Series / Under the Banner of Heaven

Uncover buried truths.

Under the Banner of Heaven is a 2022 True Crime miniseries on FX and Hulu based on the book of the same name by Jon Krakauer. It is written by Dustin Lance Black and directed by David Mackenzie.

In a small Utah town in 1984, young Mormon mother Brenda Lafferty (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and her 15-month-old daughter Erica are brutally murdered. Detective Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield) and Detective Bill Taba (Gil Birmingham) are tasked with investigating it and bringing those responsible to justice. Along the way, he dives deep into the Lafferty family Brenda married into (Billy Howle, Wyatt Russell, Sam Worthington) and finds his faith shaken as he uncovers more and more disturbing details, including ones that tie into the very founding of the Church of Latter-Day Saints itself.

The story is told through Jeb's investigation, Allen's accounts of his family's history, and flashbacks to the early history of the Mormons with Joseph Smith.

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Tropes in this series include:

• Abusive Parents: Endemic in the Lafferty family:
  • Ammon Lafferty beats the family dog to death with a baseball bat in front of all his sons for not finishing their chores. Ron describes times in the past when Ammon beat his wife and his children. Perhaps most horrifyingly, when his son Jacob had appendicitis, Ammon denied him medical care, resulting in permanent brain damage to Jacob. Ammon also publicly gave lashings with his belt to his adult son Dan in front of a group of people and got into a fistfight with Ron.
  • Ron Lafferty is not shown physically abusing his children, but he hits his wife Dianna in front of his children. His children are terrified of him, hiding when he comes home.
  • Dan Lafferty intends on marrying his 14-year-old and 12-year-old stepdaughters by "consummation", invoking an unholy trinity of Lecherous Stepparent, And Now You Must Marry Me and Marital Rape License. Their mother Matilda helps them escape before this happens.
• Accomplice by Inaction: Multiple members of the Lafferty's community are guilty of this, including Bishop Low and his wife who knew about Dan's attempt to marry his stepdaughters but didn't inform the authorities. Jeb becomes visibly frustrated when he hears this.
• Alliterative Family: Sam and Sara's kids are Jacob, Jarod, Joseph, Junior, and Jenny.
• Artistic License – Geography: BYU (Brigham Young University) is in Provo, not Salt Lake City. This is basically a Utah variant of Britain Is Only London: acting like the biggest city in a country/state is the only city.
• Artistic License – History:
  • Enforced Trope. For time constraint reasons, the history flashbacks had to be cut way, way down. There's just no room to be both accurate and hit the key details all within such short snippets.
    Consultant interview: When we shot the historical stuff — and I was there for all the historical — it was a lot more expansive, rich, and meatier. We had to cut it down so much into clips that we took shortcuts that — as a historian and researcher — makes me deeply uncomfortable.
  • Insinuations that Brigham Young orchestrated Joseph Smith's death. There's plenty of evidence Brigham Young used Joseph Smith's death as an opportunity to grab power. However, there's no evidence Brigham Young orchestrated his death. He was an Opportunistic Bastard, not The Usurper. Then again, these insinuations are coming from Allen Lafferty, a paranoiac who blames the church for his wife's death, so they should likely be taken with a grain of salt anyway.
• As the Good Book Says...: Mormon variant.
  Jeb: Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else. Doctrine and Covenants, 42:22.
• Attempted Rape: Dan Lafferty intends on marrying his 14-year-old and 12-year-old stepdaughters by consummation. Their mother Matilda helps them escape before this happens.
• Audience Surrogate: Due to Bill Taba being one of the only non-Mormon characters in the setting, he frequently needs to have things relating to the religion explained to him.
• Bad People Abuse Animals:
  Allen: Y'know, once, Ron got this mutt for his birthday. Oh gosh, he loved that dog. One day, my dad came home from giving a blessing to a sick neighbor, and my brothers hadn't done their chores. So he got us all to stand in a circle. Then he called the dog into the center. And he picked up Ron's own baseball bat — the metal kind — and he beat that dog to death. To teach us boys a lesson about responsibility, about our rightful place.
• Beard of Evil: The only detail Allen gives at first about the men threatening his family is that they were bearded like "old-timey Mormons" which should make them stand out in the community since modern Mormon men are supposed to be clean-shaven. Also a notable aversion of Suspect Is Hatless because it does make them identifiable.
