annoyed and telling her to leave. Mary instead tries the "madonna" tactic by presenting herself as a religious girl who finds herself tempted by bodily sin. This proves a lot more successful.
• Marriage of Convenience: Mrs. Carruthers needs a new husband to be the official face of her fur trading business, since she is unlikely to be taken seriously as an independent businesswoman in the 18th century. She uses her influence to get the Brown brothers released from prison after they were arrested on trumped-up charges, on the condition that one of them (she doesn't care which) agree to a platonic marriage. This later becomes a Perfectly Arranged Marriage.
• Manly Tears: Declan crying about his wife and son.
• MegaCorp: The Hudson Bay Company (Formally The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay) is a Real Life example. It was functionally the government for large swathes of North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the power to exploit the land and legal authority to enact laws and wage war. The commanders of the English forces in the series are not government figures, but persons of authority within the company.
• Mercy Lead: Lord Fisher offers Harp a head start before deploying his men out of gratitude for Harp finally killing Benton.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Imogen was perfectly willing to spy on the Alehouse for Lord Benton, but after he pointlessly threatens her (After she gave him good information) she switches her allegiance to the Alehouse.
• My Eyes Are Up Here: At one point Mary has to remind the drunk town priest to keep his gaze focused on her face instead of her cleavage. He finds her blue eyes no less beautiful.
• The Mole: Imogen is serving as a spy for Lord Benton in the Alehouse under threat of death. That is, until he pointlessly threatens her and she switches her loyalties to the Alehouse in truth.
• Naïve Newcomer: Michael Smyth spent his entire life in London and is completely unprepared for any sort of life in the wild. When Harp's band first captures him they frequently talk about how unprepared and ill-suited he is. Several months later when Clenna arrives at the fort and Michael wants to rescue her, Sokanon argues that an ignorant Irishwoman like her wouldn't be able to survive, but Michael retorts that he survived.
• Not What I Signed on For: The Black Wolf know that Harp wants revenge against the HBC, and they're happy to see the HBC's control of the region broken, but they want to see that as a result of their own fur trading activities, not the reason why they're trading. When Harp begins to assist their fur trading competition by brokering peace instead of letting them destroy each other, Dimanche and the rest of the Black Wolf leave.
• Pet the Dog: Cobbs Pond sticks up for Clenna when Grant accuses her of giving Major Vinnicome evidence that Grant did business with Michael Smythe, and also treats her with more courtesy and respect
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything:
  • The Black Wolf are supposed to be a fur trapping/trading group, but they spend most of their time on Harp's personal vendetta against Lord Benton and the HBC. Eventually Dimanche and the majority of its members leave the outfit when they realize that Harp is more focused on leading a revolution than a business.
  • In the second season Michael is determined to hold the Black Wolf together and recognizes that they need to actually engage in the fur trade to do so, but he also recognizes that he isn't actually a good fur trapper. So, falling back on his long history as a street thief, he organizes a heist of Fort James.
  • Apart from praying (poorly) at a funeral and giving a prisoner his last rites, Father James Coffin never does anything at all related to his profession as a priest, despite talking incessantly about his "mission". Within hours of meeting him, Michael sees Coffin get drunk from ale, pick another customer's pocket to pay for his drink, and flirt with the barmaid, finally prompting Michael to ask Coffin point blank if he's even a real priest.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Grace and later Imogen try to control Chesterfield by appealing to his "orderly" and "professional" nature to curb the excesses of the base. Grace persuades him to turn against Lord Benton when Benton's vendetta undermines the profits of the HBC, and Imogen gets him to stop the use of sex slaves when she points out the benefits that come from willing working women.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Samuel Grant gives the impression of being a calm captain of industry, but he is prone to Tantrum Throwing at the slightest inconvenience and goes into violent-yet-childish rages when insulted. He ultimately beats Elizabeth Carruthers to death in a crying rage while screaming "I am a good man" after she points out how his actions all show how pathetic he is.
• Reckless Gun Usage: When Clenna is traveling with Cobbs Pond in the woods she is scared about a potential bear attack. To reassure her, Cobbs has one of their french accompaniments pass over his rifle, which he cocks and passes to her with only the admonition that she not point it at him. At the later tense standoff, she accidentally shoots someone when startled.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Most of Harp's supporters in the Black Wolf leave en masse in the middle of the first season after it becomes clear that he is more focused on starting a rebellion against the HBC than engaging in the fur trade.
• Sex Sells: After noticing that the French Marquis has taken a liking to the cleaned-up Clenna, Samuel Grant recruits her to help him persuade the Marquis to sign an exclusive deal with his fur supply. Clenna explicitly states that she will not do anything sexual with the Marquis, but with the promise of being returned to London she agrees to accompany him at dinner and be generally pleasant company.
