The beloved Paramount+ cowboy drama Yellowstone was never quite the same after Kevin Costner, who played John Dutton, patriarch of the Dutton family, announced he was leaving the series after four and a half hugely popular seasons. And the series itself came to a violent conclusion: If you recall, John’s daughter, Beth (Kelly Reilly), stabs her half brother Jamie (Wes Bentley) to death as retribution for the staged suicide of her father. The show always knew how to deliver high drama bordering on soap opera, which ultimately made Yellowstone addictive to watch even as its narrative grew nonsensical. Now, a new opportunity for resolution in the Dutton family saga has presented itself: After a long two years since that bloody finale, we’re finally back in the universe with Dutton Ranch, a sequel series that follows Beth and her steadfast husband Rip (Cole Hauser)—two fan favorites of the original series, though Beth is polarizing in some circles. (Not in this house!) Yellowstone series creator Taylor Sheridan, now a household name in the TV business, is busy working on approximately 12 other shows, and so he hands over the reins here to Chad Feehan, creator of Lawmen: Bass Reeves (another Sheridan-produced cowboy show not related to the Yellowstone-verse). To that end, Feehan was recently ousted as Dutton Ranch’s showrunner—after rumored interpersonal issues on set—so he won’t be back if the show gets renewed. In the meantime, though, the story laid out in Dutton Ranch is largely Feehan’s, and the double-episode premiere reflects some of the sensibilities of Lawmen: Bass Reeves while still feeling Yellowstone-adjacent.
The first episode starts in a seemingly idyllic post-Yellowstone world: Beth and Rip were never caught for Jamie’s murder and are now living peacefully on their ranch 40 miles west of Dillon, Montana, where they settled after the events of Yellowstone’s finale. They ride out into the mountains and camp out together. Over a flask and cuddled up by a tree, Beth asks Rip if he’d ever imagined they could have this: each other, peace, and quiet. “We’re free now, baby,” he replies. It’s worth remembering what Beth and Rip have both been through in the lead-up to this moment: Beth has basically lost everyone in her life, including (most recently) her sister-in-law Monica (Kelsey Asbille), who was killed offscreen in the pilot episode of the CBS Yellowstone spinoff Marshals. And Rip has come far since his days as a troubled teen taken in and nurtured by the Dutton family. But peace never lasts long in the world of Yellowstone, and soon a crackling thunderstorm in the distance spells trouble for Beth, Rip, and their new home. A lightning strike almost immediately ignites an aggressive forest fire.
The flames are hungrily eating up the land as Beth rides back home quickly to grab their informally adopted son Carter (Finn Little) and anything she can get her hands on (including some documents, a photograph of her with her father, a cowboy hat, and a knife). They save their horses right in the nick of time and make a run for it before the ranch is engulfed by flames. Meanwhile, Rip gallops into the flames to save a trapped cow in distress. And some men won’t even text back! Rip makes it out of the fire covered in soot, but he seems otherwise okay. (Thankfully, the little calf he saved made it out alive, too.) He’s heartbroken by the destruction, but it’s time for a fresh start. After a new opening title sequence, we catch up with our little family on a new ranch somewhere in sweaty Texas. They’ve bought the “Edwards Ranch,” now renamed the “Dutton Ranch,” in the hopes of starting anew.
We also meet some new characters, like Rob-Will (Jai Courtney), a foreman (and a loose cannon), and the more even-keeled Chet (Hart Denton), both cowboys who work at the nearby 10-Petal Ranch. They grab Wes (Nakoa DeCoite) from his sleeping bunk around 4 A.M. under the guise of a breached pregnant cow emergency, but it’s actually so that Rob-Will can confront Wes about snitching on him: As it turns out, Rob-Will has been cooking the books. In a shocking way to start this episode, Rob-Will shoots Wes in the head before he has a chance to explain himself. After a bump of cocaine, Rob-Will and Chet bury the body. Later that morning, Rip heads out to work with fellow cowboy Azul (J.R. Villarreal), who has deep ties to the old Edwards Ranch (his dad died working there) and seemingly knows everyone in town. At the gas station, they have a run-in with Rob-Will and Chet. Surprise, surprise, Rob-Will is a racist bully, and he won’t stop harassing Azul. Fret not: Rip, of course, makes quick work of it, punching Rob-Will straight across the jaw. While Chet tries to apologize about the whole situation, Rob-Will drives away, leaving him at the gas station. So much for brotherhood! They literally just buried a body together.
