Note: This story contains spoilers from “Yellowstone” Season 5, Episode 10.
After “Yellowstone” killed off its main character, Kevin Costner’s John Dutton, you knew there’d be hell to pay. Not just with fans, who cried foul at what the show had done to their beloved patriarch, but on the screen, where the Dutton clan suspected who’d killed their father and were starting to bring their chickens home to roost. In this week’s episode, titled “The Apocalypse of Change,” viewers got to see the beginning of that process, brawls, tears and all.
The episode opens a little confusingly, with the ranch hands down in Texas dealing with rattlesnakes in Teeter’s (Jenifer Landon) tent and a bat-out-of-hell-like Beth (Kelly Reilly) coming to whisk Rip (Cole Hauser) away. It’s not really clear what time period you’re in — is Rip back in Texas post-funeral? Is this still six weeks prior — but when you see how carefree Beth is, it becomes pretty clear that we’re still in the before times.
As we watch Beth and Rip spend a weekend shacked up in a pretty nice looking hotel in Amarillo with its very own speakeasy, we learn not only that there is, in fact, a line of 6666 Ranch vodka products in real life but also that Rip had previously never left the state of Montana. (You’d think he’d at least been to Wyoming.) Beth tells him that, if they weren’t shackled to the ranch they could see the world, and he tells her that he chose those shackles. It’s clear the show means it to be romantic, this down-home cowboy loving the land so much that he’d never take a minute away, but instead it feels a little sad. We can’t really see Rip taking a tour of the Louvre or even enjoying Italy all that much, but maybe he’d love a quiet week riding horses in Hawaii. With what’s to come this season, presumably, he’s probably going to need some time away after all.
He’s certainly not going to spend any time in the clink even if he avenges John’s death, because as he tells Lloyd (Forrie J. Smith), “Going to prison for the rest of our lives doesn’t solve anything.”
Back in the big house, we learn that Summer’s (Piper Perabo) still camped out, naively convinced that she got a gubernatorial pardon that also somehow required house arrest. This part of the episode feels a little off, like “Yellowstone” realized it had to wrap up her plot line and character but couldn’t figure out how to do it now that Costner’s gone — Beth acknowledged as much when she sees her at the house and says she literally forgot Summer was there. We watch her and Beth trade barbs before she ships off for God knows where out of a nice-looking airport, so bon voyage, Summer. (There’s never any point in asking “why” with “Yellowstone” because the show lives in a universe with no consequences and sweeping generalizations, but why does Market Equities even need to build a new airport when there’s already a new-looking one right there?)
We also get to spend a little more time with Kayce (Luke Grimes), Monica (Kelsey Asbille) and Tate (Brecken Merrill), who are fixing up their ranch home in a pre-murder world. Everything’s sunshine and roses until it’s not, as scenes later, we watch Kayce come home to that same little family, who have been waiting for him since they heard about John. The timeline is pretty confusing here — Where did Kayce spend the night? Did he not call home or talk to them since he left the governor’s mansion basically 24 hours earlier? — but it’s nice to see the crew rallying the wagons. We quickly learn they’re all moving up to the main house because “there’s a lot to go through.” But to be honest, if they’re planning on waging all-out war with a private equity group capable of hiring ruthless mercenaries, it’s probably best that the Duttons aren’t spread out, alone, over thousands of acres anyway.
And they are going to war with mercenaries, because as Beth finds out when she pays an unannounced visit to Jamie’s (Wes Bentley) office, he’s such a chicken s—t he can’t even look her in the eye when she talks about their dad. He’s all bluster and bravado when Sarah Atwood (Dawn Oliveri) blows in later with her Market Equities boss, perhaps emboldened by Beth and Sarah’s very badass looking office fight. (Why didn’t Jamie’s secretary call the capitol police when her boss was getting slapped silly with the door open minutes earlier? But we digress.)
Once Beth is off scheming and making calls, Jamie tells the equities group that he’ll get the group’s lease on Dutton’s land reinstated, a plot point that first surfaced way too long ago to feel consequential. Market Equities is clearly angling for the ranch and Jamie says his family can’t afford to run it so it’s a win-win. Then again, Jamie also thinks Beth will fight him in court for about a year before ultimately losing and giving in, an argument that is so absurd that it’s like he’s never met his actual sister despite what viewers saw mere moments earlier. Regardless, Market Equities likes what they hear and tell Jamie they’ll support him for the Governor’s office, should he decide to run. Left alone in his office with Sarah afterwards, Jamie takes her advice to “feast on the bounty of [his] conquests” fairly literally, with a sex scene so steamy it’s almost shocking they can air it on basic cable.
While a lot of this episode is really place-setting for what’s to come — we haven’t even gotten to John’s funeral, after all — it does let us know the consequences of what everyone’s playing for. Kayce’s mercenary friend (“Will Trent” star Jake McLaughlin) suggests that the hit on John must have cost “$40 or 50 million.” While Kayce appears to be all in on avenging his father’s death in turn, given that the Duttons supposedly can’t afford to even keep their own ranch rolling, you’ve got to assume whatever revenge they exact is going to have to be homespun.
With only four more episodes of “Yellowstone” to go, it’s also probably safe to assume that whatever creator Taylor Sheridan has up his sleeve is going to be explosive and it’s going to be deadly.
“Yellowstone” airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Paramount Network.
