It finally happened—more than two years after it began, Yellowstone‘s fifth season finally came to a close last night. Against all odds—and despite an official announcement that the series would be ending at the conclusion of season five way back in 2023—we’re still not 100% certain that this was the real-deal, last-ever episode of the series (as of airing, it was still being billed as the “season finale” rather than the “series finale“), but given everything that happened in season 5 episode 14, it seems practically impossible for the series to continue for a sixth season.
In an episode packed to the gills with goodbyes—some of them of the permanent variety—the finale gave a very definitive end to the Dutton ranch that has dominated the series since its inception. And while there is certainly some room left for the stories of the remaining Duttons, with multiple spinoffs now in the works, I’m going to go ahead and call it: this was the end of Yellowstone.
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Quite an ending it was, too! So whether you missed out on the action, you just want to catch up on the details for water cooler gossip, or you’re still trying to puzzle through some of the super-sized finale’s twists and turns, here’s what you need to know about last night’s episode.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
For What It’s Worth, It Was Worth All The While
As is to be expected of a series finale (yep, I’m standing by it) there was a lot of farewell-ing to go around this episode (Green Day’s “Good Riddance” plays softly in the background.) Several of the ranch hands are moving on to new jobs; Walker has decided to follow his girlfriend Laramie on the rodeo circuit. Teeter, still recovering from her grief over the death of her boyfriend Colby, snags herself a gig working for Travis (AKA show creator Taylor Sheridan) which fellow former-Dutton hand Jimmy describes as “a hell that has to be experienced to be fully comprehended.” Is that meta or just a joke? You decide.\
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Ryan, who stands as the longest-tenured of that cast’s ranch hands besides Rip and Lloyd, has resolved to wander, but in actuality heads immediately to find Abby, the singer played by country star Lainey Wilson with whom he has a romance before deciding he preferred the life of a cowboy. Well, he’s changed his mind! And because this is the series finale, she generously takes him back after performing a full music video of the song “Hang Tight Honey.”
Of course, the biggest goodbye of the episode comes in the form of John Dutton’s funeral—a low key service held on the ranch with only the family, the cowboys, John’s ex-lover/ex-governor Lynette, and… Thomas Rainwater. Though he was one of John’s biggest enemies in the early season of the series, things are a bit different now—but we’ll get to that in a minute.
It’s a slightly weird funeral, which seems in keeping with John’s own unconventional style. Beth whispers a promise that she will avenge him, Kayce forgives him, Lynette assures his she wore her tightest skirt, and Rip promises to love Beth the way Beth loved John (what’s a funeral without some vaguely incestuous overtones?) and then the Dutton patriarch is finally laid to rest next to his beloved wife.
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Beth immediately tears off in her car after the service is over and in the episode’s second stunning example of Rip completely underestimating his wife, it takes him a full hour to figure out exactly where she’s going, armed to the teeth.
Speaking of Funerals…
You know who didn’t get an invite to John’s impromptu send off? Jamie. Considering he ordered the contract on his father’s life that ultimately put him in the ground, that seems fitting, but Beth isn’t done burying people today. Following a speech putting the blame for John’s death on Sarah (one that Jamie’s ex-girlfriend Christina said would “determine the course of your life, Jamie”), that prediction comes to bloody fruition when Beth shows up at Jamie’s house and attacks him with a tire iron and bear spray.
Jamie’s tougher than he lets on, and manages to get in plenty of shots of his own (after rinsing his eyes out with the frankly absurd amount of milk in his fridge) but, of course, he’s once again the fly in Beth’s spider web, because Rip shows up just in time to stop him from strangling Beth to death and she promptly takes the opportunity to stab her adopted brother, forcing him to look her in the eye as he dies.
It’s perhaps the most anticipated death on Yellowstone besides John himself, and feels appropriately gruesome after all of the bad blood that has passed between him and the family, though Jamie remains one of the most difficult characters to grapple with on the series. He was set up to be so patently hate-able, and yet it’s hard not to see how, under the surface of all of his massive mistakes was the desire to be loved and accepted by the family he never really fit in to. RIP Jamie, you were really… something else.
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Of course, with a body on hand, it means that it’s time for one last trip to the train station (good thing Rip brought Lloyd along—Carter’s got some big cowboy boots to fill as the new defacto righthand man) and a stop to burn Jamie’s car, all so Beth can use that evidence and her injuries to bolster the case that Jamie was the one who had their father murdered.
The moral of this, as with all Yellowstone stories: Don’t mess with Beth Dutton.
Spinoff, Here We Come
Despite the fact that Paramount has yet to officially confirm last week’s news that Beth and Rip (Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser) will be getting their own Yellowstone spinoff, the finale certainly did a lot of work to set things up in that direction.
Early in the episode, Beth shows Rip an online listing for a ranch property (7,000 acres, plus another 20,000 in a lease—ranchers, they’re not just like us) where they could run a small herd of cattle and some yearling horses. Rip’s initially skeptical, noting that the ranch is far from people (and, most importantly for Beth, bars) and that it will never make them rich. Beth assures him that she can handle the getting-rich side of things and that he can build her a bar (how she’s going to populate it with hapless fools to verbally annihilate is a question for later) and Rip reluctantly agrees.
