Yellowstone Finale Recap: It Ends With a Major Death and the Fate of the Ranch Decided

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Yellowstone Season 5, Episode 14, "Life Is a Promise." Read at your own risk!]

Yellowstone has come to an end, unless you ask Paramount Network. In an episode aggressively labeled the "season finale," the Duttons and friends worked to save their livelihoods and their land and their legacies, and one member of the family (aside from the already dead John) didn't make it out alive. Bet you can guess who! 

Kayce's (Luke Grimes) first move felt a lot less like tax fraud than it sounded like it was going to, and it ended up being fairly touching. He called Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) to his little house and offered him a deal. Rainwater could buy the ranch for $1.25 an acre, which is about what it would have cost for the Duttons to buy it back in the day, if they had bought it at all. It was a lot of money back then, but now, it's an easy sum for Rainwater with much more reasonable taxes than the ranch's "real" value. Rainwater promised he would not develop or sell the Yellowstone, and Kayce was allowed to keep his little piece of the East camp. On top of the impending pipeline getting not-so-mysteriously destroyed overnight, it was a great day for Rainwater. 

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Meanwhile, Beth bought herself, Rip (Cole Hauser), and Carter (Finn Little) some land of their own, and Rip and the ranch hands dug a grave for John's coffin on what was now tribal land. There was a small service with only the family, ranch hands, and a couple of friends, and Beth got a moment to cry over her father and hope he'd be OK with what she and Kayce had done. The ranch might not have cows on it, she said, but it won't have condos either, and that was a win. She also offered another, very different assurance to the coffin: "I will avenge you." Beth is a woman of multitudes, I guess. 

Estranged adoptee Jamie (Wes Bentley) was, of course, not invited to the intimate service. He was busy practicing his speech for his press conference designed to take the pressure off himself, which he then gave, having no idea what was coming for him. Beth had changed from funeral-wear into her Avenger outfit: jeans, t-shirt, boots, and a knife. She then drove at high speeds towards her adopted brother, with Rip racing after her once he realized where his wife was going. 

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He tried to get her to pull over, but there's no telling Beth what to do. She showed up at Jamie's house and attacked him with pepper spray and something that might have been a tire iron. He fought back, and when he learned that the Yellowstone had been sold to the reservation and all his evil plans for tourism were foiled, he nearly choked his sister to death. But — surprise! — Rip showed up to save the day, and Beth got to stab Jamie right in the stomach. Rip then carried the dead attorney general off to the train station, that empty, uninhabited canyon-filled area just over the border in Wyoming. 

Beth lied and told authorities that Jamie had started the fight but then ran off when she nearly died, with some "evidence" to back that up when Jamie's car was found in Idaho, purposely set on fire. 

Then, Yellowstone took its final bow with a Lainey Wilson (or "Abby") concert, followed by sad shots of Rip, Beth, and Kayce walking through the ranch one last time before the "Yellowstone Dutton Ranch" sign came down and the main house was dismantled. 

As folks from the reservation were working on getting rid of all literal and metaphorical signs of the Duttons, a few kids thought they would help by pointedly knocking down gravestones in the weird, creepy, and probably illegal Dutton cemetery. Mo (Mo Brings Plenty) had to come out and yell at them about sacred ground before putting the gravestones back, and while it was a nice moment, a bigger concern is: Why are those gravestones so poorly installed? 

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Voiceover from Elsa Dutton (Isabel May), the narrator of 1883 and 1923 and the original Dutton who died on this land, confirmed the completion of that seven-generation promise made at the end of 1883. The land has been returned to the reservation and will be protected forever, with no airports allowed! 

The supersized finale felt long and occasionally slow, and the outcome probably would have hit harder if the season had been paced better — the short half-season did not help — but the way Yellowstone ended was obviously how it was always going to end. It probably couldn't have worked out better or with any more disdain for tourists.