This story contains spoilers from season 5, part 2 of Yellowstone.
John Dutton is dead. I can’t believe I’m writing those words. Want to guess the last time fans experienced a new Yellowstone episode? New Year’s Day, 2023. It’s a miracle that we’re here. Even the characters on the screen don’t know how to feel. As Jamie (Wes Bentley) declares in Sunday’s season 5, part 2 premiere, “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
Why? In case you’re still in shock, let me write it one more time: John Dutton is dead. After nearly two years of off-camera feuds and potentially franchise-ruining delays, the Yellowstone patriarch blew his brains out at approximately 3:53 on the morning of his impeachment trial. Suicide? John Dutton?!? Not the man I knew! Well, that’s just what Yellowstone wants you to believe.
John’s only daughter, Beth (Kelly Reilly), immediately pins the crime on Jamie. Beth and Kayce (Luke Grimes) arrive at the governor’s mansion, inconsolable. The man lying on the floor may be their father (clearly a Kevin Costner body double), but the Yellowstone ranch head who fought to protect his family’s legacy for the past four and a half seasons would never take his own life. John Dutton was murdered.
The entire sequence—which Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan quickly disposes of after the episode’s first five minutes—is one of the most surreal scenes I’ve ever seen. It’s not just that a lengthy contract battle between Sheridan and Costner led to this sudden end for one of TV’s most popular characters. Really, I’m dumbstruck by the experience of watching what is clearly a new ending for Yellowstone, which plays out like a Reddit theorizer’s craziest idea come to life. If fans got the final act they deserve, we would never have seen a man who is obviously not Kevin Costner lying dead on his bathroom floor. The villain’s plot to kill John Dutton would end with their own demise, just like in every season before this one. And if John ever took his final breath onscreen, you’d bet it would have made every eye in America shed a tear.
Instead, his death is now the bizarre catalyst for the show’s final arc. As his children scramble to discover the truth about the murder, it’s time for Taylor Sheridan to figure out what Yellowstone even is without Kevin Costner.
First, the Duttons must reassemble like they’re the Montana Avengers. Our friends are scattered across the globe—and by “globe,” I mean a road trip from Montana to Texas. “Feels like I’m halfway across the world,” Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) tells his wife over the phone. He’s heading to the 6666 Ranch to finish off that diseased-cattle plot from the first half of the season that I barely even remember. Yellowstone shoehorns in a couple cameos from Jimmy (Jefferson White) and Travis (Sheridan, of course).
Rip is even gifted a pair of spurs by the late Billy Klapper—a real-life spur maker from Texas who filmed a scene for Yellowstone before he died this past September. “We’re almost out of legends, with none left to take their place,” one of the 6666 cowboys tells Rip. Is this...foreshadowing? Sounds great for Rip’s future, but we need America’s favorite TV cowboy to come home now. Beth calls her husband and begs him to return to the ranch. “They killed my daddy,” she cries. Add another iconic line read from Reilly to the history books.
“They” are Jamie and his evil girlfriend, Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri). Yellowstone doesn’t make John Dutton’s death a mystery. Earlier this season, the seductress from Market Equities convinced Jamie that the only way to claim revenge against his father was to have him impeached, then murder him. Jamie didn’t think she would actually go through with it. Some fantasies are never meant to come to life. Sarah didn’t see it that way.
A bereft Jamie stumbles home, weeping. He’s surprised to find Sarah dressed in lingerie, holding two glasses of Champagne, and ready to celebrate his father’s death. Baby? We discussed this. No, Jamie responds. That was just talk. He didn’t want her to travel to the city and hire some nefarious, no-named mercenaries to kill his father. But that’s exactly what she did. That’s the reality we live in now.
Sarah Atwood orchestrated the murder of John Dutton. Then she monologues to Jamie about, uh, lions. It’s a quote to rival the iconic Matthew McConaughey-ism “When the lion’s hungry, he eats,” from Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen. “Lions don’t die of old age,” Sarah tells Jamie. “Lions die in the jaws of younger lions, and you’re the younger lion. This is your kingdom now."
If there are any heroes left in Yellowstone, all eyes are on Kayce. He doesn’t believe Beth’s thinking that Jamie killed his father, but he also can’t believe that John would take his own life. He is now the patriarch’s last living son. John’s grandson, Tate, is the beneficiary to the family trust. To ensure that the Dutton family’s legacy lives on, their enemies must be silenced for good. That includes their adopted brother, Jamie. “Look him in the eye,” Beth tells Kayce. “Then come home and tell me how to kill him.”
Yellowstone season 5 promised a war. Even with the king removed from the chessboard, that’s exactly what we’re going to get.
