Yellowstone Recap: Cause of Death

Look, credit where it’s due: Yellowstone is still capable of putting out a pretty good episode! “Three Fifty-Three” is leaps and bounds above the first two of this final half-season, actually managing to consistently hold my attention for the whole hour. It makes you wonder why more of the show can’t be like this.

I hate to say it, but part of the reason this episode works so well is that it ditches the Texas crew (as well as the other ranch hands) entirely, telling a story laser-focused on the characters who truly matter at this point: Beth, Kayce, Jamie, and Sarah Atwood. Rip, Monica, and Tate all show up in the slightly unnecessary opening ten-minute flashback, but even they’re absent from the rest.

As promised, Jamie is already hard at work on undoing his late father’s legacy. That requires the cooperation of Steven Rawlings, the lieutenant governor stepping up to replace John at the top. The two solidify their partnership during a meeting that turns into a scheming session where both men agree on a plan: override the revoked Market Equities lease and take control of the land through eminent domain, a strategy Jamie once opposed. As Lynelle Perry points out, it’s clearly an abuse of state authority, no matter how much Jamie insists that this development will be huge for Montana’s economy. Soon Bozeman could be the new Jackson Hole, she warns him.

A lot of this is pretty ironic considering the massive (and polarizing) real-life influx of tourists that Yellowstone has brought to Montana. And look, I don’t know much about eminent domain or conservation easements, so I can’t make any judgments about the realism of this type of political maneuvering. But what matters here is that Jamie’s plan is moving forward successfully. It’s only unfortunate for John’s old assistant Clara, who makes the principled decision to turn down Rawlings’s chief of staff opportunity after witnessing the corruption. But at least she earns the trust of Lynelle, who may have a job for her.

From here, the narrative shifts to Kayce, who efficiently gets his father’s cause of death changed to “undetermined” after paying a visit to the coroner’s office. It’s kind of ridiculous how stubbornly the medical examiner clings to her initial conviction that it was a suicide, especially considering how many signs of foul play they find just from glancing at the body again for a minute. They find multiple signs of struggle quickly, including bruises along his neckline and forehead, abrasions on the tops of his toes, and other marks and indentations on his legs. And Kayce’s description of his military training for handling sleeping targets seems to confirm a likely reality: A team of three men entered John’s house, knocked him out, and planted the evidence to make his murder look like a suicide. We saw it earlier in this very episode.

Detective Dillard opens back up the investigation and, at Kayce’s urging, holds a press conference about it. It does seem fishy that John would drive to the livestock office for his service pistol and bring it back to the governor’s mansion, though Jamie insists to Rawlings that this is all circumstantial at best. The speech that follows is even more consequential than the press conference: Rawlings addresses the assembly as the new governor and boldly points out John’s illegal actions, announcing the reinstatement of the lease and the invoking of eminent domain. The timing might be sketchy, but it goes over well with the assembly. The only twist, really, is the governor’s declaration that Jamie will recuse himself from any investigation into his father’s death, something that could endanger any chance of him controlling the Dutton land.

Jamie is spiraling, and it’s not just because of this latest news. Kayce finally visits his office to confront him about John’s murder, throwing him onto the desk. I’ve been waiting for these two to reunite for a while — the show has often downplayed its sibling relationships for some reason — and now is a particularly raw time, with Kayce fresh off staring at his father’s corpse. And I like that Jamie manages to temporarily convince his brother of his possible innocence, for once really stretching his acting muscles and committing to a lie. “I could never do that to you,” he says, and you can imagine how much it’ll hurt once Kayce realizes he did.

Things are looking grim for the ranch, and for once we get to see Beth really wrestle with the likelihood of a worst-case scenario outcome. With John dead, she can finally see the man clearly and realize how few options he left his family. Chief Rainwater comes to pay a visit, laying out the bleak road ahead dealing with the Department of the Interior but offering his services in any way he can. There was a time when Rainwater wanted this land desperately for himself and his tribe, but it seems likelier every day that neither the tribe nor the Duttons will own it in the end.

An open offer to be used is exactly the kind of opportunity Beth would usually seize on, and Rainwater does put forth some ideas of partnerships that could lengthen their partial hold on the land. But she doesn’t see much of a path forward now, either. It’s striking to see Beth in this mode, musing about how the fantasy world of the ranch destroyed her father and so many others. There’s no preserving this place, only prolonging its collapse.

With only three episodes to go in Yellowstone, it’s refreshing to get some real consideration of what it would be like to lose somewhere that many people call home — and to see Beth near rock bottom, hopeless and grieving and full of rage. But the biggest stakes-raising drama happens in the final sequence, after Sarah buys a burner phone but fails to get in contact with the contract killing company.

Sarah’s confrontation with Jamie would be the highlight of a normal episode, the definitive moment when something shifts between them and things can never truly be the same. She tries to calm him down and assure him that nobody can connect him with the assassination, that the governor has no actual power to recuse Jamie. But her attitude pisses him off, especially the idea that she selflessly took on all the risk for Jamie while he only faces accessory after the fact, so he slaps her in the face. She slaps right back, as expected, and storms out. There’s no pretending only one of these people manipulated the other; both are deeply selfish and greedy, and Jamie got just as much out of their arrangement as Sarah did.

Except, in the end, that arrangement gets her killed. Jamie calls Sarah almost immediately after she leaves to apologize, and they do make up. But moments after saying “You have nothing to fear,” Sarah is getting gunned down at a stop light in broad daylight. It’s a pretty shocking moment, especially because this show doesn’t kill people off that often these days. But even outside that ending, “Three Fifty-Three” provides some solid evidence that Yellowstone still has some gas left in the tank. Let’s see if we can keep that going for the last three.

The Last Roundup

• The flashback at the beginning at least connects the previous episode’s flashback (Beth and Rip’s date in Amarillo) with the present-day timeline when we see Beth and Kayce each sense something deeply wrong when their father dies. Again, though, I would’ve preferred we just see all this stuff in the premiere instead.

• I actually can’t believe there was another “get a room” scene with Tate disgusted by his parents’ kissing. I feel like I’m getting Punk’d at this point.

• Kayce gently knocks out one of the technicians for a moment just to illustrate what he learned in the military. “What the fuck?” “Sorry.”

• Beth snarling “you leave him to me” made me laugh. She seemed genuinely worried her one brother would take away her opportunity to kill her other brother.

• Mo stops by and dispenses some wisdom to Kayce about how eventually choosing between his family and the ranch will feel like fate. But I do kind of wish these two could have one conversation where Kayce is the one asking about Mo. “But how about you, man? How’ve you been?”

• Congratulations to Kevin Costner’s body double, who’s getting a surprising amount of work this season.

• “We don’t take cash.” “Oh, that’s not my problem. You’ll figure it out.” You’ll sort of be missed, Sarah.