  Jeb: I don't doubt you saw plenty of beards when you were in Vegas, but here the Church vigorously discourages them, so it could be meaningful.
• Because Destiny Says So:
  • Matilda confides in Brenda that this was why she married Dan. She heard the voice of God telling her to do so, and Dan claimed to have heard the same. She begins to doubt if it was God she actually heard and if Dan actually heard him too.
  • Ron had the School of the Prophets bet their money on a horse, basing on vision he claimed to have received. Of course, they lost everything.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Lafferty family. Between a tyrannical and abusive patriarch, a submissive mother and sons immersing more and more into fundamentalist and anti-government beliefs, it's no wonder Brenda said Allen he should cut any link with them.
• Buddy Cop Show: When the case breaks the police chief is away at Yellowstone and not due back for another week, leaving Detectives Taba and Pyre to handle it together with (it's implied) less direction that they'd typically have. The two of them have different views and butt heads sometimes, but become closer over the course of the case.
• Cain and Abel: Jeb realizes that Ron and Dan both think they are the true prophet and will feel the need to eliminate the other. Ultimately it's Ron who makes the first move to try and kill Dan before he's interrupted.
• Can't Take Criticism: When the Lafferty family chiropractic business is struggling, Dan rejects any suggestions to improve things, including using their father's trusted treatments instead of new ones, offering discounts to patients, or calling their father for help.
• Censored Child Death: We never directly see Erica's body, just the police's reactions to it. The most graphic depiction given is a shot of a smashed porcelain figurine of a baby with the head broken off, which gives Jeb a flashback to seeing Erica's body.
• Change the Uncomfortable Subject: Pyre asks his bishop about blood atonement. The bishop brushes this question off. What the show does not make clear is that it's a Justified Trope. A Mormon bishop is a lay clergyman, meaning a member of the congregation whose role as bishop is a part-time and unpaid. Unlike a Catholic bishop, a Mormon bishop is not trained as a theologian — he's just a guy who's volunteering at his church. One side effect of this arrangement is that bishops are often underprepared for their roles. People can come to their bishops with any problem they're having in their life. In this scene, Jeb comes in and asks his bishop questions that might be better addressed to a historian and pharmacologist.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Brenda was driven to try and help all of her sisters-in-law with their abusive husbands, which naturally infuriated those husbands and led to Ron and Dan deciding that she had to die.
• The Clan: The Lafferty family. It's telling that when Jeb is asked by someone about the murders it's phrased as wondering if "a Lafferty" was hurt.
• Close to Home: The murder of 15-month-old Erica is particularly disturbing to Jeb, who is a devoted father of two young daughters, Annie and Caroline.
• Conspiracy Theorist: The entire Lafferty clan has some strong anti-federal government beliefs simmering under the surface.
• Converting for Love: Missionaries are not allowed to date on their mission. Returning afterwards and getting together with someone you met during that time is technically allowed, but considered… iffy. Ron and Dianna, and Dan and Matilda, both met that way.
• Corporal Punishment: Ammon beats his adult son Dan with a belt, and Ron beats his own hand with a belt.
• Cowboy Cop: Played with in that Jeb and Bill both consider each other to be the Cowboy since Bill finds Jeb overly concerned about following Mormon social norms at the expense of investigative standard procedures and Jeb doesn't like how Bill ignores them.
• Crisis of Faith:
  • Jeb is increasingly hit with this the deeper he dives into the Lafferty double-murder case. Even to the point where he asks his wife to hold off on their daughters' baptism. By the end of episode 6, his faith in the church has broken completely.
  • Allen lost his faith a few weeks before Brenda's murder, after living through the dysfunctional Lafferty family and learning about the history of his church.
• Daddy's Girl: One reoccurring theme is that many Mormon fathers with daughters are, at minimum, less traditionalist (like Brenda's father), or outright skeptical (like Allen and Jeb).
  Allen: Things change when you have kids, y'know, and the things you used to ignore, they get under your skin. Especially if you have girls. You want the best for 'em. And I could not see how the best for my little girl was being caught up in a church that would force her to make covenants to obey all men for the rest of her life. (Beat.) Do you have daughters?
• Deadly Euphemism: Dan and Ron refer to their crimes as "removals".
