Taylor Sheridan just wrapped the Yellowstone saga — at least for now — with tonight’s just concluded final episode. Deadline offers our usual recap, followed by a back and forth discussion between Mike Fleming Jr and Lynette Rice, who has spent a lot of time covering the Taylor Sheridan Universe. First, Fleming’s recap:
“Congratulations, you just made the worst land deal since my people sold Manhattan.”
There are a lot of good lines in the finale of Yellowstone’s fifth and final season, but it’s hard to top that one spoken by Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham), the chairman of the Confederated Tribes of Broken Rock. He says it to Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes), the son of slain Yellowstone patriarch John Dutton as they find a mutually beneficial solution to safeguard the land from being split into parcels and developed. Branded as an unruly youth with the ‘Y’ symbol by his father, and scarred with PTSD from all he’d seen and done in the Middle East as a Navy SEAL killer, Kayce finally finds peace after coming up with a solution for how to keep the sprawling Montana ranch in its pristine form, which was the life’s mission of his father.
But there’s a lot to unpack here before we get to the graceful way in which Taylor Sheridan — who created the series with John Linson – ties up every loose end in “Life Is A Promise,” the final episode he wrote and directed. And we know going in that all of this is the undercard to the final brawl between warring step-siblings Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley).
The episode begins with Rainwater’s righthand man, Mo Brings Plenty, leading a group that sabotages the pipeline that was being constructed on the pristine prairie after Governor John Dutton was murdered. They take the pipes and lose them in water deep enough that they won’t be salvaged.
Cut to the Yellowstone crew, still coming to grips with John Dutton’s nightmare scenario, dismantling a ranch that cannot be kept because of the tax burden. Sheridan’s horse broker character Travis Wheatley was a focal point of the penultimate episode “Give The World Away” last week when he belied his playboy rep and lifestyle by brokering a $30 million sale of all the Yellowstone livestock for no commission. He’s back, ostensibly to give some good-natured abuse to his underling Jimmy Hurdstrom (Jefferson White). As Travis leaves, he’s asked by Teeter (Jen Landon) if she can have a job at his horse haven Bosque Ranch. Why? Too much sad history, said the woman whose lover Colby Mayfield (Denim Richards) was killed by a fatal kick from a “mankiller” horse a couple episodes ago. Ever the needler, Travis hands her money to buy a book to learn to speak English, because her hillbilly patter will drive him crazy.
Next, Beth (Kelly Reilly) shows husband Rip (Cole Hauser) a plot of land she found and asks can he find a way to make them a home and make a living as a cowboy with a modest stock of horses and beef. He says he would be able to pay the bills, but it’s isolated enough that she’ll be hard pressed to find a bar. She notes she’ll be glad to be free of the tourists, and he can build her a bar. He agrees. Good, she says, because she already bought the land that morning.
Things take a serious turn when Beth is told by the funeral home that her father’s body is ready for burial. This will be no festive send-off for the Dutton patriarch played by Kevin Costner; just the immediate family – not Jamie – the cowboys and Lynelle Perry (Wendy Moniz), the former congresswoman and state governor who was also Dutton’s most frequent romantic companion before and after the death of his wife.
First, the ranch’s fate must be decided. How to get around a crushing tax burden that only corporations interested in developing the land could afford? In a move that was kind of telegraphed in the previous episode, Kayce is prepared to sign the entire land over to Rainwater and his tribe for $1.25 an acre, the price he says 1883’s James Dutton (Tim McGraw) paid when the family settled there. The idea is that the tribe would only be taxed on the selling price, a pittance compared to the land’s current value. The sale is conditional: the sprawling land can never be developed, and Kayce, wife Monica (Kelsey Asbille) and son Tate (Brecken Merrill) will stay on a small parcel where they’ve built a house and will live quietly. The chief and Kayce seal the deal with a ceremonious blood pact.
Rainwater notes that he’d once promised John Dutton he would find a way to take the ranch and eliminate any evidence that the rancher and his family were ever there. The first part of the promise is realized, but now, John Dutton and his family will remained buried there, and they’ll forever be prized as the longtime caretakers of land that has been returned to its rightful owners, just as original buyer James Dutton (Tim McGraw) said when tribal elders met him and he did them a favor.
