Billy the Kid: Unraveling the Real Story Behind the TV Show

From a creator like Michael Hirst, who has grown up watching cowboy movies and developed a fascination for the Old Wild West, ‘Billy the Kid (2022-)’, an MGM+ series, is yet another moving Western drama show. Actor Tom Blyth steps into the shoes of the adult Billy in the series, whose story is depicted in flashes and throwbacks to the time when he was younger. Billy’s life initially revolves around his loving and humble Irish mother, Kathleen, but life has never been kind to their family.

As Billy’s mother struggles to provide for her two kids, Billy learns very early on in life that things don’t come easy to people like them. He wants to be humble, but life has other plans. Other major players in this adventure drama include Daniel Webber and Eileen O’Higgins, who provide weight to the narrative with their thrilling performances. This series is set in the mid-19th century and explores how life for poor immigrants like Billy’s family was at that point. As Billy soon enters the dark world of crime, it raises questions about how true his story is. If you’re one such curious cat, let’s dig in!

Is Billy the Kid Based on a True Story?

Yes, ‘Billy the Kid’ is based on a true story. Interestingly, popular culture has been obsessed with the real Billy the Kid, and there have been plenty of movies, plays and other adaptations with Billy as a central character. Hirst was one such person who grew up listening to the legend of Billy the Kid and wanted to do justice to his story, which has been romanticized for decades. For this purpose, aware that people either viewed Billy as a complete Wild West outlaw or a hero fighting a cruel administration, Hirst decided to write his own version with as much factual accuracy as possible, while also highlighting the kind of circumstances that made Billy so infamous.

As explained in the show, the real Billy also grew up as Henry McCarty, and, over the course of time, was known by different names, including Billy the Kid, Henry Antrim and finally William H. Bonney. The real Billy claimed to have killed 21 people before he died at the age of 21, even if some accounts feel he didn’t kill more than nine in his life. While official records state he was killed in 1881 by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, stories kept circulating about him being alive even after that, with the most convincing one being of ‘Brushy Bill,’ who eventually died in 1950, but managed to convince a lot of people that he was the real Billy the Kid.

Hirst has taken care of all of these inconsistencies in the narrative to retell a story that has been told too many times, in a different way. Having the liberty to explore this narrative over the course of multiple long episodes, Hirst decided to dig deeper into all accounts before coming up with something he feels justifies the story. Taking care to examine Billy’s roots before judging him, Hirst has explored Billy’s relationship with his mother in detail, while most accounts just mention his crimes and how he was orphaned at the age of 15 when his mother Catherine (called Kathleen in the series) died of tuberculosis.

Similar to the real versions of the story, his real father died much earlier, forcing his mother to move around and finally marry an unreliable William Antrim just to survive as a single woman with kids in that society. Billy’s relationship with Antrim in the series is off to a rocky start, just like it was in real life when Antrim abandoned Billy to find his own path after his mother’s death. Not much is mentioned in real accounts about Billy’s brother Joe, except that they most likely parted ways while still as kids, and that Joe went on to become a professional gambler in Colorado.

Another important relationship that has been explored in the series is that of Pat Garrett and Billy. While Garrett is famous for being the man who killed Billy, he was also Billy’s friend. Pat was a buffalo hunter, rancher and a bartender before he became Lincoln County’s sheriff. In real life, he met Billy while he was bartending and formed an acquittance, but later started hunting him down as a sheriff when Billy was declared an outlaw. In the series, Pat meets Billy in a bar too but the former is riding with another crucial character from season 1, outlaw Jesse Evans, who has his own gang. Pat and Billy then form an acquittance where Pat also warns him about his activities.

The real-life Billy is known for stealing clothes, pistols, being an excellent gunslinger and joining many gangs, but he’s also famous for his involvement in the Lincoln County War in 1978. This was a conflict between the Lincoln County Regulators, of which Billy was a part, and the Jesse Evans gang, bringing the two friends on opposite sides again. When Evans’ gang killed one of Billy’s, the Regulators killed Sheriff Brady, which started a chain of events that eventually led to Billy being arrested again, escaping and finally dying by Garett’s hands. Ultimately, there are plenty of versions and accounts of what happened with Billy the Kid, and the makers of this show intend to explore all these points with added details and emotions that might seem more relevant.