• Defiant to the End: Brenda managed to get a "The Reason You Suck" Speech against Dan and Ron before they killed her.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Bernard Brady, Ron's fellow in the School of the Prophets, knew about his hit list, but instead of going to the police about it, he chose to write a notarized affidavit and send it to himself so that if Ron and Dan ever acted on their plans, he would have evidence that he himself was opposed to them. Throughout his time assisting Pyre and Taba, he constantly prioritizes covering his own ass from prosecution, much to their annoyance.
  • In the finale, Sam tries to kidnap Matilda and drag her back to Dan, only to flee when Dianna yells at him and Matilda slaps him.
• The Dog Bites Back: Ron's mistreatment and neglect of the infirm Ammon, which eventually results in his death, comes off as this due to Ammon's repeated abuses of his own sons, especially since Ammon refused to get medical care for Jacob.
• Domestic Abuse: Ron physically abuses his wife Dianna, while Dan is the more emotionally abusive type to his wife Matilda. It is implied Ammon abused his wife as well.
• Don't Make Me Take My Belt Off!: Ammon strikes Dan (who is an adult!) with his belt after finding out the hole Dan has got them in for not paying his taxes.
• Dork Horse Candidate: How Dan's campaign for Sheriff is viewed by everyone outside of Dan's inner circle. Him having zero law enforcement experience and openly talking about making the police virtually powerless if he wins doesn't do him any favors. Once he gets arrested after the police chase he ends up removed from the ballot.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • After initially refusing to cooperate with Pyre and Taba, Robin is horrified when he learns that his brothers murdered Brenda and Erica and immediately gives the detectives information about Dan's beef with the bishop and stake president.
  • The FLDS sect of Mormonism is not liked by the rest of the Mormon community for their extreme fundamentalism and questionable practices. When Jeb learns that Robin and Dan visited them once, he's quick to point out that they will be excommunicated from the church if anyone finds out.
  • The School of the Prophet refused the "revelation" about their hit list against Brenda and all those who helped Dianna to escape. Onias specifically told Dan and Ron they're off their rockers.
• Evil Is Petty: The horrific violence and drama at the center of the show is incited by tax evasion and a failing chiropractic business
• Family Versus Career:
  • The Lafferty family is horrified by the idea that Brenda wants to finish college and have a career as a journalist in addition to marrying and having children.
  • In exchange for cutting his brothers out of their lives, Allen asked Brenda to stay at home and have a baby.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Jeb and Bill become this over the course of the show after having an initially very frosty relationship. The turning point seems to be the aftermath of the shootout at the cabin. It's further cemented at the end of Episode 4, when Pyre explicitly states to the press that he believes fundamental Mormonism might be at the root of the crime, despite the police chief (who is very much of the mindset of trying not to offend the Church) warning him not to.
• The Fundamentalist:
  • Compared to Jeb's and Brenda's fairly modern Mormon families, the Lafferty clan adheres to a much stricter and more fundamentalist form of Mormonism. The FLDS community is also brought up as an extreme example.
  • Onias is another example, thinking the LDS Church needs and deserves being purged by the "One Mighty and Strong" to return to beliefs such as plural marriage and the exclusion of blacks from priesthood.
  • During his road trip, Ron meets more relaxed fundamentalists, open to fun.
• Generational Trauma: The series is based on the notorious Lafferty murders of The '80s in which a pair of fanatical Mormons murdered the wife and daughter of their estranged brother. It aims to examine how the two killers were shaped by their abusive religious family and how the entire Latter-Day Saints movement has never really gotten over the death of its first prophet, Joseph Smith. The causes of that are the turbulent power struggle that followed and the 1890 capitulation to the US government, which made Mormons subject to the laws of the United States, even when those laws conflicted with their religious beliefs. They officially ended the practices of plural marriage and blood atonement within the main church, causing the schism that produced most of the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints sects. It's also relevant to the Lafferty case, as Ron and Dan Lafferty kill their sister-in-law Brenda as "blood atonement" after she "fornicated" by helping their wives leave them after she found out that Ron and Dan were planning to take children as other wives. (For usage of the term "fornication", see Viewers Are Geniuses.)
• Gone Horribly Right: After Dan's failed efforts to defy the tax laws nearly got their business shut down, an aggravated Ammon urged him to re-acquaint himself with the sacred texts, presumably hoping that Dan would become more familiar with the faith's admonitions to obey the laws and be a good example. Dan took it much further, seeking out a copy of The Peace Maker and falling down the rabbit hole that is the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Jeb does not swear because he's a good Mormon.
