"I’ve Looked In Your Soul": The Real Meaning Of Billy The Kid’s Mother’s Final Words

Season 2, episode 1 of Billy the Kid features a brief callback to Kathleen McCarty’s final message to her son before her season 1 death. Kathleen is based on the real-life mother of Henry McCarty, better known as Billy the Kid. As the MGM+ series depicts, the actual Catherine McCarty traveled with Henry and her youngest son Joseph to Indiana and eventually Kansas, marrying a man named William Henry Harrison Antrim after her husband Patrick McCarty had died. Catherine died of tuberculosis or “consumption” in 1874, leaving Henry and his brother both orphans.