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“So, you could make something like this work?” she asks him.
With an uncharacteristic lack of insight into his wife (it won’t be his last of the episode) Rip says, “Yeah, I could make something like this work.”
“Well that’s a relief,” she sighs, “I bought it this morning.”
Relatively little is mentioned about the logistics of all of this again. Rip at one point invites Lloyd to join them, but he declines. Carter is also apparently going with them since evidently no one involved has any concern about this unschooled teenager living as semi-indentured servant/proxy child for Beth and Rip—here’s hoping that poor kid gets something to do in the spinoff.
The only other really pertinent detail about the new ranch (name TBD) requires a bit of Google mapping: Beth places the property outside of Dillon, Montana on the southwest side of the state, near—wait for it—the Madison Valley. Attentive Yellowstone hounds might recognize the name; it features as the titular location of The Madison, the Michelle Pfeiffer and Matthew Fox-helmed Yellowstone spinoff which, up until now, has had no obvious connection to the main show itself. How exactly that will work in isn’t clear, but it’s the first and apparently only hint at the new show in the episode, so we’ll have to take what we can get.
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A Prophesy Comes True
Ahead of the series finale, a lot of speculation centered on a scene from 1883 in which tribal leader Spotted Eagle told the Duttons of the valley that would eventually become their home—warning that in seven generations his people would rise up and retake it. That warning came full circle on this week’s episode as Kayce revealed the plan he’d previously hinted at to give away the estate-tax beleaguered Dutton ranch to the local reservation.
“Give away,” may be slightly too generous a term, as they end up selling the land (minus a small plot for Kayce, Monica, and Tate to live on) for $1.25 an acre—the same price it went for back when Kayce’s ancestors first settled in Montana. The price tag ends up at $1.1 million, which isn’t exactly chump change but still leaves Kayce with, as Rainwater puts it, “the worst land deal since my people sold Manhattan.”
This plotline actually produces some of the episode’s loveliest scenes, with Rainwater both acknowledging the animosity between himself and John and also that it came from a mutual dedication to the land. He promises that the Yellowstone acres will be designated as a wilderness area, accessible only by horse or on foot, and that the land will never change (tribal law prohibits the sale of their lands.) Kayce has to take a minute, crying at last in Monica’s arms, “I’m free.”
The reservation wastes no time in reclaiming the Dutton land, breaking down the house and barn as soon as the family has moved out. While Rip offers to give the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch signs to Kayce, he says he, Monica, and Tate will be making their own brand on their new ranch (sorry to all the ranchhands stuck with a Y on their chests forever!)
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That’s All Folks
Toward the end of the episode, a familiar voice from the prequels makes a return to narrate a few final thoughts on the ranch. Elsa Dutton, the heroine from 1883 whose death ultimately decided where the Dutton family would forge their seven-generation empire, and who serves as the narrator for 1923 as well, gives her voice for the first time on Yellowstone, saying “Raw land, wild land, free land can never be owned. But some men pay dearly for the privilege of its stewardship. They will suffer and sacrifice to live off it, and live with it, and hopefully teach the next generation to do the same, and if they falter, find another willing to keep the promise.”
The episode concludes with a few shots of Kayce, Monica, and Tate welcoming new cattle to their ranch (name also TBD) while Rip and Carter wrangle heir own herd on the new property Beth has bought for them. Rip tells her that the grass is good there (a high compliment from a cowboy) and that he’s happy. She assures him that she’s “getting happy” and with that, what is likely the end of Yellowstone comes to a sweet close.
Given what little we know so far about the spinoff series, it’s not clear whether this will be the last we see of Kayce’s side of the family, or eve when we might be getting more of Rip and Beth’s new adventure, but one thing’s for sure—fans will be eagerly awaiting when the Duttons ride again.
Assorted musings:
- During the funeral, a bird of prey (previously seen flying during the grave digging scene) lands an observes the service. My ornithology skills are not up to snuff to tell what kind of raptor it is, but it certainly called to mind Spotted Eagle.
- The Dutton cemetery has been a set piece for a while now, and this episode we get shows of a number of the gravestones including the original, Elsa, as well as Lee. Remember Lee? The Dutton sibling who died in the first episode and was so loved and lamented that basically no one ever mentioned his name ever again? Yeah, me neither until they showed me his tombstone.
- Okay, but seriously, what adult man living alone has two full half gallons of milk sitting in his fridge?!
- Did it seem like there was more product placement in this episode than usual or was that just me? Whatever the reason, I have a burning desire to go buy some Ray-Bans.
- Now that we have reached the end, I must vent a totally petty personal beef I’ve been holding onto for seasons. According to the character Teeter’s background on the show, she’s from Texarkana, Texas, and as a born-and-bred Texarkana native myself, I just have to say—we don’t talk like that. Whew! Feels good to get that off my chest!
