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SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from the Season 5, Episode 14 episode of “Yellowstone,” “Life Is a Promise” which premiered Sunday, Dec. 15 on Paramount Network.
Kevin Costner‘s early departure from “Yellowstone” killed the show.
It happens with nearly every series put in that uneasy predicament. No “Office” fan cites seasons after Steve Carell left as their favorite. “The X-Files” fizzled once David Duchovny left. And although firing Kevin Spacey was the right call, Netflix’s final season of “House of Cards” without its lead was forgettable.
Meanwhile, Costner made an unfortunate gamble on himself, leaving the lucrative “Yellowstone” after the first half of Season 5 to focus on his big-budget vanity project, the film series “Horizon.” Cut to the end of 2024, where “Yellowstone” still has huge ratings, whereas the first “Horizon” was a box office bomb and the second lacks a theatrical release date.
Popular on Variety Despite being an unwise fiscal decision, Costner’s departure seemed final, which forced series co-creator Taylor Sheridan to write the last six episodes of this season as a tribute to Costner’s John Dutton, the owner of the series’ eponymous ranch and the emotional intersection of all the plotlines. And while the first five episodes were rough, Sunday night’s finale proved the emotional resonance of one of television’s biggest dramas.
For a show with so much business to wrap up suddenly, the initial batch of episodes of Season 5B spent plenty of time spinning its wheels. John’s death was detailed multiple times before it was actually shown three episodes in. Flashbacks came frequently, slowing the momentum of the narrative. Sheridan got in plenty of product placement, as well as shots of his pecs. “Yellowstone” — a show famous for wild shootouts, hot sex and a scene where Rip opened a cooler and threw a venomous snake in a guy’s face — was at risk of becoming boring.
That said, the finale “Life Is a Promise” was a winning episode because it swung big on the two most divergent, yet compelling, aspects of the show: The blend of soapy violence with contemplative cowboy poetry. The former was met with Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Jamie (Wes Bentley) engaged in a fight to the death, blood flying and flesh ripping like gladiators in his prefab kitchen. Yet Beth finally plunging a knife into her brother’s heart was the catharsis the series had been leading to for years, as the sibling relationship took bigger and bigger steps towards the inevitable.
Yet the true key to the show’s emotional core came at the crest of their fight, as Jamie snarls at an on-the-ropes Beth, “You won’t even have to worry about the inheritance tax on the ranch anymore, because the class action lawsuit is going to take every inch of that place, and then you can sit back and watch me turn it into the most desirable recreation destination in America.” “Yellowstone” — as well as the prequel series “1883” and “1923” — has always been about land: Who owns it, who wants it and what they want to do with it. For much of the series, John has wanted to retain his land so it would remain pristine and untouched, while Chief Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) pursues it for the Reservation, as it was their ancestral land. Meanwhile, city slickers — nearly always aided by Jamie — were constantly flying out, trying to turn Montana into their vacation destination.
Ultimately, progress and development comes with the march of time, and there was an inevitability that no matter how rich or high up in government they were, the Duttons couldn’t hold on forever against the dirty political tricks thrown at them week after week. By selling the land to the Reservation at a rock-bottom price, Beth and Kayce (Luke Grimes) knew that this chess move was more important than ownership. It represents freedom, and a blockade from industry marching in to build cheap condos.
In the first episode of Season 5B, an easygoing scene around a Texas campfire finds Rip (Cole Hauser) lamenting the disappearance of western traditions and the cowboy lifestyle, saying, “In 30 years from now, nobody’s going to be doing this. Nobody.” While it seemed like that fight against progress would be the theme of these final episodes, Walker (Ryan Bingham) delivered the truest wisdom, speaking of land that will “forget you ’till you disappear.”
“We won,” Beth whispers to John’s coffin in the ending’s emotional centerpiece. While her scars heal, the cowboys’ chest brands fade, and the memories of Jamie, John and their ancestors disappear, the massive plot of land once known as the Dutton’s Yellowstone ranch lives on.
