Was Ruth really taking a moral stand in refusing Campbell's pardon, or was she merely a Death Seeker who lost her will to live after Ezra's death?
Whether the Swede's conversion to Mormonism was genuine or not. He comes to the faith by murdering a Mormon bishop and assuming his identity, but he rises in the church to become the right hand of Brigham Young himself, and seems to have moments of genuine religious clarity.
Major Bendix has become quite popular for his Ax-Crazy speeches.
Since the end of he show, the Swede has since become probably its most remembered and well-liked (in a Love to Hate sense) character.
Growing the Beard: While the first season is generally agreed to be So Okay, It's Average, the show is considered to have become a lot more interesting the second season onwards.
Ho Yay: between Cullen and Elam, hell, the end of "Revelations" even has them riding off into the sunset together.
Salvaged Story: The first season, and overall premise of the show, were accused by some of buying into Lost Cause rhetoric — the "honorable Southern veteran" who was against slavery but bravely fought for the Confederacy anyway out of honor, hunting down the brutal, undisciplined "Yankee hordes" who murdered his family. In later seasons, plot and character developments pushed back against this, such as Bohannon admitting he never actually freed his slaves, multiple characters openly discussing the centrality of slavery to the Confederate cause and the Confederacy's wartime atrocities, and the introduction of several decidedly unsympathetic Confederate characters like Sidney Snow or the train robbers.
So Okay, It's Average: Many, if not most, critics feel this way about the show. Being that this is on AMC, and that this series followed in the wake of the highly contested The Killing, this was not a good thing.
Cullen finds a photograph where the face of the man who ordered his wife hanged is blurred out, in what is clearly a cheap Photoshop effect rather than any of the issues affecting photography at the time.
Understandable given the restrictions they were operating under, but any time actual locomotives were shown, they were a bit lacking.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: About season 3 and four (particularly four), a running complaint has been the fact every single good person in the show dies horribly and pointlessly while the bad people thrive and triumph. By the fourth season the show's ratings actually started to fall due to this, particularly with Elam's death.
rhetoric — the "honorable Southern veteran" who was against slavery but bravely fought for the Confederacy anyway out of honor, hunting down the brutal, undisciplined "Yankee hordes" who murdered his family. In later seasons, plot and character developments pushed back against this, such as Bohannon admitting he never actually freed his slaves, multiple characters openly discussing the centrality of slavery to the Confederate cause and the Confederacy's wartime atrocities, and the introduction of several decidedly unsympathetic Confederate characters like Sidney Snow or the train robbers.