That Death and ‘1883’ Ending Explained

(This story contains major spoilers from the Season 5B finale Yellowstone“Life is a promise.”)

Yellowstone circled back to the beginning to deliver its conclusion.

Heading into Sunday’s Season 5B finale, the mega-hit Taylor Sheridan series had not confirmed whether the super-sized episode would indeed be the series finale. But for those tuning in to what the Paramount Network described as a special season-ending event, the ending certainly felt like an ending. Yet it also set up where Yellowstone-verse could go next time.

(Major spoilers ahead…)

Directed and written by Sheridan, the one hour and 26 minute episode titled “Life Is A Promise” revealed Yellowstone’s fate as the Dutton family ranch was sold back to the Broken Rock Reservation, finally freeing Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) from her father’s legacy while giving his own family a future. Beth Dutton’s (Kelly Reilly) master plan was also revealed in the episode’s most shocking scene, when she fatally stabbed the brother she has loathed, Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley), in the heart.

“You made me promise not to sell an inch, and I hope you understand that I’m the one holding it,” Beth says to the casket of her late father John Dutton (played by late star Kevin Costner; who not shown) as they lay him to rest on the land of Yellowstone. “There may not be queues on it, but there won’t be owner-occupied flats either. We won.”

She later whispers, “I will avenge you.”

Beth collected the last words for her father by setting up a perfect murder of Jamie, who will likely go down for the death of her father, the former governor of Montana, who is declared missing to end the series.

“The last thing I ever want to say to my dad was to make this promise — I’m going to keep it,” Beth tells husband Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) before asking him to take her brother to the Dutton “train station.” which is when their enemies go away and are never seen or heard from again.

Beth walks away from the attack on her brother bruised, battered and concussed. But she heals quickly, and the episode begins to look ahead to what’s next for the ensemble and possibly. Yellowstone-verse by and large by perfectly looking up the reported Beth and Rip spinoff (more on that below). Beth buys her and Rip a new ranch 40 miles west of Dillon, Montana, just far enough away from the airport, tourists or any land developer’s dreams. The ending also kickstarts a new legacy for Kayce, who says he wants to start his own brand and is seen buying cattle with son Tate (Brecken Merrill).

The former ranch hands all move on after the tragic death of cowboy Colby (Denim Richards) and the sale of Yellowstone, including Teeter (Jennifer Landon) who got a job at Bosque Ranch, leading to another on-screen appearance by Sheridan in the finale as horse trainer Travis Wheatley and Ryan (Ian Bohen) reunite with the woman who got away (played by country star Lainey Wilson).

The episode ends with the fictional Broken Rock Tribe moving into Yellowstone and dismantling the ranch. But as they begin to take down the tombstones of the Dutton family’s ancestors buried in the grounds, they are stopped by Mo (played by Mo Brings Plenty, who is also the American Indian coordinator consultant for the franchise).

That’s it 1883‘s Elsa Dutton rises from the dead – as Isabel May ties the entire series and franchise together in a surprise voiceover cameo. (Her “seventh generation” revelation may also answer the theory of John Dutton’s grandfather). Here is what she says:

A hundred and forty years ago, my father learned of this valley, and here we were, for seven generations. My father was told that they would come for this land and he promised to return it. Nowhere was that promise written. It disappeared with my father’s death, but somehow lived on in the spirit of the place. Men cannot really own wild land. To own land you have to cover it in concrete, cover it with buildings. Stack it with houses so thick people can smell each other’s dinner. You have to rape it to sell it. Raw land, wild land, free land can never be owned. But some men pay dearly for the privilege of stewardship. They will suffer and sacrifice to make a living from it and live with it, and hopefully teach the next generation to do the same. And if they falter, find someone else willing to keep the promise.

The final shots capture the cascading Montana countryside as both Kayce and Beth are seen settling into their new lives as they seek a fresh start, with Kayce in the former Yellowstone’s East Camp and Beth with Rip in their new new home.

To understand this ending full circle, you need context about how 1883 ended.

The first Yellowstone prequel series, which aired as a limited series in 2021-2022, featured an important conversation between an elderly Dutton, James Dutton (played by Tim McGraw), and then-chief of the Crow Tribe, Spotted Eagle (played by Graham Greene) .

1883 prequel that explained how the Dutton family settled on what would become their Yellowstone ranch, centered around heroine and narrator Elsa Dutton (May), the daughter of James and Margaret Dutton (Faith Hill), who gradually dies over the course of a week at the end of the series, the result of a poisoned arrow. Due to her impending death, James changes course and takes his daughter on horseback west on the Bozeman Trail to Montana’s Paradise Valley, telling Spotted Eagle that he wants to settle the family where his daughter is buried so she can always be with them.

“The winters are cruel. But the summers are bountiful, and a man who plans can prosper. And you look like a man who plans,” Spotted Eagle tells James of what would become the Yellowstone ranch and the heart of today. Yellowstone series.

