[This story contains major spoilers from the Yellowstone season 5B finale, “Life Is a Promise.”]
Yellowstone wrapped up its central saga with the season 5B finale. Taylor Sheridan and Paramount Network have not confirmed if the supersized episode is indeed the final one in the megahit flagship series, despite reports surfacing ahead of the finale that two of its surviving stars — Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser — have finalized deals for a spinoff.
But one thing is for sure: Yellowstone solidified its legacy in a finale that sure felt like a series finale. The Sheridan-directed event, titled “Life Is a Promise,” left some doors open, but it also circled all the way back to the start of the saga — to prequel series 1883 — when it shut down the Yellowstone ranch for good. In order to save the flailing ranch, the largest in the state of Montana, the children of the late John Dutton (Kevin Costner) sold the ranch back to the Broken Rock Reservation in a deal that not only solved their financial problems but also made good on a 141-year-old promise made between the Dutton ancestors who settled Yellowstone in 1883 to the Indigenous people of the land. Seven generations later, the land has been returned.
But before John’s children, Beth Dutton (Reilly) and Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes), could walk away from their family’s legacy and seek fresh starts with their own families, Beth had unfinished business with her other brother, Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley). Decades of loathing between the siblings — dating back to when Jamie sterilized his sister without her consent as teenagers — culminated in the second death of a Dutton in season 5B, following the assassination on patriarch John Dutton to solve Costner’s exit from the series and kickstart the propulsive drama that followed in these past six episodes.
An epically violent brawl between Beth and Jamie ended with her stabbing him fatally — a knife to the chest — and saw her not only getting away with the murder, thanks to the help of her husband Rip Wheeler (Hauser), but also setting up Jamie, who is officially declared missing, to go down for orchestrating the hit their father.
Below, The Hollywood Reporter breaks down how all of the main characters rode off into their proverbial sunsets — at least, for now.
Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) and Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser), with Carter (Finn Little)
The finale spent time with Beth laying her father, John, to rest. The intimate funeral of the Dutton family patriarch saw the entire ensemble paying their respects to the cowboy who ran the Yellowstone, with Beth making a final promise to his casket that she would avenge his murder. And avenge she did, when she surprised brother Jamie in an attack that led to his death. But Beth ends up keeping an even bigger promise when she and brother Kayce formalize their plan to sell the ranch back to the Indigenous people who were there first. They sell the land to Chief Rainwater for $1.25 an acre in a deal totaling $1.1 million — one that Rainwater describes as the “worst land deal since my people sold Manhattan” — in a move to avoid an inheritance tax that neither side could afford on the property’s true value.
“You made me promise not to sell an inch, and I hope you understand that this is me keeping it,” Beth says, speaking to her late father, who is buried on Yellowstone land along with his ancestors, as well as those of the tribes. “There may not be cows on it, but there won’t be condos either. We won.”
Beth covered her tracks in Jamie’s murder. Rip disposes of the body (taking him to the “train station”) and she tells the police detective on John’s murder case where to look in order to connect Jamie to his murdered girlfriend Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri), who was the one who ordered the hit on John. The episode ends with a serene scene between Beth and Rip, who have settled into their new home: A modest and secluded ranch away from tourists — and even bars — 40 miles west of Dillon, Montana. The ranch hand they all-but adopted, Carter (Finn Little), rides with them, and their future looks bright.
Kayce (Luke Grimes), Monica (Kelsey Asbille) and Tate Dutton (Brecken Merrill)
“This is how I always thought it would be, in my dreams,” Monica tells her husband Kayce, with son Tate riding alongside them, as the youngest of John’s sons finally realizes his own dream. Free at last of his father and the Yellowstone legacy, Kayce does literally ride off into the sunset with his family by his side, as he begins to build his own brand after purchasing 300 cattle for his family’s East Camp ranch. The home he has been building in season 5B will remain theirs as part of the deal with Rainwater.
Kayce has struggled with his life and legacy throughout the series, often returning to his vision quest — an Indigenous ritual — for guidance. He always interpreted what he saw as an omen that he would one day be forced choose between the family he was birthed into and the family he created. But he realized in the end that he didn’t have to be the one to save them both. They could sell the ranch to the reservation at a price so small, the sales tax wouldn’t sink either of them, and the land could be returned to the people who came before the Duttons.
Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley)
Not all of the Duttons made it out alive, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that Jamie was the one whose life was snuffed out. The estranged brother and adopted son of John’s (a truth that came to light midway through the series) dug himself into a hole so deep that even the Montana Attorney General couldn’t smart his way out of it. In the end, it’s sister Beth who comes for him, surprising him in a vicious at-home attack. Jamie fights back in a brawl for the ages between the hated siblings, leaving Beth nearly for dead by the end of it.
