November 25, 2025 – The screen flickers to life. A lone spotlight cuts through the velvet dark of a half-empty Vegas showroom, illuminating a figure in a crisp white suit, mic in hand, voice like aged bourbon over a stripped-down piano: “Every outlaw’s got one last song left to play.” Cut to Donny Osmond, 67 and timeless, striding the neon-lit Strip at dawn, his grin as boyish as it was in 1971, eyes carrying the mileage of six decades under the lights. The Netflix logo ignites in gold sequins. And in that instant, the world exhales: the clean-cut crooner from Ogden isn’t fading to black. He’s rewriting the finale.

Donny Osmond: The Last Outlaw, the trailer for which premiered at midnight ET during Netflix’s Tudum winter slate drop, isn’t a glossy retrospective. It’s a raw, 98-minute revelation directed by the intimate lens of Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster), tracing the seventh son of a Mormon musical dynasty from church-basement barbershop quartets to global icon status – and the shadowed valleys that nearly silenced him. From the frost-kissed stages of 1950s Utah to the pyrotechnic peaks of his Harrah’s Las Vegas residency (now in its explosive second year), this doc unspools the evolution of a man who turned wholesomeness into weaponry, reinvention into religion, and legacy into lifeline.

The trailer hooks with Super 8 haze: a wide-eyed 5-year-old Donny, all freckles and fervor, joining brothers Alan, Wayne, Merrill, and Jay – the original Osmond Brothers – in a cramped Ogden living room, their harmonies tight as family prayers. “We weren’t chasing fame,” Donny narrates, his tenor still velvet at 67. “We were chasing hearing aids.” The footage – unearthed from Olive Osmond’s attic archives – captures the spark: George and Olive Virl Osmond Sr.’s nine kids, raised in a devout Latter-day Saints home where faith was the first rehearsal. Eldest brothers Virl and Tom, born deaf in the post-WWII boom, inspired the quartet’s formation in 1958; little Donny, born December 9, 1957, tagged along at age 4, his pitch-perfect soprano turning church gigs into Andy Williams Show auditions by 1962. “Family, faith, career,” Donny quotes the clan motto, a mantra that glued them through 5,000+ shows.

What unfurls is a cinematic medley: grainy kinescopes of their 1963 Disney debut, where the boys’ barbershop polish caught Walt’s eye; the 1971 supernova of “One Bad Apple,” vaulting The Osmonds to No. 1 and igniting Osmondmania. Donny’s solo breakout – “Sweet and Innocent” at 13, “Puppy Love” at 14 – minted him teen-idol gold, his bubblegum covers of Johnny Mathis and Paul Anka outselling siblings’ rockier turns. Interwoven: never-seen Polaroids from the 1976 launch of The Donny & Marie Show, where he and sister Marie (born 1959, the family’s lone girl) co-hosted ABC’s variety hour, blending skits, duets like “I’m Leaving It Up to You” (No. 4, 1974), and roller-disco dazzle that grossed $50 million in merch. “We were America’s sweethearts,” Marie chimes in via archival clip, “but Donny was the heart.”

Struggle strikes the chords like a sour note. The trailer pivots to the ’80s abyss: post-Donny & Marie (axed in 1979 amid shifting tastes), the squeaky-clean image soured into punchline. “Donny Osmond? More like Donny Who?” sneers a 1982 Variety headline in voiceover. Broadway’s Little Johnny Jones (1982) flopped, his edgier singles like “Young Love” fizzled, and typecasting trapped him in Vegas lounges, earning peanuts while battling crippling social phobia – dizziness, blackouts mid-song, panic attacks that left him whispering to stage managers, “Get me off.” “I was apologizing for my own existence,” Donny confesses in a Sussex-filmed sit-down, voice cracking. Footage rolls of his 1992 Vegas low: empty seats, a despondent Donny chain-smoking in his dressing room (a habit kicked via faith-fueled resolve). The doc doesn’t gloss the toll: brother’s bipolar shadows, Marie’s eating disorder skirmish, the family’s unspoken fractures under George’s iron baton – “It doesn’t matter who’s out front, as long as it’s an Osmond.”

