After a long period of delay due to COVID, Yellowstone has finally made a re-appearance on our television screens last Sunday. For long-time fans that have been anxiously awaiting the follow up to last season’s cliff-hanger, their prayers have been answered.
If you’re new to the show? Worry not, because there’s plenty of action in the first ten minutes to get you hooked and catching up on previous seasons as quickly as possible.
Read below for our recap of the season opener.
The Beginning
We pick up right where we left off in season 3, which is John Dutton laying on the side of the road dying from multiple gunshot wounds, Kayce hiding behind the overturned desk in his Livestock Commissioner office in the midst of similar rapid gunfire, and Beth reeling from an explosive device that detonated in the middle of her downtown Bozeman office. We know only one thing, and that’s that all of them are alive … for now.
Rip rushes to John’s side and phones for a flight for life, but not before John has had a chance to smear a description of the assailants’ vehicle in the dirt with his own blood. Two-tone blue van headed north, got it.
Kayce, being the professionally-trained military man that he is, is quick to strap on his bulletproof tactical vest, switch his pistol for a fully automatic rifle, and sweep the office before pursuing the assailants in his Livestock Commission truck.
Beth emerges slowly from the smoking building, ears ringing. Covered in soot in blood, it’s difficult to distinguish if what we see is her charred and mottled skin or the remains of her tattered clothes. And in true Beth fashion, she casually takes a seat on the curb and asks a shooken bystander for a cigarette.
Monica, who just hung up the phone with Kayce, is attacked at the Yellowstone ranch main house. Her head gets bashed on the ground quite well (ouch), but gets away thanks to some sharp-shooting skills from Tate. Surprising. They head to the bunkhouse for safety only to walk in on more chaos.
The bunkhouse boys are dealing with their own attackers, hanging one up by a noose and fighting off others. Jimmy’s barrel racer girlfriend is screaming for him as he lays unconscious on the ground and the other barrel racer is just kind of … sitting around, crying. At least Teeter, the pink-haired, thick-skinned female ranch hand is good for something.
Kayce, with the help of the sheriff’s office, is able to track down the blue van. Before the assailants can get away, Kayce puts the pedal to the metal and rams into their van with his own truck, immediately gets out, and opens fire.
And when I say opens fire, he lights them up. He has a fully automatic weapon now, remember? Plus a psychopathic rage burning behind his eyes. An intense shootout ensues for the next few minutes.
They manage to eliminate all but one, who steals another vehicle and attempts to drive away. But not if Kayce can help it. Kayce abandons cover and fires away at the driver … successfully as we see the car veer off the road into a ditch. Kayce touches his chest and realizes he’s been hit, and falls to the ground.
Rip returns to the Yellowstone ranch to check on the staff. They’re fine, but they need to get rid of the bodies. Do you know what’s not fine? Rip’s beautiful cabin, gifted to him from John Dutton. It was burned to the ground. Poor Rip. He’s not a man that requires much, but his cabin was one place that meant a lot to him.
And that’s just the beginning, folks. Cue titles.
The Middle
We’re transported back to Montana 1893. We see a father and his two sons on horseback, surveying their land and noticing an encampment of Native Americans. Upon approach, they learn the leader simply wants to bury his father in a “place he can rest”, on the land which was once his. The 1800’s John Dutton grants him this wish.
Back in modern times, we see a heart rate monitor spike and a hand clutch an IV stand. It appears John Dutton has woken up from a coma. It’s been two months since the attack. Naturally, John would like all these nice doctors to leave him the hell alone so he can go back to work. What were they thinking?
Beth, who probably paid daily visits to her father in the hospital, is there as well. She sits outside on a bench, smoking a cigarette, and makes conversation with a 14-year-old boy on the next bench, whose father is also dying inside the hospital. But from heroin. The two have more in common than they think, other than dying fathers. Mainly, they both have attitude problems. Birds of a feather must stick together.
At the local Broken Rock casino, a white trash man gambles at the black jack table. Drunk, he brags about having orchestrated the “party” recently thrown for the Dutton family. Mo, Chief Rainwater’s henchman and all around braided bad-ass, seizes the drunk for questioning. He’s much too stupid to have orchestrated the entire attack, but he must know something.
The End
John is brought back from the hospital, with the condition that he stays in a hospice bed with an at-home nurse. As soon as the nurse is out of sight, John gives himself a nice shave, dresses in his normal clothes, puts on his cowboy hat, and walks out the door. He tells his nurse, “you’re fired.”
Kayce emerges from the hill with his ghillie suit and fills Pops in that even though he killed every last assailant in the blue van, they’re not sure who’s behind the attacks. But they’re suffering: their land is being burnt.
In a rare display of emotion, John pays a visit to the bunkhouse. They stop their poker-playing and beer-guzzling to sit in stunned silence. John awkwardly thanks them for fighting the fight they didn’t have to, and urges them that from here on out, they need not worry about anything other than their normal ranch duties. And rightly so. None of them tried calling OSHA before?
Beth pays a visit to Jamie’s fancy Attorney General’s office. I had been wondering where he was this whole time. John, Kayce, and Beth all bear physical scars from the recent attack on their family, but Jamie is unscathed. Could he have had something to do with it? Beth is convinced. She threatens that one day, some day, she will be the one that kills him.
For the ending scene, we see Roarke fishing in the river, as he is wont to do. Almost as if not much has happened, right? Rip appears with a small cooler in his hands. “Is this yours?” he asks.
Roarke denies it but Rip presses on. He trudges through the water to where Roarke is standing, opens the cooler, and throws a seriously pissed off, jaws agape prairie rattlesnake at Roarke’s face. We see the life fade from Roarke’s eyes as Rip walks off, no trace of him having been there.