  Bill: Okay, then I'm gonna take a quick walk in these woods, see if I can find those furry sons of guns who ripped this place to shit — uh, bits.
  Jeb: (slightly amused) Thank you.
• Happily Married: Jeb and his wife Rebecca, although it's strained by Jeb's faith crisis.
• Harem Seeker: A very dark example. Dan wants to marry his 12 and 14 year old stepdaughters, but Matilda helps them escape first.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Ron and Dan's whole scheme relies on convincing their suggestible followers that they're receiving directives from God. This backfires when they send Robin to Vegas to bet on a particular horse in order to get money to continue their killings. Adrift in a "sinful" city, the pious Robin prays for guidance, and that guidance tells him to bet on a different horse, causing him to lose a lot of money. Things fall apart even further when Dan suddenly starts getting guidance from God telling him that Ron has completed his tasks as a prophet, and that it's time for him to become a martyr.
• Holier Than Thou: When first meeting Brenda, several of the Lafferty brothers imply that Mormons at Brigham Young Unversity or from Idaho are less pious than the Lafferty family. Later, when one of Dan's chiropractic patients walks out of his appointment because he disliked the treatments, Dan says that the problem is that the patient wasn't prayerful enough.
• Hot for Student: Brenda's professor was clearly into her, but Brenda doesn't put up with it for a second and calls him out on how he only locks the door to the broadcast room when he's alone with a female student.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Ammon has a feud with his neighbor, yet marshals his family to clear the man's field when it falls under threat from outsiders.
  Ammon: Our old neighbor and I have had our feuds, earthly and spiritual. With no family left to call on, he's come asking for forgiveness and deliverance. And I told him forgiveness is not mine to give, but deliverance, well... We are Laffertys. Much of his land remains filled with stones, but he's been notified it must be made suitable for planting by Monday or the federal government will take what is rightfully his to build a highway. Yes, the Lord's saints may disagree with one another, but when we are attacked by outsiders, do we allow our brothers to be eaten alive? Never.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Ammon very deliberately chose Dan instead of his eldest son Ron to be in charge of the business while he was on his mission due to believing Ron had strayed from their faith. Things are noticeably frosty between father and son during the scene where this is announced and they don't exchange a single word.
• Improvised Weapon: Brenda was strangled with the cord from a nearby vacuum.
• I Reject Your Reality: When the Lafferty family chiropractic business struggles after Ammon and his wife leave on a mission trip, Dan rejects the possibility that patients have stopped coming because they preferred his father's treatments or no longer have the expendable income during the economic downturn in the 80s. Instead, he decides that it's all a religious test and that their problems are the fault of the federal government.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Ammon going after Dan for his behavior at the parade, even if Ammon himself is the ultimate cause of it.
• Lecherous Stepparent: Dan intends on marrying his 14-year-old and 12-year-old stepdaughters by "consummation".
• Lysistrata Gambit: Threatened, though not actually carried out. When Jeb tries to make a unilateral decision about getting their daughters baptized, his wife hits back with this.
  Rebecca: I acknowledge and accept that you are indeed the man of this house, and as such you are our priesthood holder. But don't you ever forget it's me who chooses when or if I ever hold your priesthood again.
• Madness Mantra: At one point, desperate for guidance for what to do about his mounting legal problems, Dan starts chanting "I will go anywhere, I will do anything!" over and over, with increased fervor. His family starts chanting it, too.
• Make an Example of Them:
  • In the flashbacks to the early history of the Mormon church, a local rancher shoots a dog owned by one of Joseph Smith's followers after the dog eats one of his sheep, as a warning to Joseph Smith and his followers to abide by local, earthly law. This is connected to a flashback of Ammon Lafferty beating Bob the family dog to death with a baseball bat as a punishment for the Lafferty children failing to complete their chores.
  • In the finale, Bill recounts the Paiute's short-lived alliance with the Mormons, where the Mormons enlisted the Paiutes to help them defend against an "invasion" by Gentiles. In reality, the "invaders" were just a large family of settlers heading for California, and the Mormons chose to slaughter them in the hopes of deterring any other settlers from moving through Utah.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: The Lafferty family is so large it requires a diagram to parse out. There are six Lafferty brothers (Ron, Dan, Robin, Sam, Jacob, and Allan), their wives, and most have at least five children of their own.