“But know this,” he continues, “that in seven generations my people will rise up and take it back from you.”

James replies, “In seven generations you can have it.” He also promises that the Crow tribe has the freedom to hunt his Paradise Valley, and so the relationship with the Duttons and the indigenous people of the land they settled on was born.

The Yellowstone The finale saw Kayce (Grimes) fulfill the promise made more than a century ago and carry out the plan teased at the end of the penultimate episode when he told Sister Beth (Reilly) that the only way they can save the ranch is to give it away.

To end the season, and perhaps the flagship series, Kayce sells his family’s ranch to Chief Thomas Rainwater (Gil Burningham) of the Broken Rock tribe, whose bloodline has been traced back to 1923the other Yellowstone prequel series about the early Duttons with his ancestor Teonna Rainwater (Aminah Nieves). May also narrates 1923.

Kayce sells the ranch to Rainwater for $1.25 per acre, which he explains was the price of the land when his ancestors arrived. The low offer solves their financial hurdles as neither the Dutton family nor Rainwater could afford an inheritance tax on the property if it sold for value.

“Congratulations on the worst land deal since my folks sold Manhattan,” Rainwater says of the $1.1 million deal for the largest (fictional) ranch in Montana.

Kayce’s offer comes with two conditions: that Rainwater sign the deed for East Camp back to Kayce so he and wife Monica (Kelsey Asbille) and their son Tate (Merrill) have a forever home, and that he can never develop or sell Yellowstone. Rainwater agrees. The agreement is finally made in a ceremonial scene where Rainwater and Kayce shake hands in blood and Mo (Brings Plenty) sings a song in his native language. “I will protect this for you and for all of our relationships,” Rainwater promises the family.

Grimes had told THR at the start of the season, he was a “mess” when he read the final script. “I saved the last one (of Season 5B) as long as I could until I couldn’t take it anymore. From the very beginning, Taylor told me he didn’t want me to know how it ended before we got here because he said it might make me play things a little differently (quotes Sheridan): ‘It’s probably best you don’t know; I know how it ends’. So it felt like I waited so long already that I didn’t bother to read it and I wanted to hold out,” he said.

And Reilly, meanwhile, had teased THR that there would be a scene in the finale that would explain the entire series, a scene that didn’t involve Beth and Rip. “The scene I’m talking about that culminates the whole series for me is a scene that has nothing to do with us in it, and it’s in the last episode,” she said. “I think this scene is a reason why this whole series was made.”

All eyes have been on Sheridan to see where the co-creator, writer and director would steer his flagship Western saga and TV’s No. 1 series ever since the departure of its star Kevin Costner and the announcement that Season 5B would be the final season of Yellowstone. Season 5B was announced back in May 2023 as the final season. But then, over the summer, reports surfaced that fan favorites Reilly and Hauser were in talks to move on Yellowstone with a possible sixth season.

So, just days before the finale, new reports said the pair had finalized deals for their own spinoff series. The news was not confirmed by the Paramount Network, as it would essentially spoil that Beth and Rip would be among the living when Season 5B ended Sunday night.

“Taylor can figure out how to absolutely continue if he wants to. But that’s just Taylor being a brilliant writer. I’m not telling you that it’s continuing, it’s just that he’s smart enough as a writer to to do it if it’s something he’s passionate about,” Hauser shared. THR at the start of season 5B. “I trust him wherever he takes her; whether we leave her where we left her or we have to find her somewhere else, I trust him,” Reilly added of their possible series future.

Ahead of Sunday’s final, Reilly gained weight Instagram to say goodbye to the series while she is in production on her next role. “Whatever the future holds, this is the end of the show we’ve been doing for the past 7 years,” she wrote.

Yellowstone director and executive producer Christina Voros, in interviews with THR during this season, has said that the Season 5B finale would really feel like an ending, while still leaving the door open for it to continue in some form. “I think the degree of secrecy that went into it, the atmosphere was definitely that we were protecting a conclusion,” she said. “There’s always an emphasis on any show that comes to a conclusion. You want people to love it as much as you do. … That’s what’s exciting about the end of the season — the way Taylor has kind of unexpectedly drifted into a conclusion on the show that always leaves room to wonder what happens next?”

After the penultimate episode, when I specifically asked her to reflect on a possible 1883 recall, Voros had gracefully teased that “Taylor has taken Yellowstone and he has turned it into a story between the generations. There are complexities that exist by virtue of doing that, which I think make the world of the Dutton story so much richer and more interesting. … The context of Yellowstonewithin the historical saga that Taylor has created is a sort of centerpiece. But the stories extend from that in many different ways.”

These threads will continue in Yellowstone-verse, although this finale was the finale of the flagship series. Second prequel series 1923 is set to return on February 23 and the present-day spinoff Madison is currently in production.

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How to stream Yellowstone and check back with THR tomorrow for more on the finale.