Back at the newly minted Dutton Ranch, Beth helps Carter with his algebra and encourages him to check out the local rodeo. We’re then pulled into a high school B-plot with Carter, who develops a crush on a girl in his English class (pulling his focus away from Animal Farm). After his crush dupes him into buying her and her friends alcohol—he’s 19 and looks older than the average high schooler—he notices a fight going down between a man and a woman in the parking lot. When he notices it getting physical, he jumps in and basically beats the shit out of this guy until the police have to intervene. Luckily, Oreana (Natalie Alyn Lind), the woman in question, is able to bail him out of jail somehow. I guess that’s one way to have a meet-cute in this town.
Meanwhile, Beth shows up to the 10-Petal Ranch hoping she can schedule her six Angus cows for slaughter, but she gets a frosty reception. This is where we meet Beulah Jackson (played by the Annette Bening). She’s the boss around here, and she’s the mother of two sons who work for her: little demon Rob-Will and the more buttoned-up Joaquin (Juan Pablo Raba). Apparently, Beth’s herd is a little too small for this corporate-style slaughterhouse, but Beulah agrees to take them on—so long as she gets a cut of the profits. Beth is not keen on that idea, going as far as to call it extortion. It’s a no-deal meeting and something of the beginning of a local rivalry. (Bening going toe-to-toe with Reilly is absolutely what I’ve signed up to watch here.) Surprisingly, Beth doesn’t destroy anything on her way out the door.
To take a load off after that, Beth grabs a drink at the local tavern, where she meets local veterinarian Everett McKinney (the Ed Harris). (Their bartender, Carol, is played by country music artist Morgan Wade, whose name might ring a bell if you watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.) Beth and Everett exchange pleasantries, and he gains Beth’s respect when he tells off a disrespectful, annoying other cowboy at the bar. On her way home, Beth gets stuck at a road closure, where she notices a whimpering impaled horse nearby—one the police have thus far refused to put down. She takes it upon herself to put the animal out of its misery, but she hesitates after she lifts her gun to its head. Before she can make her next move, a veterinarian the police called shows up—it’s Everett! She convinces him to try and save the horse, having already built a connection with the creature. After some surgery, the horse survives for Beth to rehabilitate. Maybe this is a new healing era for Beth after all. She’s so mother. As the day comes to a close, Beth and Rip crack open a couple cold ones and unpack the day they’ve had. They talk about making their life here in Texas work, and Beth expresses how much she misses her dad. She yearns for a peaceful life, and Rip tries to make that a reality for her. (She wakes up to fresh coffee and a rose. God, I see what you have done for others!) We’ll see if that peace lasts—especially when Rip soon stumbles on Wes’s body, buried on Dutton Ranch land. Uh-oh. In episode 2, we flash back to eight days after the Montana fire to find out how Beth and Rip ended up buying 5,000 acres in Rio Paloma, Texas, of all places. It was actually Walker (Ryan Bingham), a cowboy from Yellowstone, who told Rip about the ranch’s sale. (Will Bingham be making a cameo at some point?!) Apparently, the Jacksons have been after that land for 20 years, or so Jeanie Edwards (Harriet Sansom Harris) tells Beth and Rip down in Texas. Now that her husband, Billy, has passed, Jeanie wants to sell the Edwards Ranch to a family who will actually take care of it, rather than gut it in the name of corporate greed. Jeanie is aware of John Dutton’s reputation, which is how she ends up selling the land to John’s daughter and her husband—even if it costs them both everything they own. (They figure it’s cheaper to rebuild in Texas than in Montana. We’ll see about that!)