Reinvention roars back like a comeback single. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1992 call for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – Donny as Pharaoh, 2,000+ London and Toronto performances – shattered the stigma, his glittering strut earning Olivier nods and a lifeline. “Pharaoh saved me,” he quips, clips showing sold-out crowds chanting his name. The ’90s bloomed: 1989’s Donny Osmond album birthed “Soldier of Love” (dance-floor smash, No. 2 UK), voiceover Shang in Disney’s Mulan (1998’s “I’ll Make a Man Out of You”), Gaston in Broadway’s Beauty and the Beast (2006). Vegas beckoned anew: the 2008 Donny & Marie Flamingo residency ran 11 years, $200 million haul; his solo Harrah’s extravaganza (2021-) blends 60 years of hits with aerial acrobatics and AR holograms of young Donny dueting live. “At 67, I’m not nostalgic,” he tells the camera, mid-rehearsal sweat. “I’m unfinished.”

Love and loss weave the emotional warp. Married 46 years to Debbie Glenn (since May 8, 1978, in Salt Lake Temple), Donny credits her as “my co-pilot through the turbulence” – secret courtship at 19, against George’s dire “There goes your career” warning. Their five sons (Donald Jr., Jeremy, Brandon, Christopher, Joshua) and 12 grandkids anchor the narrative: tender home videos of Donny building electronics kits (his offstage obsession) with the boys, now grown into a tight-knit tribe echoing the Osmond ethos. Loss lingers raw: father George’s 2007 passing at 90, the patriarch who bartered barbershop for stardom; brother Virl’s 2024 health scare, a reminder of fragile harmonies. “Legacy’s not the gold records,” Donny reflects, touring his Ogden childhood home. “It’s the lives you lift – even when you’re falling.”

Faith pulses as the doc’s unspoken bassline – not sermon, but symphony. Raised LDS in a home where church was rehearsal and revelation routine, Donny skipped a full-time mission at 19 (“Career called, but church consented – live exemplary, share beliefs”), channeling devotion into public witness: his website’s “My Beliefs” forum fields thousands of queries on the Trinity, prophets, eternal families. “God gave me the stage to testify,” he says, footage of his 2013 Mormon Tabernacle Choir guest spot blending “Soldier of Love” with sacred hymns. The trailer teases 2024’s Start Again, his first album in seven years – introspective tracks co-written with son Chris (a Claim to Fame Season 2 finalist) – grappling with pandemic isolation and purpose: “Faith isn’t the spotlight; it’s the shadow it casts.”

The web wildfire starts at dawn: 22 million trailer streams by noon, #LastOutlawDonny eclipsing DWTS finale recaps. Marie tweets a sibling selfie: “Brother, you slayed the myth. Proud outlaw.” Son Jeremy posts rehearsal bloopers: “Dad’s the original phoenix.” Fans, from ’70s teenyboppers to TikTok converts, swarm: “Donny didn’t just sing; he survived – and sanctified it.” Critics crown it catharsis: Rolling Stone calls it “a sequined Won’t Back Down, proving wholesomeness is the ultimate rebellion.” Berlinger’s touch – raw cams, no polish – earns Emmys buzz; the score, remixed Osmond outtakes with Donny’s live overlays, alone justifies the binge.

Donny Osmond: The Last Outlaw streams December 18, 2025 – mid-solstice glow. It’s no victory lap; it’s a vow: the boy from the projects who polished stars knows the real plan isn’t the hits, but the heart behind them. As the trailer fades on Donny, mic raised in a sold-out Harrah’s roar, one verity rings: outlaws like Donny don’t ride off into sunsets. They encore – eternally, unapologetically, one resilient riff at a time.