• Sex Slave: When Chesterfield tries to get under Grace's skin by turning the Alehouse into a brothel, the quartermaster starts bringing in kidnapped native women. Imogen argues against this by pointing out that it makes this more difficult all the way around, and willing women are safer for all concerned.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Clenna is very attractive beneath all the dirt and grime of low-class living, which Elizabeth Carruthers notices when she is working in her factory (Literally saying "I bet you clean up well"). She has Clenna washed and given new clothing as part of a gambit against Samuel Grant. Afterwards, Samuel Grant decides to use her right back, and brings her into his house to instruct her on all the proper mannerisms so she can more fully impersonate a high-class lady.
• Shoot the Messenger: When an HBC soldier escapes from Harp and brings word of his approach to Benton, Benton has him killed for his troubles.
• Shown Their Work: All of the clothes, furs, and styles are period correct. Especially the Métis flag seen in the opening credits. Knowing it exists(and the Métis do) is big enough, but also having it be the historic red instead of the current blue is huge (The reason it is red is that the cloth they bought, from the HBC, was only available in red or tartan at the time)
• Side Bet: Cobbs Pond and Samuel Grant make a bet on whether or not they will succeed in turning Clenna into a lady so that they can get a deal with a French Marquis. Cobbs wins when Clenna pulls it off.
• Smoke Out: How Declan disappears in the season one finale, in gunpowder flavor.
• Smug Snake: Captain Chesterfield is both quite arrogant and desperate for recognition while scheming to become the Governor of Fort James. While he eventually succeeds at that specific goal, many of his other schemes fail due to his own bumbling leadership. It's also clear that Lord Benton, while no less arrogant than his former subordinate, is a far more cunning threat, forcing Chesterfield into an eventual Enemy Mine with Declan Harp.
• The Starscream: Captain Chesterfield spends the first season plotting against his boss Lord Benton in the hopes of taking over his position as governor of Fort James. He tells himself that Benton isn't qualified to run the Fort, but he also admits that his own ambition is a driving factor as well.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: The cabin boy Chaulk is actually a girl in disguise. Her family was desperate for money back home in England and this was the only form of work she could find.
• Taking the Bullet: When Lord Benton tried to shoot Harp as he was freeing himself from the hangman's noose, Father Cahill ran forward to stop Benton and (Accidentally?) took the bullet instead.
• Tantrum Throwing: When Samuel Grant is curtly rejected by a successful fur trader who tells him point blank that he doesn't need Grant's help at all, Grant starts throwing around stuff from his desk like a spoiled child who has just been told "no" for the first time.
• Tattooed Crook: The Siberian has facial tattoos that one character notes means he's done time in prison.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: When Chesterfield turns the Alehouse into a brothel while Grace is in Montreal, Imogen uses her own body to distract the lecherous patrons from the innocent Mary and stops the use of sex slaves by persuading Chesterfield that willing women are better. When Grace returns, however, all she sees is that Imogen returned to whoring and helped fill the Alehouse with more prostitutes. Mary herself is bitter over the way that Imogen seems to have used the situation to her advantage. With both of them spurning her, Imogen decides that she might as well really ally herself with Chesterfield against Grace, and stops running interference for Mary.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In the second season finale, Elizabeth Carruthers absolutely eviscerates Samuel Grant in private by pointing out how all of his actions just highlight his inadequacy in life.
  "Oh, you are an insignificant man."
• Token Evil Teammate: Cobbs is this during the second half of season 3; he does become genuinely fond of Michael and Malcolm but he’s still more than willing to help frame Vanstone to save them
• Took a Level in Badass: Michael starts out as a hapless schmuck who only survives the crossing to the new world because Benton decides to use him as a weapon against Harp. By season 3 he’s grown savvy enough to negotiate with multiple dangerous factions as an equal and is treated as a dangerous suspect by the Hudson Bay Company.
• Too Dumb to Live: Elizabeth Caruthers. After having Cobbs Pond arrested and revealing that she knows his secrets Elizabeth, knowing full well that he has had or has killed several people just for competing with him stays behind, alone in Samuel Grants home and taunts him about it, complete with calling him inadaquate ((see above)), it's not surprising that she ends up being killed by him for her troubles.
• "Wanted!" Poster: In season 2 Declan Harp has a bounty of 200 pounds placed on his head, attracting various bounty hunters to Fort James. Grace tries several avenues of getting the bounty lifted, but the continued presence of the posters shows that she never quite succeeds.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Mr. Carruthers is killed off in the same episode he's introduced when he refuses a business offer from Samuel Grant and is subsequently murdered on Grant's orders. His late wife Mrs. Carruthers and her continuous rivalry with the Grant company for control of the fur trade in Montreal are far more significant to the plot.
• Working with the Ex: Sokanon and Wahush were promised to each other before she left to join Harp's band. When the Black Wolves need Wahush's canoes to transport their stolen furs, Sokanon's new relationship with Michael complicates things as Wahush explicitly still wants her back.
• You Have Failed Me: Benton enacts cruel — and often self-defeating — punishments on his subordinates that he views as having failed or betrayed him. He has one HBC redcoat executed because he managed to escape Harp alive.
• You Killed My Father: Declan Harp's desire for revenge against Lord Benton is because the latter had his wife and son murdered.

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