Our time at the Yellowstone is coming to a desperate end — in more ways than one.
We now have just one episode remaining to bring an unwanted closure to Taylor Sheridan’s epic modern day western drama, streaming now on Paramount+. First released in 2018.
However, as the sun comes up over the Yellowstone in the start of the series’ penultimate episode of the final season, there is little time for reflection as the last of the Duttons and their ranch hands ready the venerable ranch for a fire sale to end all fire sales.
Just across the valley, Chief Rainwater (Bill Bingham) and his right hand Mo (Mo Brings Plenty) look over the land of their own ancestors, watching in despair as the oil pipeline development continues across their sacred grounds.
With melancholy sounds lingering forlorn in the background, the players in this complicated game of power, politics, and loyalty, once at odds with their varied interests, now share a common grief and desperation to hold onto their past and stake their legacy in the foothills of God’s majesty that is Montana.
Back in Helena, news has hit the airwaves that John Dutton was, indeed, murdered. As that shocking reality sinks in, detectives arrive at Market Equities corporate offices to search former attorney Sarah Atwood’s (Jenna Malone) office. Market Equities has been a thorn in the Duttons’ side since episode 3 with the pending airport project. But, with Sarah’s unexpected death, it has not taken long for authorities to connect her dots to John Dutton’s death. In the fallout, everyone is scrambling to cover their….ahem, assets. After all, the dead cannot defend themselves.
News reports also make the connection that Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley), Montana’s attorney general, stood to gain from the airport development, himself. Panicked, Jamie calls Beth, as he suspects his estranged sister as having leaked the information. Beth was not having it with Jamie and reminded him of her promise to reveal his part in her father’s death. Jamie threatens what he knows of the Dutton Family secrets, himself. Trips to train station come back quickly to the mind.
Cut to sweeping aerial views of the Montana landscape and the Dutton Family Lodge, Kayce arrives back home to his wife, Monica, who questions where he has been. Make no mistake, Kayce is tying up loose ends of his own, explaining that he went to send a message to those who came after his father on what would happen if they came after the remaining Duttons. It was insurance for when him and his little family leave the ranch, themselves, he told her. No doubt, the foreshadowing has begun on the inevitable ending to come.
The road-weary ranch hands return home from Texas to find those left behind moving quickly to prepare everything that is not nailed down at the Yellowstone to sell, in a desperate attempt to save what’s left of the Dutton ranch. It is fool’s dream, Beth emotes, as these attempts merely delay another inevitable — ultimately, it is a move akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Teeter, in some of Jennifer Landon’s best performances, to date, runs immediately to the bunkhouse to face her own moment of truth, only to find Colby’s empty bunk. It would be Walker (Ryan Bingham) to follow and offer Teeter words of comfort as she continues to mourn the death of her true love. Lloyd (Forrie J. Smith) joins the pair, giving Teeter Colby’s hat, the only personal effect of his not sent back to his family. Grateful, Teeter wastes no time slipping the weathered, sand-colored Stetson over her cotton candy-colored locks. Drying up her tears, she goes back to work at what’s left of her life at the Yellowstone.
As Rip continues to organize for the auction in Montana, Beth heads to Texas to oversee the sale of the show horses with long-time Yellowstone friend Travis Wheatley (played by Taylor Sheridan, himself). While we get to see a resurgence of classic Beth in these scenes, busting heads and taking names as the only adult in the room, it is evident the sole purpose of the Beth character’s trip down south, was a setup for Sheridan to flex his muscles and show off his real life riding skills, as well as put himself in the enviable position to go head-to-head with Kelly Reilly onscreen. And, why not? If you are the one holding the pen, who wouldn’t you write it that way? But, seriously, strip poker? For moment, I thought script-wires were being crossed with Landman. IYKYK. But, I digress.
When Travis succeeds in impressing Beth in selling the Dutton horse, over the original asking price, to a group of Brazilian wanna-be cowboys, Beth asks him to come back to Montana for the auction to save the ranch.
