Sarah Atwood’s second-to-last phone call went to a disconnected phone number, but it may have told us everything about what the rest of this season of Yellowstone will look like.
Until this point, we knew who ordered the hit on Governor John Dutton and who took that order. We didn’t know who pulled the trigger until Sunday (Nov. 24), but you had to squint to see it.
Like the week prior, Ep. 11 built slowly. Emotional flashback scenes that found Rip and Beth struggling with the distance between them and Kayce and his family grateful for a new home set the table for several procedural conversations about how the new governor (Steven Rawlings, played by actor Gareth Williams) would work to acquire the ranch by eminent domain.
Details of John Dutton’s death broke up this table setting. We learn three important things: A trio of men executed the hit, they snuck oxycontin into his medicine cabinet (and likely his blood stream), and they used his hand to hold the gun that fired the shot that killed him.
Later, while Kayce Dutton is strong-arming the medical examiner to reexamine the body, we recognize the importance of those details. It’d take three men, Dutton says, to subdue a sleeping man if they followed the technique he was taught as a Navy Seal. One would take the legs, one would take the arms, and the third would execute the choke to make the person pass out.
That’s exactly what Dutton’s attackers did.
Put a pin that and start thinking about Sarah Atwood’s final minutes. She makes two important phone calls before a hitman kills her. The first is from a newly-purchased burner phone and she dials area code 713, which is pinned to Houston.
For Sarah, it’s a dead end, but the disconnected phone number puts her on edge, and she begins to visibly crack. The second call comes after her fight with Jamie. He actually calls her apologizing — it’s as sorry as it seems — and she tells him to find a shred of self confidence.
Give me a dollar for every person who’s told Jamie that, right?
A military style attack, a Houston area code and undercover operatives … I had to go back and rewatch, but didn’t Kayce’s old Navy Seal friend mention Houston?
During Ep. 10, Kayce asks the guy (character name Cade McPherson) which companies would take a hit on a governor and he mentions one in Houston, but dismisses them. He tells Kayce he’ll call him back and tells him to be careful.
Kayce never heard back from the man. See if you spot anything unusual about that moment:
Cade McPherson was just returning from a mission that involved covert weapons, guns and secrecy. He told Kayce he was out of the country, but that could have been to shake his friend from his trail. You could say the same thing about Houston.
It all makes you wonder about the nature of that app Cade had Kayce download.
With Sarah out of the picture, Market Equities is likely to pause their full court press to build the airport. That makes this a one-on-one battle between Beth and Jamie, unless another set of provocateurs step forward.