Now that you have had the chance to see The Madison Season 1 in its entirety, you have no doubt fallen for the incredible love stories at its core.
Stacy and Preston set a wonderful example of love and acceptance for their children, but that kind of success can also be daunting, especially when you’re struggling to find it.
So there’s something quietly disarming about the way The Madison introduces Abby and Van.
(Emerson Miller/Paramount+)
At first glance, it’s easy to frame them as the next great romance: the city woman, unraveled by grief, and the grounded man who seems to exist exactly where he belongs.
But that idea only scratches the surface of what’s actually happening between them.
By the time Abby arrives in Montana, she isn’t just grieving. She’s lost the version of herself that once made sense. It may not have brought her happiness in love, but she was comfortable in her skin.
In New York, there were routines. There were ways to keep moving forward, even when things underneath weren’t holding together. Preston’s death and the visit to Montana strip all of that away, leaving her with nothing but the reality of what she’s feeling.
And that’s where Van enters her life, not as a solution or as someone untouched by loss, but as someone who has already lived through it and found a way to keep going.
(Emerson Miller/Paramount+)
“I mean, I think it’s a little bit of both,” Beau Garrett says when asked whether Abby and Van’s connection is about healing or recognition.
“Healing comes in really unexpected ways. And I think the grief is so new for Abigail that she’s not looking to heal right away. I think there are things she thought she could do to help her heal, and it’s not working. When she meets Van, she really is at round zero. She is not in a good place.”
There’s no version of Abby left to perform at that point, no carefully maintained image of being put together.
Garrett leans into that vulnerability as the foundation of Abby and Van’s connection.
“I think she’s quite a put-together woman, and he has seen her in a very put-together place. So there’s a real vulnerability in that from the moment one. And I think she feels quite safe with him. And that’s really unexpected. I don’t think she’s ever really felt safe with a man.”
(Emerson Miller/Paramount+)
That sense of safety isn’t built on anything grand. It’s built on being seen.
“I think there’s been nowhere that Abigail’s been able to feel like she can be asked, ‘How are you doing?’ No one’s asked her that. So I think that Van is the first person who actually sees her.
“They can talk about their grief, but they’re also exploring each other. So there’s something new to talk about. It’s not just sharing sadness. It’s also, who are you, and how do you live your life?”
For Ben Schnetzer, that connection is just as much about timing as it is about emotion.
“I think as well, these are two people who have had previously very meaningful relationships that began when they were both quite young.
“And now they’re meeting each other at a different point in their lives with a much different level of maturity and self-possession, and they’re both parents.
“There’s something about the unexpectedness of the connection that they find in each other. Their guards are kind of down when they meet. They don’t have any expectations going into that first encounter.”
(Emerson Miller/Paramount+)
That lack of expectation becomes its own kind of opening.
“They’re able to find a simpatico and this little counterpoint that resonates,” Schnetzer says.
“And given the circumstances, they decide to take their chances. I think it’s a little bit of healing and a little bit of acknowledging what’s missing in themselves. Sometimes those two things go hand in hand.”
And yet, no matter how much Abby and Van feel like something new, they exist in the shadow of something that came before.
Because Stacy and Preston’s love story is baked into The Madison‘s DNA.
(Emerson Miller/Paramount+)
It’s visible in the push-and-pull between two people from completely different worlds, and in the question of whether love can bridge that divide. Abby and Van don’t just step into a relationship. They step into the shadow of one that has already thrived.
The parallels to Stacy and Preston are impossible to ignore. The city and the country. The contradiction of two lives that don’t quite fit together, and yet refuse to let go of each other.
But Abby isn’t consciously stepping into that story.
“I don’t think she’s thinking about it yet. I don’t think she’s thinking about it at all,” Garrett says. “That love story is so beyond her realm. It’s something that she has failed at in her own life, and I don’t think she feels capable of it.”
Still, even if Abby doesn’t recognize it, something deeper is taking shape, and the audience sees it.
Because what she’s discovering about her parents’ relationship, the parts of it that existed outside her understanding, is already shaping how we see her own.
(Emerson Miller/Paramount+)
Garrett points to an idea that reframed the relationship for her while she was building it.
“There was something my acting coach said to me that I really resonated with when I was trying to figure out how to play these scenes with Van. She said, ‘You know, he’s your soulmate.’
“And I was like, okay, that makes sense. So it doesn’t really matter where they would be. I think they would have found each other.”
And yet, it’s Montana, and everything Abby is forced to confront there, that makes that connection possible now.
“The routine was there in New York. You could go to Pilates, you could get your coffee, you could be your girl. But now the routine’s gone. Nothing is the same. Every day is different. And I feel like she is so broken down and so lost, more lost than she’s ever been in New York.”
(Emerson Miller/Paramount+)
That loss of control, that absence of structure, opens the door for something Abby never allowed herself before.
For Van, it’s exactly that unpredictability that pulls him in.
“I feel like Van is someone who knows the role that he plays in his world and in his community,” Schnetzer admits.
“That stability gives him something to hold on to as he navigates his own grief. And then he meets this person who is a total wildcard, who comes in and opens up something in him.”
There’s something in Abby that disrupts him, but not in a way that pushes him away.
(Emerson Miller/Paramount+)
“There’s a bit of a wildness in Abigail that I think is very alluring to Ben. They find a kindred spirit in the other that ignites something in each other,” he says.
And maybe that’s where Abby and Van diverge from Stacy and Preston.
Because while Stacy and Preston’s story is defined by endurance, by years of loving and missing pieces of each other along the way, Abby and Van are standing at the beginning of something that asks a different question.
It’s not whether love can last, but whether they’re willing to step into it at all.
“I think it’s the first time that Abigail, whether she realizes it or not, is meeting that kind of love,” Garrett says. “Seeing what you would do to fight for the person that you love, and how much you’d be willing to give up.”
(Emerson Miller/Paramount+)
And that’s what lingers long after the credits roll.
It’s not just the connection between them, but the possibility that Abby and Van aren’t simply repeating a story that’s already been told.
They might actually be rewriting it.
Is Abby and Van TV’s next great love story? Have you fallen for them already? Could they one day rival Beth and Rip or Alex and Spencer? We want to hear from you!
If you’ve missed the story so far, all six episodes of The Madison Season 1 are available right now on Paramount+.
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Are Abby and Van following in Stacy and Preston’s footsteps? Beau Garrett and Ben Schnetzer talk their second chance at love.
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Matthew Fox and Beau Garrett discuss Taylor Sheridan’s new series The Madison, the emotional themes driving the story, and what drew them to the Montana-set drama.
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Elle Chapman, Patrick J. Adams, and Amiah Miller discuss how their characters navigate change and family dynamics in Taylor Sheridan’s new series The Madison.
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