After months of delays caused by creative disputes between Taylor Sheridan and series star Kevin Costner, Yellowstone’s beleaguered final season finally came to a close last week. Good riddance.
What began as a gripping Western action-drama following John Dutton (Costner), a patriarchal cattle baron defending his sprawling Montana ranch from threats as varied as real estate moguls, government bureaucrats, occasional hired assassins, and, worst of all, coastal yuppies from California, devolved into a meandering cowboy soap opera. The show once deftly balanced action with rich, character-driven arcs, delivering three solidly entertaining seasons. Then, somewhere between the fourth season and the torturous march to its finale, the writing fell off a cliff.
The last two seasons have been nothing short of a slog. Gone are the tense power struggles between the three major factions vying to control Yellowstone’s vast landmass: the Dutton family, the Native American reservation, and the developers eager to build condos and ski chalets. Instead, audiences are subjected to drawn-out filler scenes — the fifth season opens with an almost half-hour sequence of ranchers chasing rattlesnakes in Texas. By this finale, I’ve been masochistically hate-watching purely for closure. If Sheridan had the moral fortitude of his cowboy protagonists, he’d have taken this series behind the barn and shot it seasons ago.
Much has been written about Yellowstone’s politics. On the surface, the series exudes a comfortably conservative aesthetic. Its rugged cowboys, armed and stoic atop their horses, serve as walking tributes to a bygone era of masculinity. The show glorifies the toughness of men who live off the land and fight for what’s theirs, standing in stark contrast to the coastal elites portrayed as adversarial interlopers.
Yet beneath the surface, Yellowstone’s moral underpinnings are more nuanced. The series centers on private property as the ultimate symbol of power. As John Dutton tells his adopted son, Jamie, in the pilot episode, “Leverage is knowing that if somebody had all the money in the world, this is what they’d buy.” On Yellowstone, cash is secondary to land — it’s the immovable heart of the Dutton family legacy.
John Dutton himself is framed as a Corleone of the American West, willing to cross ethical lines to protect his family’s empire. The central moral dilemma — how far would you go to safeguard what’s yours? — is a perennially compelling theme, even if its execution falters in later seasons.
Yellowstone isn’t a conservative show, but there is a lot in its first three seasons that conservative audiences can appreciate. Even Sheridan’s portrayal of Native Americans, while acknowledging their grievances, presents them as self-sufficient people trying to better their community, not waiting around for the government to deliver them swaths of land or solve their problems. Mo Brings Plenty from the Rainwater clan, who plays himself on Yellowstone, is the series’ most underused character and a strong candidate for a future spin-off with Kayce Dutton.
But what is most vexing about Yellowstone’s final seasons is how quickly its ostensibly shrewd characters abandon reason and become incompetent or irrational imbeciles. John Dutton is off on a bizarre fling with a hippie ecoterrorist he met at a pipeline protest on his land. Beth, the series’s abrasive alcoholic daughter and supposed astute financial strategist, seems to have no grasp of taxes or estate planning. In one pivotal and unintentionally comedic scene, Kayce asks Beth, “If you sold me your $300,000 Bentley for $1, what would the sales tax be based on?” Without hesitation, she replies, “The $1 sale price.” This is her brilliant scheme to avoid inheritance taxes — not a trust, the obvious solution any novice adviser would suggest.
Kayce fares no better, spending the last two seasons in a dull subplot about reconnecting with his wife’s Native American heritage. Their son, Tate, whose only consistent contribution is recoiling in horror every time his parents display affection, only adds to the cringe factor.
The sole conflict that carries through the finale is Beth’s feud with her brother and archnemesis, Jamie. Torn between his ambitions as a Harvard-educated lawyer and his duty to the ranch, Jamie follows an arc that unfolds in the most predictable way possible, offering little payoff for the buildup.
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Sheridan, much like Bruce Springsteen, loves crafting stories about blue-collar America — despite never having lived that life himself. This disconnect becomes glaring in these last two seasons, where audiences are subjected to endless montages of cowboys riding horses set to country music. Sheridan’s crafty ideas for the Duttons and their ranch appear to have dried up by the fourth season.
Amid the mediocrity, Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) remains the heart and soul of Yellowstone. With more bodies buried than your average mob boss, Rip expresses unwavering loyalty to the Dutton family, radiating a charm reminiscent of Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas. Since he married Beth, the fan-favorite couple has provided a rare bright spot in the series. With a spinoff focusing on their lives on a new property already announced as Sheridan’s next project, one can only hope they finally find better financial counsel.
Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog and a computer engineer in Toronto pursuing his MBA.