Back in the present-day timeline, Rip heads to the local prison to pick up Zachariah (Marc Menchaca), a cowboy who worked closely with Azul’s father when he was still alive—and now a new member of the Dutton Ranch crew. (Rip puts him to work immediately.) Beth manages to convince Everett to take her to another slaughterhouse that might handle her cows, and they spend the car ride eating gummy worms and talking about his time in the U.S. Navy. Finally at a butcher who wants her business, Beth sells her six cows to Claudio (David DeLao) and his small four-man operation. We’re forced to watch some disgusting shots of cows getting sawed in half but, hey, at least Beth got her deal! Meanwhile, Rob-Will and Joaquin head out to pick up Wes’s body when they stumble on his empty grave. (As we already know, Rip got to it first.) The plan Joaquin made with Beulah at the end of the last episode was, essentially, to cover up the entire murder and send Rob-Will to rehab. That’s going to be a lot harder to do with a missing body. Beulah ends up pretty frustrated at this turn of events, and she goes so far as to blame Joaquin for letting the sale of the Edwards Ranch slip through their fingers.
The drama is already getting messy, but things grow messier still when Joaquin is sent to tie up loose ends by paying Wes’s widow, Whitney (Olivia Rose Keegan), and their child a visit. She is immediately suspicious about the entire situation and goes straight to the police to file a missing person’s report, but the cops don’t seem too keen on helping her out. (This seems to suggest the police are in the Jackson family’s pocket.) Whitney ends up packing up her place in garbage bags, presumably to make a run for it so she doesn’t end up as Rob-Will’s next victim. At the 10-Petal, Beulah assigns Chet the foreman job previously held by Rob-Will. She chooses to anoint him head cowboy with the understanding that she knows what he knows: He was there the night of the murder, which binds them in a kind of mutual protection pact. The other men at the ranch don’t take this development well, however. One cowboy, in particular, won’t let it go, intent on pushing Chet for answers as to Wes’s whereabouts. This prompts a nasty fight, and Chet beats the man badly to get him to shut up about it. On Carter’s loverboy end of things, Oreana picks him up after school to drink beer and shoot some empty bottles. Is that safe?! Who cares—she’s enamored by him. (Her saying he’s “kind of handsome, kind of not” took me out.) But not all’s well in paradise: We find out quickly that not only does Oreana have a boyfriend, but she is also Rob-Will’s daughter. Of course.
At Beulah’s dining table, Oreana finds out her father will soon be heading off to rehab. Beulah gives her granddaughter a stern talking-to, thrusting expectations of perfect behavior onto Oreana, whom she hopes might take over the ranch someday. What about Joaquin?! He seems to be doing all the heavy lifting around here. Still, it’s not a Sheridan show without some kind of shouting match over a dinner. Across another dining table, Rip and Carter talk over his girl problems. Rip gives him some fatherly advice: Listen to the woman, no matter whether what she says is nice or mean. (This is hilarious, because it’s exactly Rip’s own dynamic with Beth.) Beth walks in before they can get any deeper into their father-son chat, and she invites Rip out to a nearby bar to have a drink with Everett, who seems to be a pretty solid ally for the Dutton Ranch so far. Over at the bar, they exchange pleasantries, and before you know it, Everett heads up onstage to perform a song for Beth and Rip to dance to, although the scene cuts away before we get a chance to hear Harris actually sing. (Boooo!)
As the episode concludes, Rip finally disposes of Wes’s body in a minefield nearby. I suppose this is the new “train station” of Dutton Ranch. I can’t imagine most people would want to wander out into this minefield…but it’s worth noting that both Beth and Zachariah noticed Rip’s absence in the middle of the night. Looks like peace won’t be possible in Texas any more than it was in Montana.