Back in Helena, Jamie pays an unexpected visit to a blast from his past, his ex-partner Christina (in a reprised role by Katherine Cunningham) and the mother of his child. Confused and a bit whiney on what he is supposed to do about the dark cloud that lingers over him, Christina, always the brains in their shared operation, walks Jamie through the crisis communication clean-up surrounding Sarah Atwood’s and his father’s murders. With renewed energy, she reminds her ex that not only will this one speech determine his political future, his life will be forever tethered to it. Draft accordingly.
Beth arrives back home from Texas. Less-than-enamored with the Texas horse trainer, she questions how her husband could be his friend. To answer, Rip recounts how he and Travis started their 20-year friendship through a bar-room brawl. It was a rare moment to see the character of Rip break a smile and laugh recalling the memory. It is in these quiet interludes reliving the past, that we recognize, ourselves, what the five years being a part of these characters’ lives has truly meant. The tears cannot be too far behind.
Nevertheless, at times, the episode seems to take a rather snail’s pace to get to where it needs to be, moving not in a manner that one would suspect that we are coming to the end of something…epic. Rather, the cinematic lingers on these often quiet scenes that lull you into naively believing there will be many more episodes to follow.
However, in the final 20 minutes, dominated by the Yellowstone auction day, you come to terms with the finality of it all. Set against the backdrop of watching the beauty and majesty of the ranch’s rope horses and real cowboys work their craft, you know that life here on the ranch will never be the same again — fictional or not.
As the family receives word that the coroner is ready to release John Dutton’s body, Beth entrenches herself as ranch matriarch — tying up loose ends, doling out tender words of comfort and hard-earned words of wisdom. She even invites former Governor Lynell Perry (Wendy Moniz), as her father’s one-time love interest to his funeral on the ranch; and invites Teeter to join her for a drink in town to drown her sorrows in barrel-aged Scotch and take her grief and frustration out on unsuspecting tourists and West Coast transplants. When Teeter asks, through her tears, when her pain over the loss of Colby will go away, Beth reminds the young ranch hand that it never really does because there is, in effect, now a hole in her heart; one, for which, Beth, herself, also has for her late father.
Landon’s portrayal of Teeter in these soft and aching grief scenes over the last episodes has been a refreshing departure from her character’s often strong, no-nonsense demeanor, tough and resilient, serving as the only female ranch hand at Yellowstone. It is unfortunate that it is here at the finish line that we truly get to experience how much more Landon could have given to this character over the years, if time and space had allowed.
As the fictional auction and real life episode come to a close, the emotion meter ramps up as the farewells that have been standing at the door begin their assent on the beautiful spread that is the Dutton Family ranch — the first of which comes as a public tribute to John Dutton and his fallen ranch hand Colby Mayhew. As a kickoff to the Day 2 of the auction, two rider-less horses led by Kayce and Teeter make their way into the corral. With heads bowed and elegant words of freedom spoken, the beautiful farewell felt more like a final tribute to more than just fictional characters; it was the quiet closing of the story on the Duttons, themselves, and their beautiful Montana masterpiece that we have all have come to know and love as the Yellowstone.
As Beth walks quietly through the stable, now devoid of equine life and their energy, she meets Carter, with a question we all collectively want the answer to ourselves — “what am I supposed to do now?” If you have invested any shred of yourself into these stories in this past half decade, your heart will, indeed, sink, when she answers softly, “Sleep in.”
In the final moments, as Beth and Kayce look out over what’s left of their family’s legacy, the setting sun reflecting in their eyes, Kayce asks his sister earnestly not to spend any of her own money trying to save the ranch; he then proceeds to question her about the tax implications of buying/selling property, all in hypotheticals, of course. As her brother drives away with the answers he needs, it hits Beth that Kayce may have found the only viable way to save Yellowstone — though, painful and necessary, they must give it away.
And, so, now we are left to see how doing so will all play out, when the Duttons close their final chapter on Yellowstone, next Sunday, December 15, on Paramount+. What are we all supposed to do now?
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