Kevin Costner's New Western Series Takes on One of Hollywood's Oldest Lies
Kevin Costner has spent decades playing cowboys, but now he's finally turning the camera around. His new Western series aims to do what most Hollywood Westerns never bothered with: tell the truth.
Kevin Costner's The West is a new docuseries airing on the History Channel, produced and narrated by Costner himself. But unlike the frontier fantasies he's known for, this one sets out to dismantle the Western myth — focusing on Indigenous resistance, Mexican displacement, and U.S. expansionism instead of dusty gunfights and noble cowboys.
Costner opens Episode 1 with a line that sets the tone:
"Although the United States was founded in the East, the country we know today was forged in the West."
Episode 5: The Robin Hood of El Dorado
The fifth episode focuses on Joaquin Murrieta, a Mexican immigrant who came to California during the Gold Rush. He was looking for fortune. What he got was stolen land, racial violence, and a fast-track to outlaw status.
- The U.S. had just taken California from Mexico.
- Murrieta and others were treated as trespassers on land they used to own.
- According to legend, he fought back — robbing the rich, attacking lawmen, and becoming a folk hero (or a wanted criminal, depending on who was telling the story).
Eventually, California Governor John Bigler sent in a team of bounty hunters, led by Harry Love, who claimed they killed Murrieta and brought back his severed head in a jar. Whether that was actually him? Still debated.
The Bigger Picture
Costner's episode isn't really about whether Murrieta existed — it's about how the West created legends to justify violence. Murrieta became the template for the "Mexican bandit" character that's shown up in Westerns for decades.
- His story was first told in an 1854 novel passed off as history.
- He inspired The Robin Hood of El Dorado (1936), Zorro, and countless other Hollywood myths.
- Newspapers at the time tied him to 20 murders — with no trial, no hard evidence, and no accountability.
The point? If Murrieta had been white, he'd be an American icon. But instead, he was turned into a stereotype.
Costner has spent years telling idealized versions of the West — Dances with Wolves, Yellowstone, and most recently Horizon: An American Saga. But now, in The West, he's finally asking: what stories got erased to make room for those legends?
Whether Murrieta was a real person or a symbol, his story shows how easily history gets rewritten — and how often the Western genre helped do it.