#0TD, on January 21st, 2021, a reboot of Walker Texas Ranger premiered on the CW, available to be streamed all over the United States, now just titled Walker.
The series revived the character of Walker from the 1990s show starring Chuck Norris as a Ranger. The original show was inspired by Norris’ role in the 1983 film Lone Wolf McQuade and ran for 8 seasons.
The original Walker, Texas Ranger was recently the subject of the podcast Know Your Enemy. It is used on the podcast to illustrate the development of right/conservative ideology in the 1990s in the United States. The new Walker, played by Jared Padalecki, is a military vet turned Texas Ranger who tries to uncover the mystery surrounding his late wife’s death and solves other contemporary crimes in a fantasy Austin.
Padalecki, originally from San Antonio, produces the show. He has stated that the inspiration to reboot the show was, in part, based on stories emerging about the detention of children at the U.S./Mexico border. Padalecki was inspired by a particular story of an officer who refused to detain a three-year old child at the border.
But while the show seeks to confront the issues of contemporary policing in the political landscape of contemporary Texas, it carries with it the mythology of the Texas Rangers as ultimately agents of good, or at least law and order. The city council of Austin green-lit the show to be filmed in the city based on a $141,326 incentive and the third season of the show is current airing.According to Wikipedia, each episode has a total of between 1 million and 3.5 million total viewers and has garnered “mixed to average reviews.”
The show has also spawned a prequel titled Walker: Independence which premiered on October 6th, 2022. Set in the 19th century, the prequel follows a woman from Boston who journeys out west to settle in a town called Independence, Texas. The budding franchise participates in the political economy of the cultural production industries of Texas, re-circulating the mythos of the Rangers as a justice-seeking organization and how that drives the settlement of the west.
Public investment in the Rangers is still alive and well and there is continued interest in getting these stories “right,” whether it be according to historical facts or according to the contemporary sense of a moral compass. Walker and Walker: Independence diversify the fictional stories of the Rangers across history and attempt to confront issues of “justice” in the ongoing settlement of the land of so-called Texas. Without recognition of the very real history of the Texas Rangers and their policing of this territory over 200 years, however, this engagement is thin.