• Meet the In-Laws: In episode 2, Brenda brings her boyfriend Allen home to meet her family at Christmas before they get engaged. Her father has a bad feeling about Allen, for reasons he struggles to articulate. Allen tries to do fireworks to win over Brenda's younger siblings… and ends up setting a tree on fire.
• Moment of Lucidity: Jeb's mother Josie has dementia, but she has occasional moments where she feels like her old self to Jeb.
  Jeb: I just still — I... I get these moments with her, Becca, these moments of real clarity, and — and — and she's still there, when we go for a walk, or when we talk at night. And I'm just concerned that these medications are just gonna… take away anything that's left.
• Momma's Boy: Jeb is shown to have a very close relationship with his elderly mother, who lives with him and his family throughout the series. In fact, the very last scene shows the two enjoying each other's company.
• Murder by Inaction: Ron deliberately refused to get Ammon proper medical care which eventually resulted in his death. Doubles as Death by Irony since Ammon himself refused to get his son Jacob medical care which resulted in permanent brain damage.
• Never My Fault: Dan's biggest flaw is to always redirect blame on someone else, often blaming people for not being pious enough.
• Old Man Marrying a Child:
  • The FLDS community that Dan and Robin visit is based on this.
  • Dan intends on marrying his 14-year-old and 12-year-old stepdaughters by "consummation", invoking an unholy trinity of Lecherous Stepparent, And Now You Must Marry Me and Marital Rape License.
  • Onias, an associate of Dan and Ron, brings three teenage girls from a FLDS community in Canada to their hideout in Utah.
• Original Character: The characters are mostly Historical Domain Characters, or Roman à Clef versions of them (a couple less-central Lafferty brothers had their names changed). However, Jeb Pyre or Bill Taba are fictional characters. There are two reasons given for this. One, the director interviewed an actual investigator who worked on the case, and he did not want to be depicted on screen and have to re-live it. Two, from a structural standpoint the story needed Audience Surrogates, and so such characters were created. Through Jeb we learn about the case; through Bill we learn about the Mormon community. However, it ended up being zigzagged. Once the outline of Jeb's character was in place, actor Andrew Garfield was put in contact with a real-life cop who worked on a different case, and the actor shaped his character around that man's true story.
  Consultant interview: A police officer in Utah County and he's still a working officer [...] and he is mainstream orthodox Latter-Day Saint but he is an atheist because he had worked on a case kind of similar to the one that you see Jeb working on. So I'd put Andrew in touch with him early on. This man refuses to be acknowledged, partially because he's a working cop, and also because his wife is very, very devout and she doesn't even know that he consulted on the show — that's how fraught this is for him. And so Andrew working with him, it became foundational, this cop's story.
• Our Nudity Is Different: While "garments" (Mormon underwear) cover much of the body, it's still underwear, and seeing someone in only their underwear is still an embarrassing social situation to be in.
• The Patriarch: Ammon Lafferty, who leaves his chiropractic business in the hands of his sons while he and his wife go on a mission to Louisiana. Even when he's not physically present his sons feel his influence in every scene.
• Patricide: Ron let his father Ammon die because he wanted to led the family.
• Plot Parallel: The 1980s events are paralleled to various 1800s events in Mormon history.
  • Brenda's parents didn't love Allen, yet he married her anyway. Likewise, Emma's parents weren't fans of Joseph, yet they married anyway.
    Allen: I'm not the first man in history to not be well-liked by his father-in-law. Isaac Hale, he was Emma's father. He thought Joseph was a con man. So when Joseph asked Emma to marry him… If Joseph had put her father's words above God's, would you have your one true church? When I met my wife, my testimony was strong. So I refused to let her father's opinion sway me.
  • The detectives are dealing with people holed up in a cabin on a mountainside. This resembles the Haun's Mill massacre in Missouri, 1838. During an attack on a Mormon settlement, people fled into a blacksmith's shop which had gaps between the logs that made up the walls. The barrels of guns were put through those gaps and shot those inside. Jeb realizes the parallelism, and works to make it a Defied Trope and de-escalate the situation.
    Jeb: In Sam's mind, with our guns all pointing at him, we are those militiamen.
