You can’t beat Mother Nature. She wins every time, and national parks across America are living proof. From riptide currents, towering cliffs, to unforgiving heat, hundreds of people disappear within the national park limits each year, as detailed below. Whether it’s while hiking or falling from great heights, it’s the sad reality of visiting such magnificent, grand spaces that celebrate wildlife and its freedom. For a place as beautiful as Yosemite National Park, very ugly things occur and reside within it. Just look at Netflix’s new hit, Untamed. The neo-Western thriller is a dramatized story of a day in the life of a special agent working in the park, played by Eric Bana. Created by Mark L. Smith and Elle Smith, John Wells also co-produced the summer hit, and it’s got people riveted by both the wonder of America’s national parks and its dangers.
Untamed first and foremost is fiction, and follows a twisting murder mystery across its six episodes. While some of the roadblocks Bana’s character hits throughout Season 1 may feel far-fetched, some of them are scarily close to reality. From a string of murders near the Yosemite National Park campgrounds in the ’90s, to dozens of people plummeting to their deaths off the El Capitan summit in the past several decades, the park has a dark history. While Untamed gets a lot of these dangers right, it gets this one key element wrong.
What Is Netflix’s Thrilling Series ‘Untamed’ About?
Bana stars as Kyle Turner, a special agent living in Yosemite National Park who solves disappearances and murders while also battling alcoholism. Still struggling with the death of his 7-year-old son who died years ago in the park, he and his ex-wife, Jill (Rosemarie DeWitt), cling to each other in their depression. When a young woman falls to her death off the El Capitan summit, Kyle is convinced foul play led to her fall. Sam Neill plays the Chief Park Ranger, Paul, and tries to guide him towards moving forward with his life amidst the tricky investigation. While solving the disappearance, Kyle trains the new park ranger, Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago), who has a dark past of her own. As they interview campers across the park, and a suspicious wildlife management officer, Shane MacGuire (Wilson Bethel), the two realize a lot more of Yosemite’s history is wrapped up in the case.
Netflix’s ‘Untamed’ Gets a Lot Right About National Parks’ Dangers
Where Untamed actually gets it right is that the leading causes of death in Yosemite, or any of the most popular parks in America such as the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone National Park, are things such as falling, drowning, or getting lost. Untamed has the terrifying scene of Naya falling through a flimsy structure to the caves below filled with bats. The mysterious and unpredictable terrain can be death traps — literally — and actress Lily Santiago makes the claustrophobic scene feel like something out of a horror movie as she’s stuck in the dark, damp enclosure preparing for certain death. Luckily, Bana’s Kyle is there to save the day, but it’s one of the scariest moments of the series, and it’s a reminder of how helpless humans can be when Mother Nature takes charge.
One of the most famous parts of Yosemite National Park is the summit, El Capitan. Two times the height of the Empire State Building, it’s extremely daunting, but that doesn’t stop people from attempting to climb it. It’s how Untamed begins, and is the site of the mysterious death of the initial murder mystery as Lucy Cook (Ezra Franky) falls off the top. There have been at least 16 climbing deaths on El Capitan since 1989, and in the past decade alone, there have been seven. According to the law firm Roberts & Spiegel, “It’s speculated that death rates have increased for climbers due to heightened popularity around timed climbing, gaining social media clout, and persual of sponsorship deals.” So, someone falling from a cliff is not so out of the realm of possibility in a national park.
‘Untamed’ Leaves Out the Devastating Reality of National Park Disappearances
What Untamed skims over, though, is that a good chunk of disappearances in national parks are not solved, with many missing person cases left open for decades even, sometimes. As of 2017, there have been 33 missing persons cases in Yosemite. Additionally, another source explains, “There were 785 incidents at Grand Canyon and 732 at Yosemite during the same three-year timeframe. Among those, four cases remain open at Grand Canyon and five are still open at Yosemite.” That’s why it’s so important to come to parks prepared with the proper equipment, water, and knowledge of the terrain.
Though it may seem like Untamed has too many people going missing or disappearing, it’s actually fairly accurate in that regard. Where it gets it wrong, and tragically so, is that most people are never found, and most disappearances are due to Mother Nature, not murderous cults on park property or rangers.
A Serial Killer Terrorized Yosemite in the 1990s
From the drug running inside the park, to a cult full of hippies living on its grounds, murders seemingly pop up every day when Agent Turner works. But, if there is any park with a particularly murderous history, it is Yosemite. Back in the ’90s, four women were brutally murdered in Yosemite near the park, and it turns out it was at the hands of a serial killer. That serial killer was Cary Stayner, who already had an infamous backstory when his younger brother, Steven Stayner, was kidnapped at age seven and held hostage for seven years by his captor before running away. It’s one of the most outrageous kidnapping cases in American history, in part due to Steven’s bravery in escaping and saving fellow kidnapping victim, Timothee White. Cary Stayner was featured in the news and part of the media storm at the time, which made it all the more shocking when he reappeared back in headlines years later for what’s now deemed as the “Yosemite Murders.”
Stayner had been hired at the Cedar Lodge Motel as a handyman, which was just outside Yosemite, and that’s where he chose his victims. Three women, Carole Sund, along with her daughter, Juli Sund, and her friend, Silvina Pelosso, were murdered in 1999. A few months later, Jodie Ruth Armstrong was murdered in July 1999. Working at the Yosemite institute, she was a passionate environmentalist and loved hiking in Yosemite, including the El Capitan summit. Stayner eventually confessed to killing all four women, and remains on death row to this day at San Quentin State Prison. While the murders are not mentioned in Untamed, it still remains a defining part of the park’s history, and a heartbreaking story.
Untamed shines most in its commitment to depicting the brutalities of living in a national park, but still has room to grow in showing the reality of disappearances and missing person cases and how they are commonly attributed to accidental deaths. The series is not based on any one true story, and instead, creators Mark L. Smith and Elle Smith were inspired to make the series after being sent articles about the investigative Services Branches of National Parks and their day-to-day lives. It remains an exciting thriller and murder mystery that brings attention to the dark side of National Parks, but it’s safe to say it remains a work of fiction that takes more than a few liberties.
Untamed
- Release Date
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2025 – 2025-00-00
- Network
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Netflix
- Directors
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Nick Murphy
