‘Yellowstone’ Has a Villain Problem — and It’s Kinda Baffling Why
[Editor’s Note: The following article contains spoilers for “Yellowstone” Season 5, Episode 11, “Three Fifty-Three.”]
Here are a few recent scenes from “Yellowstone” that are absolutely, undeniably, without-a-doubt vital to Season 5: Beth (Kelly Reilly) learns Italian. Sarah (Dawn Olivieri) visits the phone store. Kayce (Luke Grimes) incapacitates a doctor to demonstrate how the human body works for another doctor. Tate (Brecken Merrill), well, pretty much everything Tate says at family dinner is dumb. (In one relatively brief conversation, he drops three infamous cliches: the most hackneyed “funny” blessing of all time, the most outdated, casually misogynistic “joke” of all time, and the always-hilarious quip directed at any romantic display of affection whatsoever: “Get a room!”)
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Now, despite my recurring complaints about bloat, I am not a plot purist — one of those joyless TV viewers who complains whenever there’s a stray sequence, scene, or spoken word that dares to exist for reasons beyond moving the A-story forward — and “Yellowstone” isn’t either. Taylor Sheridan’s hit show has long savored any extra time in the saddle, including many-a-music video-like sequence of cowboys cowboying, often set to one of the creator’s favorite country-rock tunes. Heck, the family dinner featuring Tate as a lazy 1980s comedian is significant, too, given how much of the episode’s drama stems from appreciating what the Duttons stand to lose if they do, in fact, lose the ranch. I only bring up these odd little moments to emphasize what’s missing elsewhere. While Sheridan is happy to make time for a character buying a phone to make a call that doesn’t even go through, he’s seemingly just as happy plodding forward without an opponent worthy of ending John Dutton and the Dutton Ranch.
For as much time as Episode 11 devotes to Kevin Costner’s body double — detailing how its hero was killed off without ever showing his face — it dedicates very little time to setting up the responsible villain. Why? Perhaps Sheridan is content with elevating his perennial pinch-hit antagonist, Jamie (Wes Bentley), who’s always been the henchman, never the Big Bad. Or maybe he prefers to keep the Duttons locked in existential battles between man vs. nature and man vs. time, which have long substantiated the series’ wistful romantic side. But how Sheridan chose to write out his now-departed star demands a resolution that boils down to man vs. man — that someone, not just something, be held accountable for Daddy Dutton’s demise. And Jamie isn’t gonna cut it.
After this week, there’s one fewer foe. In an episode that saw Kayce play the instigating investigator (probably because Beth was too busy monologuing about the death of her family’s ranch-life “fantasy”), Sarah Atwood ends up dead. The shady fixer for Market Equities gets spooked when local police — pressured by a new autopsy report Kayce procures — reverse John Dutton’s official cause of death from suicide to homicide, triggering the mysterious powers that be to tie up loose ends. That’s bad news for Sarah, who panics, fights with Jamie, and drives off in a huff. When she’s flagged down by two tourists at a stop light, it’s obvious this isn’t a coincidence. Those aren’t tourists — they’re secret assassins sent to take her out.
In the grand scheme of things, losing Sarah isn’t that big of a deal. Sure, Jamie is upset — he kind of, sort of, liked her (and certainly enjoyed having sex with her) — but she was never built up to be smart enough, strong enough, or nefarious enough to be “Yellowstone’s” ultimate adversary. She was always portrayed as a critical cog in a giant machine, but she was still just a cog.
More perplexing is that I’m still not sure who’s running the machine. Is it Grant Horton (Matt Gerald), aka that bald guy with glasses we saw watching the police press conference on his computer monitor? Is it whoever he called and nervously asked, “You watching this?” Is it Caroline Warner (Jacki Weaver), the chairperson of Market Equities? It sure seems like it should be, but if so, why isn’t her role more substantial? Why is she so often reacting to things and giving vague orders, instead of taking action on her own? Did she ever even meet John Dutton?
Here is where “Yellowstone’s” Season 5 endgame becomes truly confounding. When Kayce meets with Detective Dillard (Rory Cochrane), he tells him to “make a statement — a big one” about formally opening an investigation into John Dutton’s murder. “That will send them running for cover,” Dillard says. “You’ll never find out who did it, but you might find out who paid for it,” Kayce replies. Wait a second. “You’ll never find out” who killed John Dutton? The face of the ranch? The star of the show? That’s an acceptable ending for our all-powerful Montana Livestock Commissioner?