• Politically Incorrect Villain:
  • Dan describes his belief in the "original" Constitution (i.e. itself and the Bill of Rights without the subsequant amendments), not being bothered by Brenda asking him whether it also include the 13th amendment banning slavery.
  • Later, Onias describes Black people as the spawns of Satan born from the devil inseminating beasts with his seed, decrying the LDS Church's decision to give them the priesthood.
• Poor Communication Kills: In "One Mighty and Strong", Bernard Brady suggests that Ron's descent into fundamentalism might have been avoided if someone had just told him that Dan was excommunicated for attempting to marry his stepdaughters. He posits that Ron truly believed that the Church excommunicated Dan to appease the federal government, and that this perception of a church more concerned with politics than principles drove him over the edge.
• Precision F-Strike: Pyre (previously adhering to Gosh Dang It to Heck!) finally loses his patience with Taba out in the desert, shouting "What the fuck?!" complete with thunderous echo.
• Promoted to Scapegoat: It's subtly implied that Ammon's "second mission", which sent him out of the country and resulted in him appointing Dan and Robin to take over his business, was not born out of pious fervor but a desire to let his two less-successful sons take the fall for his tax problems. It's notable that when the tax man shows up, he's looking for Ammon explicitly.
• Racist Grandma: At one point, after a discussion about baptism, Josie starts going off on a tangent about how the Jews need to be baptized or they'll all go to Hell.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Characters endlessly call each other "Brother [surname]" and "Sister [surname]". This is not the dialect or speech patterns of modern Mormons, and it's been criticized by many for being overdone. Other viewers, though, insist it's very accurate to 80s Utah, especially in small towns.
• "Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Ammon Lafferty gives one to his son Dan after Dan campaigns to be the local Sheriff while wearing a goofy costume and shouting anti-government nonsense in a local parade. Ammon calls him out for neglecting his devoted wife, having an overinflated ego, straying from Mormon religious beliefs by smoking and cavorting with another woman, and generally being a deadbeat, all while chasing away a crowd of various enablers and hangers-on.
  • Dianna gave one to Sam and the crowd after Sam came to try to get Matilda back, telling him and his brothers are nothing but rejects blaming others for their failures, and accusing the crowd of being cowards for not trying to rescue Matilda.
• Redemption Equals Death: As part of their foray into Mormon fundamentalism, the Lafferty brothers became acquainted with the doctrine of blood atonement, and it is soon invoked for the murders by Ron in his hit list.
• Roman à Clef: Things that were publicly reported on, the show kept — ie. the names of Lafferty brothers Dan, Ron, and Allen. For smaller roles, the show changed names to protect people's privacy. Brothers Jacob, Samuel and Robin's names in real-life were Thomas, Mark, Tim, and parents Ammon and Doreen was real-life Watson and Claudine.
• Sanity Slippage: Dan's increasingly erratic behavior as the series goes on, including leading police on a chase with his wife in the car which gets him arrested.
• Satanic Panic: Set in the mid 80s, this is suggested as a possible interpretation of this gruesome murder of a child, but then dismissed.
• Scatterbrained Senior: Jeb's mother has increasing symptoms of dementia, but with occasional lucid periods. At one point, she confuses the words "baptism" and "bath".
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Dan wants to run as a county councilor to allow himself to build an extension to his house without too much red tape; later, he run as sheriff to be able to nullify the tax laws he blames for his failing business.
• Second-Person Attack: When Taba approaches the cabin and looks through a hole into the house, the scene cuts to his viewpoint as a gun appears through the hole.
• Settle for Sibling: A sore point for Matilda is the fact that Dan was originally interested in her sister, so she wonders if he did this with her.
• Shower of Angst: After a long and brutal first night on the case, Jeb goes home and takes a shower. His wife joins in and comforts him, looking like she's trying to invoke Shower of Love. But the case has clearly taken a toll on him and he's not in the mood for sex, just a hug.
• Single Sex Offspring:
  • The Lafferty family has 6 children, all sons.
  • The Wright family, Brenda's family, has 5 daughters (Brenda + 3 younger sisters + 1 elder sister Betty) and 1 son.
• Sinister Minister: Ammon Lafferty isn't literally a minister, but serves as the spiritual and moral authority for his large family. There's a sinister, violently authoritarian edge to his religious guidance and parenting.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Dan sees nothing bad at repealing the Thirteenth Amendment, but viewers are expected to, and so Dan's casual dismissal of it is used to characterize him.