John Dutton is laid to rest in a small celebration, buried right next to the wife (Gretchen Mol) who long ago had been killed in a fall from a horse while the kids were small. Kayce tells his wife Monica that in his prayer over his father’s coffin, he forgave his father, the man who gave him such hardship as a youth and shackled him with killing and anything else needed to keep encroaching developers from taking Yellowstone — all this because of a promise John made to his father (Dabney Coleman). But the entire hue of the sentimental finale darkens when Beth says her farewell to the father she gave up so much to protect his interests. She lays her head close to the coffin, and whispers to her father that she would soon avenge his death. So even though Jamie was not invited to the funeral, he’ll be seeing her soon. Rip, who became a surrogate son to John Dutton, gestured his loyalty and respect by dropping the coffin in the hole in the ground he dug with his cowboys. Alone with his shovel, Rip covers the coffin with the loose soil, laying John Dutton to rest for good.
An hour or so later, Rip realizes where Beth went when she sped off in her Bentley: the inevitable collision between the sister and the black sheep brother viewers know was complicit in the murder of John Dutton. That clumsy murder staged as a suicide was exposed by Kayce based on his SEAL experiences. And that led to Jamie’s lover, Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri), being shot dead in her car to cover the killers’ tracks.
We first see Jamie in the finale as he stands before his mirror, and then in the shower, practicing a speech he’ll give in a press conference. He demands justice for his father, declaring to the press and people of Montana that this was an attack on their liberty. And that as Dutton’s son and the Attorney General of Montana, he would dedicate himself to seeking justice on their behalf.
To most anybody who has followed the episodes, this rang as hollow as acquitted murderer OJ Simpson’s pledge to find the killers of his ex-wife Nicole, leading many to wonder if the prime suspects were on the golf courses because Simpson spent almost all of his time there. Jamie’s impassioned speech seems to move the crowd of journalists. Driving back to his house and listening to a favorable radio report, it seemed Jamie thought he’d be getting a pass, a smug satisfied grin spreading across his face.
That was until Beth surprises him at home with the first of several salvos of bear spray in his eyes. What follows is a knock-down, drag-out brawl reminiscent of Tommy Hearns and Marvin Hagler. Why didn’t Beth bring a gun? Why didn’t she wait for Rip, who was speeding to the location but was hopelessly behind?
Things looked particularly bad when Jamie got enough of the bear spray neutralized with a dousing of milk to gain the upper hand over his sister, pummeling her as she lay helpless on the floor. He tells Beth she will be arrested, and charged with killing their father, and then will rot in an 8×8 cell while he oversees her father’s beloved ranch getting sold into pieces to be transformed into a recreational destination.
A bloodied Beth laughs through her pain, telling Jamie the family no longer owns the land, after the deal she and Kayce made with Rainwater. At that point, Jamie’s intent becomes murderous.
Before Jamie can kill his sister, Rip barrels in and throws Jamie through a sheetrock wall. Before Rip can tear the family’s lady-hitter in half, Beth intervenes. She shoves a blade right into Jamie’s black heart, demanding he look her in the eyes, so she can keep her promise that hers would be the last face he ever sees.
Then Beth’s carefully crafted plan becomes clear. Beth tells Rip to call 911, and that he and Lloyd (Forrie J. Smith) should take Jamie’s body to the train station, that infamous ravine just over the Wyoming border where there is no police jurisdiction and where bodies disappear with great regularity. Beth then calmly explains she’ll spin a story that Jamie assaulted her with the intention of pinning the murder on her, running off when she fell unconscious after a vicious beating.
By the time Rip and Lloyd dump Jamie’s body and set his car ablaze in a desolate field in Iowa, her cover story is validated, and warrants are issued against Jamie for aggravated assault and domestic violence.
A few other loose ends get tied up in the aftermath. Loyal ranch hand Ryan (Ian Bohen) tells Rip he is going to wander awhile before figuring his next move. Distraught after losing best friend Colby, he regains his footing by tracking down the one who got away. That would be the C&W singer Abby (Lainey Wilson). Playing a club and clearly on her way to stardom, the singer sees Ryan in the crowd, and after exchanging pleasantries, she tells him to take care of himself. It’s clear she still hurts from when he spurned her offer to leave Yellowstone and join her. Ryan stops her, and says he’d made the wrong choice when he chose the cowboy life over her. She kisses him and it is clear Ryan’s ranching days are over and a more promising future beckons.
The finale climaxes as Yellowstone signage is removed by the tribe, and Mo Brings Plenty follows a group of tribal kids into the woods. When he sees them toppling Dutton family headstones, he scolds them. This is hallowed ground that must never be disturbed, he tells them. One of the headstones he puts back in place belongs to Elsa Dutton, the narrator of 1883 and the precocious daughter of James and Margaret Dutton (Faith Hill) played memorably by Isabel May. We hear her familiar voice as narrator, tying together the final knots in Sheridan’s deftly plotted finale. These connect all the way back to the family’s first wagon train trek from Texas to Montana.