While Kayce’s advice is practical and fine for the situation at hand, the situation at hand didn’t have to be this way. Why can’t we find out who killed John Dutton? Why did John have to be killed by an anonymous hit squad in the first place? Why isn’t the person who killed him someone who can be brought to justice, frontier or otherwise, by the surviving Dutton family?
Letting go of an opportunity for righteous, visceral vengeance isn’t in line with the “Yellowstone” of yore. Remember the Beck brothers? Remember what happened to them? What about Roarke (Josh Holloway)? For bombing Beth’s office, Rip (Cole Hauser) doesn’t exactly let the ne’er-lost fly fisherman off the hook. Even the randos in the blue van who shoot John at the end of Season 3 are tracked down and killed to kick off Season 4.
Having someone to blame is part of what makes those arcs both satisfying and memorable, whereas Season 5’s depiction of John’s death is mainly just messy. Compared to past conflicts, writing the killers as a nameless, faceless goon squad and then letting those nameless, faceless goons get away with it isn’t very affecting (or effective). But it does allow the series to shift focus to its preferred targets: the suits. The Duttons hate men in suits. Always have, always will. And who’s been wearing a suit for five-plus seasons? Jamie.
John Dutton’s only adopted son makes a fitting target for “Yellowstone’s” noble fury in that he’s habitually embodied the growing bureaucracy threatening to overtake the ranch. He’s a lawyer. He works in government. He wears the uniform of authoritative oppression (aka suits). Of course he’s involved in the family’s downfall.
Except… he’s not solely responsible for it, or even clearly to blame. Jamie has never made for a good villain because he’s always been too much of a victim. Sure, such a conflation allows Sheridan the chance to frame a whiny entitled child (who’s also a wimpy, East coast-educated elite) as a devious backstabbing murderer, but that only makes it easier to hate Jamie. It doesn’t make it more satisfying to see him brought down, and it certainly doesn’t elevate him to the stature required of whoever offed John Dutton.
When it comes to betraying his family, Jamie permanently has one foot in, one foot out — a discombobulating position that makes it as hard for the family to fully disown him as it does for viewers to full-on despise him. Beth is the only one who’s been allowed to lean into her hatred of Jamie, and even then, her nonstop admonishment is based on events Jamie has profusely apologized for. Sure, it makes sense that Beth would never forgive him for knowingly allowing her to get an abortion that left her sterile, but the show still shows Jamie expressing enough remorse over a choice he made as a teenager to make you believe he’s genuinely sorry. Beth can hate someone who hates himself, but can we? Should we?
“Yellowstone” can’t decide, and Jamie’s flip-flopping crops up once again in Episode 11, when Kayce attacks him and Jamie explains why he’s not to blame for John’s death.
“I love you,” Jamie says to his brother. “Even if I hated him, which I never did, I couldn’t do that to you.”
Of course, Jamie is to blame for John’s death, but I also believe he’s telling Kayce the truth. That’s just who Jamie is: a man easily tempted toward his own best interests, yet just as easily convinced he’s doing right by the people he cares about. He’s a decent embodiment of a lot of things the Duttons despise — the law, politics, good hygiene — but he’s a terrible Big Bad because he’s not all bad, bad enough, or all that good at being bad.
So who’s the ultimate villain going to be? If “Yellowstone” showed a stronger grip on its story, perhaps its absent antagonist could be seen as more intriguing than troubling. In a classic western, when a white hat gets shot down, the villain is hard to miss: He’s the guy in the black hat. But here, no one stands opposite John’s dead body, smoking gun in hand. Instead, there’s just a big, blank building with an equally nondescript name: Market Equities. Being a modern western, maybe “Yellowstone’s” final fight should be with a mysterious force beyond the abilities of a single hero. John Dutton used to say he was “the opposite of progress,” casting himself in a David vs. Goliath battle where Goliath wasn’t some mythical creature, but an inescapable monolith. So if the Dutton ranch succumbs to progress, the tragedy would, at least, be timely.
It just also could’ve been a lot more rewarding to watch.
“Yellowstone” airs new episodes Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on Paramount Network. The latest episodes are not available to stream, but Seasons 1-5a are available on Peacock.
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