FEW THINGS ARE more frustrating for a TV fan than seeing a series come to a close with an ending that wasn’t clearly planned, and with Yellowstone’s tumultuous final season—split into two parts, deeply delayed, and sullied with the unceremonious departure of lead actor Kevin Costner—a messy ending seemed increasingly likely for the popular neo-Western.
But even with its wild twists and turns, I’ve always suspected that Taylor Sheridan had a clear end game for Yellowstone. As the show quickly approaches what seems to be its final episode, the fate of the Duttons and their generations-long land war has been in flux for a while now. For three seasons, big city financial firm Market Equities has been getting closer and closer to usurping the Duttons land in hopes of building an airport and, eventually, a new city. But with the conclusion of this season’s penultimate episode, Yellowstone’s big finish seems to have been in the works for well over a hundred years (in fictional time, of course).
In last Sunday’s episode, “Give the World Away,” after selling off the cattle and horses from the ranch to pay for the immense tax debt the family faces, Kayce Dutton asks his sister Beth a hypothetical question—if he were to buy her $300,000 dollar Bentley from her for a dollar, what taxes would he have to pay on it? She replies and tells him that the taxes are based on the purchase value, not the actual value. He smiles a bit before saying, “That’s what I thought.”
While Yellowstone may have been coy about the situation and buyer that Kayce clearly has in mind, fans of the series (and its prequels) can probably make a good guess as to what comes next. To escape the crippling debt the family faces, Kayce could sell the land, and he likely has only one buyer in mind. The Duttons’ season 1—and longest-running—adversary has always been the Broken Rock Reservation. Chief Thomas Rainwater and his tribe have long held the belief that the Yellowstone ranch and the land it sat upon was rightfully Broken Rock land, which is even more complicated by the fact that Kayce Dutton married into the Broken Rock tribe after wedding Monica Long. Their son Tate is the first generation to belong to both sides by blood. Keep that information in your back pocket as we travel back 141 years.
1883: A Yellowstone Origin Story
In Sheridan’s first Yellowstone prequel, 1883, the miniseries ends with the Duttons’ eldest daughter Elsa falling victim to an arrow wound. In pursuit of a place to bury her, the Duttons happen upon the land that would eventually become the Yellowstone ranch. The Native American leader on the land at the time told the Duttons they could bury her there and set up a life in Paradise Valley, but in seven generations, that land would come back to the Crow people, where the Broken Rock reservation is situated. The deal was made, and thus, James Dutton gave way to John, who gave way to Jack, then John Jr, John III, Kayce, and now, Tate.
Jumping forward in time, to somewhere around season 3, the relationship between Broken Rock and the Duttons continued to become increasingly complicated. The Duttons have always been gruesome when it comes to the treatment of their opponents, except when it comes to the people of Broken Rock. In fact, later seasons of Yellowstone have positioned the tribe as allies more often than enemies. The big shift in that relationship dates back to the season 3 premiere episode, “You’re the Indian Now.” It’s at that point that Market Equities makes itself known as the outside force hoping to take the land from the Dutton family and turn it into a development project (RIP Josh Holloway, who died from a rattlesnake bite to the face).
When Monica finds out about the development plans, viewers get a rare scene shared between her and John where she tells him that “you’re the Indian now,” equating the Market Equities move to what colonizers did to Native Americans across the country. Specifically, it shifts the dynamic shared between the Duttons and the Broken Rock tribe. While the Duttons may have been ranching on borrowed time, the family and the Broken Rock tribe share a common enemy in Market Equities, who are no more than modern day colonizers attempting to settle on land they have no claim to.
Jump forward one more time, back to the ending of our current season, and the end game becomes quite clear: the government, and Market Equities by proxy, is coming for the money and the land owned by the Duttons. But with all the assets of the ranch liquidated and the money set aside for Kayce and Monica’s family, there’s only one thing left for the Duttons to do to avoid Market Equities from acquiring it—sell it for nothing back to the people who foretold it would come back to them anyway.
Even richer, for fans who love the Duttons: Tate’s identity as a Dutton of Broken Rock descent creates an ideal seventh generation benefactor of the land. Will he be the one to run the tribe one day? Likely not. But his place in the story serves as a perfect marriage between the rightful owners of the Paradise Valley land mass and the family who was willed to only inhabit the land for seven generations anyway.
If Sheridan pulls off that ending, Yellowstone will do something that history has rarely achieved: restored a rightful balance of power to the indigenous people who had it taken from them.