But Rip arrives just in time to help his wife deal the final blow. She stabs Jamie in the chest and asks him to look her in the eyes as the life goes out of his. Rip ends up disposing of Jamie’s body as part of Beth’s master plan — burning his body in a car on the side of a road — and he is officially declared missing. He leaves behind an infant son, Jamie Jr., the child he had with his political ex-girlfriend Christina (Katherine Cunningham), whom he had reconnected with in the penultimate episode.
Chief Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) and Mo (Mo Brings Plenty)
“I made a promise to your father once,” Rainwater tells Kayce when making the Yellowstone deal, “that I would one day have this land and I would return it to the state that man found it. I would remove any evidence that he had been here. Im sure he took it as a threat. At the time, that’s how I meant it. But your people are buried in that land. And so are mine. It is sacred. And that’s how we will treat it.”
In the end, one of John’s land adversaries becomes partners with the Dutton family in the deal of the century, which was sealed by a blood handshake between Rainwater and Kayce, whose wife, Monica, is of Broken Rock tribe. “We are brothers now. To each other and to our land,” says Rainwater.
This promise is realized in the final moments of Yellowstone, when the reservation moves into the land and begins to dismantle Yellowstone as we know it. But when some begin turning over the headstones of the Dutton elders buried there, they are stopped by Mo (played by Brings Plenty, who is also the show’s American Indian coordinator consultant). “They protected this land. They died for this land. And this land is where they’ll stay,” he calls out.
He rights the headstones of Elsa Dutton, followed by that of John Dutton, before Elsa’s voice again rises from the grave, and Isabel May (who also narrates Yellowstone prequel series 1923) explains as franchise narrator how this ending circles back to 1883 and the land promise made between her father, James Dutton (Tim McGraw), and then-Chief of the Crow Tribe: After seven generations of Duttons, they would come back for the land. Rainwater is chief of the fictional Broken Rock tribe, whose bloodline has been traced back in 1923 with his ancestor Teonna Rainwater (played by Aminah Nieves).
The Yellowstone Cowboys
Ever since the accidental death of one of their own, Colby Mayfield (Denim Richards), the writing has been on the wall for the ranch hands at Yellowstone. With the Dutton family poised to sell the property, the bunkhouse cowboys all began looking for other work.
Teeter (Jennifer Landon), the grieving girlfriend left behind by Colby, mustered up the courage to ask Travis Wheatley (played by Yellowstone boss Sheridan) for a job at his Bosque Ranch; Ethan (Ethan Lee) and Jake (Jake Ream), who are cowboys in real life, say they are heading to the N Bar ranch in New Mexico; and Walker (Ryan Bingham), whose song “A Song for the Stone” played in the finale, plans to follow his girlfriend (played by real-life girlfriend Hassie Harrison) on the road. Ryan (Ian Bohen) at first says he plans to wander down the dusty trail, but ends up reuniting with the woman who got away (played by country star Lainey Wilson) and making a similar plan to Walker. It’s Lloyd (Forrie J. Smith) whose future is left somewhat unknown, as he rejected Rip’s offer to come with him to his and Beth’s ranch.
Former Yellowstone cowboy Jimmy (Jefferson White), who has made several season 5B appearances with Sheridan’s onscreen character, was sent to work at the Four Sixes ranch and was supposed to star in the 6666 spinoff series, which has been on hold since Sheridan purchased the property. (Sheridan owns and operates two Texas ranches, Four Sixes and Bosque.)
John Dutton (Kevin Costner)
Since Costner departed the series between seasons 5A and 5B, his character’s fate was kept secret until the season 5B premiere. The shocking episode revealed that John had died by suicide. But the season later unraveled the assassination plot on his life, which was ultimately traced back to Jamie and his girlfriend, who are now both deceased. John was given a touching and ceremonial funeral in the season 5B finale. The final act of the cowboys all together was to dig John’s grave by their own hands. After each member of the main ensemble placed a white rose on his casket and said their personal goodbyes, it was Rip who ends up lowering John’s casket into the ground.
“Thank you,” he says to the father-in-law he owes his life to. “I want you to know, I’ll take care of your daughter, you have my word. I’ll try and love her the same way that she loved you. I’ll see you around.”
Now, the Yellowstone-verse will just have to wait to see if we will be seeing Rip (and Beth) around again. IN the meantime, 1923 returns next, in Feb. 23, and the present-day spinoff The Madison is currently in production.
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