How ‘Yellowstone’ Ended for All the Main Characters

[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 haven’t confirmed if the supersized episode is certainly the ultimate one within the megahit flagship sequence, regardless of studies surfacing forward of the finale that two of its surviving stars — Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser — have finalized offers for a by-product.

But one factor is for positive: Yellowstone solidified its legacy in a finale that positive felt like a sequence finale. The Sheridan-directed occasion, titled “Life Is a Promise,” left some doorways open, but it surely additionally circled all the way in which again to the beginning of the saga — to prequel sequence 1883 — when it shut down the Yellowstone ranch for good. In order to avoid wasting the flailing ranch, the most important within the state of Montana, the kids of the late John Dutton (Kevin Costner) bought the ranch again to the Broken Rock Reservation in a deal that not solely solved their monetary issues but additionally made good on a 141-year-old promise made between the Dutton ancestors who settled Yellowstone in 1883 to the Indigenous folks of the land. Seven generations later, the land has been returned.

But earlier than John’s youngsters, Beth Dutton (Reilly) and Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes), may stroll away from their household’s legacy and search contemporary begins with their very own households, Beth had unfinished enterprise along with her different brother, Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley). Decades of loathing between the siblings — courting again to when Jamie sterilized his sister with out her consent as youngsters — culminated within the second demise of a Dutton in season 5B, following the assassination on patriarch John Dutton to unravel Costner’s exit from the sequence and kickstart the propulsive drama that adopted in these previous six episodes.

An epically violent brawl between Beth and Jamie ended along with her stabbing him fatally — a knife to the chest — and noticed her not solely getting away with the homicide, because of the assistance of her husband Rip Wheeler (Hauser), but additionally establishing Jamie, who’s formally declared lacking, to go down for orchestrating the hit their father.

Below, The Hollywood Reporter breaks down how the entire important characters rode off into their proverbial sunsets — a minimum of, for now.

Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) and Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser), with Carter (Finn Little)

The finale frolicked with Beth laying her father, John, to relaxation. The intimate funeral of the Dutton household patriarch noticed your entire ensemble paying their respects to the cowboy who ran the Yellowstone, with Beth making a remaining promise to his casket that she would avenge his homicide. And avenge she did, when she stunned brother Jamie in an assault that led to his demise. But Beth finally ends up retaining an excellent larger promise when she and brother Kayce formalize their plan to promote the ranch again to the Indigenous individuals who had been there first. They promote the land to Chief Rainwater for $1.25 an acre in a deal totaling $1.1 million — one which Rainwater describes because the “worst land deal since my folks bought Manhattan” — in a transfer to keep away from an inheritance tax that neither facet may afford on the property’s true worth.

“You made me promise to not promote an inch, and I hope you perceive that that is me retaining it,” Beth says, talking to her late father, who’s buried on Yellowstone land alongside together with his ancestors, in addition to these of the tribes. “There might not be cows on it, however there gained’t be condos both. We gained.”

Beth lined her tracks in Jamie’s homicide. Rip disposes of the physique (taking him to the “prepare station”) and he or she tells the police detective on John’s homicide case the place to look with a purpose to join 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’ve settled into their new house: A modest and secluded ranch away from vacationers — 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 appears to be like brilliant.

Kayce (Luke Grimes), Monica (Kelsey Asbille) and Tate Dutton (Brecken Merrill)

“This is how I all the time thought it could be, in my goals,” Monica tells her husband Kayce, with son Tate driving alongside them, because the youngest of John’s sons lastly realizes his personal dream. Free eventually of his father and the Yellowstone legacy, Kayce does actually experience off into the sundown together with his household by his facet, as he begins to construct his personal model after buying 300 cattle for his household’s East Camp ranch. The house he has been constructing in season 5B will stay theirs as a part of the take care of Rainwater.

Kayce has struggled together with his life and legacy all through the sequence, usually returning to his imaginative and prescient quest — an Indigenous ritual — for steerage. He all the time interpreted what he noticed as an omen that he would someday be pressured select between the household he was birthed into and the household he created. But he realized in the long run that he didn’t must be the one to avoid wasting them each. They may promote the ranch to the reservation at a worth so small, the gross sales tax wouldn’t sink both of them, and the land might be returned to the individuals who got here earlier than the Duttons.

Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley)

Not the entire Duttons made it out alive, and it shouldn’t be a shock that Jamie was the one whose life was snuffed out. The estranged brother and adopted son of John’s (a fact that got here to gentle halfway by way of the sequence) dug himself right into a gap so deep that even the Montana Attorney General couldn’t good his means out of it. In the tip, it’s sister Beth who comes for him, stunning him in a vicious at-home assault. Jamie fights again in a brawl for the ages between the hated siblings, leaving Beth almost for lifeless by the tip of it.

