Warning: This article contains major spoilers for the Yellowstone season 5, part 2 finale.
Since 2018, and across five seasons of the flagship Yellowstone series and multiple prequel shows, fans have embraced the Dutton family saga created by Taylor Sheridan and John Linson. But as much as viewers love the Duttons, they’re not all good people. This family has been willing to kill to protect their secrets and their land, as well as brutally pursuing vengeance out side of the law. That’s how it went down again in the Yellowstone series finale. Before the final credits rolled, the show revealed what happened to most of the major characters, and what might come next.
The fate of the Yellowstone ranch
As teased in the penultimate episode, Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) had a plan to save the Yellowstone ranch. It just wouldn’t be possible for the Duttons to save it themselves. The family didn’t have the money to pay the inheritance tax on the land, and rather than sell some of the land to cover those expenses, Kayce decided to essentially give the land to Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) and the Confederated Tribes of Broken Rock for pennies on the dollar. Rainwater and the tribes couldn’t afford to pay market rates, and the only ones who could would have redeveloped the land and turned it into something unrecognizable.
Kayce’s conditions for the sale included a carve out for the small 5,000 acre home that he built for himself and his family on the land, as well as guarantees to never sell or develop the land. He also requested that Rainwater look after the generations of Duttons who were buried on the land, which was almost immediately betrayed by the young children of the tribes who started pushing down the Dutton family’s grave markers. Rainwater’s right-hand man, Mo (Moses Brings Plenty), caught the children in the act and chided them before shouting a reminder that the Duttons protected the land and died for it. And the first gravestone Mo put back upright belonged to Elsa Dutton (Isabel May), the tragic heroine from the prequel series 1883.
May made a vocal guest appearance as Elsa narrated the end of this chapter and noted that the fate of the Yellowstone ranch was foreshadowed in 1883 when the tribes said they would reclaim the land in seven generations. Almost like clockwork, that’s exactly what happened.
The funeral of John Dutton
Kevin Costner didn’t appear in the second half of Yellowstone season 5 over a very public falling out with Sheridan and Paramount Network. His character, John Dutton, was killed off in the midseason premiere, and he was finally laid to rest in the finale. The decision was made to bury John next to his late wife in the graveyard on the Yellowstone property. It was an emotional gathering, especially for the Duttons and their extended family of ranch hands. Kayce took the opportunity to tell his late father that he forgave him, while his former enemy, Rainwater, vowed to protect the land.
Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) took it upon himself to bury John’s coffin and promise to keep loving his wife — and John’s daughter — Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly). Beth had a different promise for John, as she vowed to avenge his death… and then took off right after the funeral to do just that.
Beth vs. Jamie: The final battle
Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley), the black sheep of the family, wasn’t kept in the loop about John’s funeral in part because everyone else in the family knew he had a role in John’s death. To keep the press and the public off of his trail, Jamie practiced and delivered a speech where he denied that he was sleeping with Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri) and vowed to pursue his father’s murderers from his office as the Attorney General of Montana. Jamie probably even thought that the speech might land him in the governor’s mansion someday.
First, Jamie had to endure a vicious assault from his sister, Beth, and a face full of bear mace that briefly left him blinded. Regardless, Jamie turned the tables on Beth and nearly beat her to death until he realized that he could use her attack to frame her for John’s murder. He was only stopped in his tracks when Beth revealed that the family had already sold the ranch to the tribes, and Jamie’s dreams of earning riches from the redevelopment died a hard death. Before Beth could follow those dreams into the afterlife, Rip arrived and got in a few shots at Jamie before Beth took the killing blow for herself.
Beth’s plan seemed to hinge upon Rip’s later arrival, although she nearly got herself murdered in the process. While Rip disposed of Jamie’s body and car, Beth called the police and told the arriving officers that Jamie had beaten her after she accused him of being involved with killing their father. She also provided enough ammunition for the police to begin investigating Jamie as a fugitive rather than the victim of murder himself. By the end of the episode, a warrant is out for Jamie’s arrest, but his body may never be found.
Justice for John Dutton?
Jamie’s death closes the book on Beth’s quest for revenge, but the men who attacked her father and staged his death as a suicide seemingly escape capture and justice. The show doesn’t even seem to be all that interested in determining who the assassins were, as it spends a good deal of time with the characters saying goodbye to the ranch and to the Duttons. Of course, this finale wouldn’t be complete without one more appearance by Sheridan’s character, Travis Wheatley, which plays like an out-of-control ego trip. Travis really comes off like a real jerk when one of Yellowstone’s ranch hands, Teeter (Jennifer Landon), approaches him for work and he berates her command of the English language as “hillbilly” and orders her to listen to a book on tape about how to speak English.
Nevertheless, most of the characters get their happy endings as Kayce and his family put together their own brand of cattle, while Rip and Beth put down roots in a much smaller ranch.
How does the Yellowstone season 5, part 2 finale set up the spinoff shows?
It kind of doesn’t. There’s nothing in this episode that points to The Madison, which will star Michelle Pfeiffer, Kurt Russell, Patrick J. Adams, and Beau Garrett. None of those actors appear in this episode. The only direct link to the next spinoff series is through Rip and Beth, since both Cole Hauser and Kelly Reilly recently signed on for an entirely different Yellowstone sequel series.
The irony of any potential spinoff for Beth and Rip is that they seem happy in their new home, and there doesn’t appear to be much drama in their relationship or the town near their ranch. So there’s no obvious hook for the next series, unless Sheridan is going to spring some fresh problems on the couple when the new show inevitably premieres some time in the future.
Peacock will eventually stream Yellowstone season 5, part 2, but hasn’t currently set a date for when the episodes will be available.
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