‘Yellowstone’ Season 5 Episode 9 Recap: “Desire Is All You Need”

As Yellowstone returns after almost two years away, the life of John Dutton isn’t the only thing that’s ending. After all of the offseason/hiatus drama about its series lead not just quiet quitting but officially Costner Quitting, the show itself is concluding after six new episodes to close out its fifth season. And because Yellowstone is a Taylor Sheridan joint, with Episode 9 it’s continuing to emphasize the ending of the vocational lifecycle that for generations has sustained the Dutton family and their ginormous cattle ranch. Cowboying as an entire way of life is under threat, and not just because family patriarch John Dutton (Costner), the 26th Governor of the State of Montana, is discovered lying dead from a gunshot wound on the morning his impeachment was about to begin.

As Yellowstone returns in the present, it’s with some immediate resolution for every shouty fan theory that had Costner’s John Dutton killed off via sudden chest grabber or random car crash. It’s neither, as his daughter Beth (Kelly Reilly) is horrified to discover. Speeding up to the governor’s mansion in her Bentley Continental GT, and joined by her brother Kayce (Luke Grimes), Beth sees a dead body in a bathroom, a nearby pistol, and a whole lot of blood spatter. But what she doesn’t see is anything denoting the official cause of death: suicide. “It was Jamie!” Beth says to Kayce through angry sobs. “I know it!” 

Now, you gotta remember that before the break, in Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 8, Beth and Jamie were actually issuing concurrent murder threats. She was pitching John on the idea of snuffing out his adopted son, who as power-hungry Montana attorney general had generated all manner of nuisances for the fam. (Impeachment proceedings, squabbles over ranch land getting put into a conservation easement, Jamie’s secret son/potential Dutton heir; the order for Beth to atone for her barfight with community service.) But now it’s Jamie’s words to his secret lover from back then that matter even more: “What if I wanna…play offense?” 

That John Dutton died is at least established before Yellowstone flashes back five weeks and to the circumstances of its preparation. He definitely did not do it himself. Earlier this season, when Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri) was tapped by Market Equities to steady the high stakes money and land situation in Montana, she recognized Jamie Dutton as a soft target, seduced him in short order, and finally offered her help with arranging a Michael Clayton-style corporate death squad. And here in ep 9, we see how that actually works. Atwood’s meeting with a “logistical solutions” firm reveals they have her unethical sex-having with Jamie on tape – don’t fuck with us, in order words – and that she took approximately two seconds to consider before giving them the green light to arrange John Dutton’s murder. While he had a lot of enemies, they like suicide rather than framing anybody, because its finality removes any potential autopsy/medical examiner whammies. They will inject the triggering agent. But they emphasize it’s Atwood who put the murder weapon in their hands.  

Five weeks before John’s demise, we also catch up with Beth’s husband Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) as he hauls a bunch of horses and cowboys down Texas way, where they’ll stay on the open plain with a clutch of Dutton livestock. This is due to Brucellosis appearing back home, an outbreak they will whether at 6666, the vast South Texas ranch owned by Travis Wheatley (Sheridan). Bunkhouse faves Teeter (Jennifer Landon), Ryan (Ian Bohen), and Walker (Ryan Bingham) are along for the duration, Jimmy Hurdstrom (Jefferson White) works at the 6666 – what Yellowstone fan wouldn’t want more Jimmy? – and the move also allows Sheridan, as a writer, more space to explore the changing nature of the cowboy ethos. Rip recognizes that in 30 years, nobody will be doing the hard work on purpose, right out there under the stars. And in ep 9, evocative direction from Christina Alexandra Voros depicts an entire wordless montage of cowboys in action, with the rhythms of horses in motion and the masses of cattle pushing their way through pens. 

The killing of John Dutton is probably also gonna get a lot of other people on Yellowstone killed. We’re definitely here for all of that – the series has always given good gun fights – but as the show kicks its spurs toward a conclusion, we’re also really interested in seeing how Sheridan will tie the concept of dying cowboy traditions into the show’s evolving questions about economics and the nature of effective land use. These themes have surfaced in the battles over land for the Dutton ranch and the Market Equities airport. They continue to affect Chief Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) and his stewardship of the Broken Rock people. (New pipelines forced onto the reservation have Thomas telling Moses Brings Plenty’s Mo, “This is the hill we die on.”) And they’re at the heart of a beautiful episode 9 sequence that features Billy Klapper. After the loriner legend gifts Rip a pair of artful, sturdy one-piece steel bits, which the veteran cowboy will require if he’s gonna spend months in the hard winds of the Texican plain, another 6666 cowboy gets wistful. When Klapper’s gone – episode 9 is dedicated to his real-life memory – “we’re all out of legends. And with nobody trying to be the next one.”

In the present, Sarah Atwood appears at Jamie’s house in lingerie, and with a champagne toast. Did a bawling Jamie really not put it together until this exact moment that his dad’s death was not a suicide, and was in fact his and Sarah’s doing? The way this scene is framed feels suspect. But we’ll allow it for now, because it also reveals more of how Atwood has always had Jamie right where she wants him. “Who are all these tears for?” she asks, still in her underwear. In their reading, John Dutton was Jamie’s torment, his constant oppressor. And besides, it’s high time for some new blood at the top of both the Dutton fam and the state of Montana. Atwood feeds Jamie Dutton’s flailing ego. “You are the younger lion!”

Maybe so, maybe so. But Jamie Dutton also has a sister named Beth. And she’s already preparing to avenge her father’s murder in a war to end all the Dutton family wars. At least until the next one.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.