• Starts with Their Funeral: Begins with the police being called to investigate Brenda's murder, and then goes back, undercutting the investigation with the events leading up to this.
• Stay in the Kitchen: A major tenet of the Lafferty family's religious beliefs is that men and women have specified, pre-ordained roles, and women are destined only to serve their husbands. Ammon Lafferty and other members of the family are horrified when Brenda leaves the group of women making lemonade to help the men clear rocks from the neighbor's farmland. It becomes even worse once Dan gets hold of The Peace Maker, a 1843 pamphlet promoting polygamy.
  Robin: What's really important is that you find a woman who will help you build a family for eternity. I mean, that's — that's why we're here, right? Not — not for worldly ambitions.
• Stupid Evil: In contrast to his older brothers, who are fanatics but at least have the sense to not commit their crimes in public, Sam is a moron on a power trip who cheerfully gloats about Brenda's death and who thought it would be a brilliant idea to try and kidnap Matilda in broad daylight.
• Take That!:
  • The show critiques Mormon fundamentalism, showing it as a toxic way of life that puts immense pressure on men to provide for their families, belittles women into being submissive and serving their husbands, and is inherently hypocritical due to its preaching of caring for the community when it does anything but.
  • Libertarianism is not portrayed in a positive light, either. The Laffertys' (especially Dan's) strong anti-government views are shown as being backward and just another sign of how unlikable they are.
• Teasing Parent: Flashbacks show Jim Wright challenging his daughter Brenda when she announces her intention to go to Salt Lake City for college, pushing her to give reasons for why she wants to go there rather than somewhere closer to home. When she makes her arguments, he then announces that her room is up for grabs for her younger sisters.
• The Theocracy: The LDS Church is depicted as having a lot of power, with bishop and stake presidents being able to interviene in police investigation or managing parallel welfare system for battered spouses.
• Throat-Slitting Gesture: The endowment before Brenda's and Allen's wedding includes this, symbolizing that they'd sooner die than betray the secrecy of the temple. This particular oath was removed from LDS practice in 1990, but it would've been part of Brenda and Allen's wedding in the early 80s.
  Temple Worker: Names, signs, and penalties, which you will receive in the temple this day, are most sacred, and are guarded by solemn covenants and obligations of secrecy, to the effect that under no condition, even at the peril of your life, will you ever divulge them. (He gestures for them to stand up and leads them in Throat-Slitting Gesture.)
• Tragic Stillbirth: It's mentioned that Jeb's wife has had three stillbirths or miscarriages (it's not entirely clear which). It's brought up by the wife of a church leader who reminds her she'll be reunited with her children in Heaven, and is clearly a threat to kick the family out of their church community if they continue asking too many questions. This is especially sinister because Mormons believe that they can only live with their family forever in heaven if they are full members of the church.
• Twofer Token Minority: Bill Taba is acutely aware that he's a Southern Paiute man and a non-Mormon in an Utah community that's mostly white Mormons.
• Unusual Euphemism: When telling Jeb he better not pull rank on her again, his wife Rebecca tells him that she decides when she holds his priesthood.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: The brothers call Brenda a "fornicator." Brenda did not cheat on her husband, nor does anyone mistakenly think she did. The Laffertys are using "fornication" to mean "disobedience." To an average viewer, this seems pretty off the wall—Insane Troll Logic, or perhaps the old trope of condemning women by accusing them of sexual misconduct, used reflectively without actually thinking it through. Someone who's well-versed in Mormon fundamentalism will know this draws upon the teachings of the real-life Prophet Onias (Bob Crossfield) and The Peace Maker pamphlet. According to The Peace Maker, the sexual misconduct definition is what fornication means for single people; for married people, it means transgressing against their spouse.
  Sam: She disobeyed her husband... and me... and God's chosen men. That's fornication. That's fornication!
• Windmill Crusader: Dan Lafferty comes to the conclusion that a lack of piousness among the patients and the interference of the federal government are the reasons for the family chiropractic business failing.
• Women Are Wiser: Discussed Trope
  Brenda: (to Matilda) Some say men can hear the Holy Spirit better. That's not true. We can. 'Cause, y'know, we don't get at all mixed up with the promptings of our you-know-whats.

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