Note: This story contains spoilers from “Yellowstone” Season 5, Episode 11.
Historically, “Yellowstone” has been at its most interesting, most explosive when the Duttons have had their backs up against the wall. Someone threatened their land or their livelihood, so they got a posse together and drove the attackers back.
In recent seasons though, that’s been easier said than done not just because they’ve been rustling with the evil Market Equities, but also because they’re trying to go up against the faceless enormity of the U.S. Government. It’s why John Dutton (Kevin Costner) became governor, and probably somewhat true to the experience of an actual rancher. But as a viewer, there’s just something kind of “meh” element to the Duttons trying to muddle their way through easements, eminent domain claims and estate tax issues.
That’s where we are in “Yellowstone” Season 5, Episode 11, titled “Three Fifty-Three” though, with Beth (Kelly Reilly), Kayce (Luke Grimes) and Jamie (Wes Bentley) slogging through the reality of what’s going to happen to the ranch in the wake of John’s death. There’s also the little matter of their dad’s actual death, which we see go down prior to the opening credits. As we already knew, it was conducted by a crack team of black ops mercenaries who thought they got away with it — until Kayce started asking questions around the medical examiner’s office. Throwing a little muscle around, he figured out that Dutton was held down prior to his demise, something that leads to the M.E. (Vinessa Shaw, of “Ladybugs” and “Hocus Pocus” fame) classifying the death as “undetermined” pending further investigation. Turns out holding a guy down, putting a single bottle of oxycodone in his medical cabinet, and forcing a gun to his temple isn’t as clean a manner of offing someone as those hired guns thought.
Jamie’s ascent to power also isn’t going the way he wanted, with the new governor (Gareth Williams) seemingly playing into his hands before taking the podium in the state senate chamber, and announcing that not only is he rolling back the supposedly self-serving actions that John Dutton took to save his ranch, but that he’s also requesting that Jamie remove himself from all legal proceedings, investigations or actions involving his family. It’s a move that feels fairly obvious — talk about a conflict of interest, right? You’d think an attorney general would understand that — but Jamie loses it, racing home and facing off with Sarah (Dawn Oliveri) over the perceived threat to his career.
Even as Jamie and Sarah trade slaps, it’s pretty clear that she’s running his show. He doesn’t have the confidence or the direction to rise on his own, and it’s like he’s always looking for a Beth-wielded ax to come flying down. (Understandably, because it’s definitely coming.) When Kayce confronted Jamie in his office earlier in the episode, Jamie tried to convince Kayce that he’d never hurt their father because who else does he have? He might be estranged from the family, he says, but they’re still the only people in his life. It’s a false-sounding speech delivered from a sleazy place, but it’s true. He has Sarah, but without her, there’s really no one else.
And given how this episode ends with Sarah getting gunned down in her car by what appears to be a blandly suburban couple in a midsize SUV, Jamie’s really about to be up shit creek without a paddle. While the “Yellowstone” audience has always clearly wanted to see Sarah get her just desserts, it’s surprising that it happened this early in the season. It was clear the walls were closing in, to be sure, but her death feels like it could wrap up the whole “getting revenge for John’s death” plot almost too quickly. While it’s not surprising the hired killers she enlisted would want to take care of the only person who could finger them in a homicide investigation, it is surprising that she wouldn’t have seen that coming. She should have been on a plane to Bermuda with bags of money the second that case was reopened. She stuck around too long, though, and now her plan — and Jamie’s plan — is in real jeopardy.
Maybe the real story of what’s going to happen on “Yellowstone” this season, then, isn’t avenging John’s death but dealing with its legal aftermath. As Beth and Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) discuss at the end of the episode, John’s insistence on keeping the ranch whole no matter what has put the family over a barrel. They could have walked away with $500 million in Market Equities money, but now they’re looking at pennies on the dollar, a deal with an “experiential tourism” company, and a fire sale on expensive horses. “There is no preserving this place,” Beth tells Rainwater. “There is prolonging its collapse.”
The family’s land and legacy may have taken 142 years to build, but it may only take a few more episodes to destroy.
“Yellowstone” airs Sundays at 5 p.m. ET/PT on Paramount Network.