But Rip arrives simply in time to assist his spouse deal the ultimate blow. She stabs Jamie within the chest and asks him to look her within the eyes because the life goes out of his. Rip finally ends up disposing of Jamie’s physique as a part of Beth’s grasp plan — burning his physique in a automotive on the facet of a street — and he’s formally declared lacking. He leaves behind an toddler son, Jamie Jr., the kid he had together with his political ex-girlfriend Christina (Katherine Cunningham), whom he had reconnected with within the penultimate episode.

Chief Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) and Mo (Mo Brings Plenty)

“I made a promise to your father as soon as,” Rainwater tells Kayce when making the Yellowstone deal, “that I’d someday have this land and I’d return it to the state that man discovered it. I’d take away any proof that he had been right here. Im positive he took it as a menace. At the time, that’s how I meant it. But your individuals are buried in that land. And so are mine. It is sacred. And that’s how we’ll deal with it.”

In the tip, considered one of John’s land adversaries turns into companions with the Dutton household within the deal of the century, which was sealed by a blood handshake between Rainwater and Kayce, whose spouse, Monica, is of Broken Rock tribe. “We are brothers now. To one another and to our land,” says Rainwater.

This promise is realized within the remaining moments of Yellowstone, when the reservation strikes into the land and begins to dismantle Yellowstone as we all know it. But when some start turning over the headstones of the Dutton elders buried there, they’re stopped by Mo (performed by Brings Plenty, who can be the present’s American Indian coordinator marketing consultant). “They protected this land. They died for this land. And this land is the place they’ll keep,” he calls out.

He rights the headstones of Elsa Dutton, adopted by that of John Dutton, earlier than Elsa’s voice once more rises from the grave, and Isabel May (who additionally narrates Yellowstone prequel sequence 1923) explains as franchise narrator how this ending circles again 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’d come again for the land. Rainwater is chief of the fictional Broken Rock tribe, whose bloodline has been traced again in 1923 together with his ancestor Teonna Rainwater (performed by Aminah Nieves).

The Yellowstone Cowboys

Ever because the unintentional demise of considered one of their very own, Colby Mayfield (Denim Richards), the writing has been on the wall for the ranch arms at Yellowstone. With the Dutton household poised to promote the property, the bunkhouse cowboys all started in search of different work.

Teeter (Jennifer Landon), the grieving girlfriend left behind by Colby, mustered up the braveness to ask Travis Wheatley (performed by Yellowstone boss Sheridan) for a job at his Bosque Ranch; Ethan (Ethan Lee) and Jake (Jake Ream), who’re cowboys in actual life, say they’re heading to the N Bar ranch in New Mexico; and Walker (Ryan Bingham), whose music “A Song for the Stone” performed within the finale, plans to comply with his girlfriend (performed by real-life girlfriend Hassie Harrison) on the street. Ryan (Ian Bohen) at first says he plans to wander down the dusty path, however finally ends up reuniting with the girl who bought away (performed by nation star Lainey Wilson) and making an analogous plan to Walker. It’s Lloyd (Forrie J. Smith) whose future is left considerably unknown, as he rejected Rip’s provide to return with him to his and Beth’s ranch.

Former Yellowstone cowboy Jimmy (Jefferson White), who has made a number of season 5B appearances with Sheridan’s onscreen character, was despatched to work on the Four Sixes ranch and was alleged to star within the 6666 spinoff sequence, which has been on maintain since Sheridan bought the property. (Sheridan owns and operates two Texas ranches, Four Sixes and Bosque.)

John Dutton (Kevin Costner)

Since Costner departed the sequence between seasons 5A and 5B, his character’s destiny was stored secret till the season 5B premiere. The surprising episode revealed that John had died by suicide. But the season later unraveled the assassination plot on his life, which was finally traced again to Jamie and his girlfriend, who are actually each deceased. John was given a touching and ceremonial funeral within the season 5B finale. The remaining act of the cowboys all collectively was to dig John’s grave by their very own arms. After every member of the primary ensemble positioned a white rose on his casket and mentioned their private goodbyes, it was Rip who finally ends up reducing John’s casket into the bottom.

“Thank you,” he says to the father-in-law he owes his life to. “I would like you to know, I’ll maintain your daughter, you could have my phrase. I’ll attempt to love her the identical means that she liked you. I’ll see you round.”

Now, the Yellowstone-verse will simply have to attend to see if we will likely be seeing Rip (and Beth) round once more. IN the meantime, 1923 returns subsequent, in Feb. 23, and the present-day spinoff The Madison is presently in manufacturing.

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Here’s learn how to stream Yellowstone and examine again in with THR tomorrow for extra on the finale. Read THR’s deep dive into the season 5B ending.