Major Death, Gruesome John Dutton Scenes Leave Jamie in Big Trouble

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 11, “Three Fifty-Three.”]

Another Yellowstone major player was just taken to the train station.

The purpose of the Texas and Montana flashbacks with their confusing timelines was revealed in Season 5 Part 2’s third episode, which aired Sunday, November 24 on Paramount Network. They were to show where Beth (Kelly Reilly), Rip (Cole Hauser), Kayce (Luke Grimes), and Monica (Kelsey Asbille) were when John Dutton (Kevin Costner) was killed.

Beth was on a long overnight drive from Texas to Montana when she suspected something was suddenly very wrong. Kayce felt something similar, with a nightmare waking him up seconds before getting the call about his father’s death. Shockingly, John’s murder was actually shown, but creative staging made it so his body but not his face was seen. This confirmed without question that John’s death was a homicide, not a suicide, and Kayce helped prove that the investigation into his death needed to be reopened.

Because of that, the new interim governor is making Jamie (Wes Bentley) recuse himself from all matters connected to his father’s death. This led to Jamie and Sarah (Dawn Olivieri) exchanging physical blows in Jamie’s home as Sarah panicked about the truth coming out and Jamie seethed with anger over what she did. A major death came in the episode’s final moments, setting up a big cliffhanger at the midway point of the final season. With that, the episode began and ended with murders, the second a very quick karmic swing.

How did John Dutton die?

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Flashbacks to the night of John’s death show the previously mentioned power outage that cut out the security cameras at the governor’s mansion in the middle of the night. Three armed men dressed in all black and with their faces covered entered the mansion and made it into John’s bedroom without obstacle. Viewers took the POV of the hitmen as the mansion and John were shown through night vision technology (pictured above).

One wrapped their arm around John’s neck, cutting off his air supply, while the others held back his arms and his legs. John struggled up until the point where they drugged him through an injection between his toes. Then they dragged him to the bathroom, where they forced the passed-out John to shoot himself in the head. They planted a bottle of oxycodone in the medicine cabinet as well. The shot was heard immediately, and the cop protecting the house outside (who had been questioning the power outage) reported the noise and ran inside to find John dead. He was the first to report the death as a suicide.

In the present-day timeline, Kayce demanded a new inspection of his father’s body. He used his military training to show how they performed “snatches” like the one he suspected was performed on his dad. Bruises on John’s body matched the markings that would be present after a physical struggle. This reopened the investigation and made the legal cause of death switch from suicide to undetermined. The weapon used on John was a gun he gifted Kayce in the past, which was somehow acquired by the killers.

Does Kayce believe that Jamie killed John?

Kayce’s next steps were to call Beth and then confront Jamie. He pulled his assistant into Jamie’s office so she couldn’t run for help, and then he slammed Jamie down onto his desk with the intent to beat him up more. Kayce believed Jamie when he said he could never kill their father, in part because he loves his brother and could never hurt him. This was, of course, paired with Jamie saying that Beth is a poison that can’t be trusted. He didn’t kill John, but he isn’t completely innocent either — ordering the hit was his idea, after all, and it was carried out by his girlfriend.

Jamie also raised suspicions with Lynelle (Wendy Moniz) and John’s executive assistant, Clara (Lilli Kay), after a conversation with the interim governor about the Dutton land. Clara rejected the offer to become the governor’s chief of staff out of loyalty to John. Lynelle encouraged her to use her newfound unemployment to speak to the press about Jamie without fear of legal punishment.

What happened to Sarah Atwood?

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Sarah thought she fixed all of her and Market Equities’ problems by ordering this successful hit against John, but panic set in when she saw the press conference about the new homicide investigation. She bought a burner phone and tried to call the only number the hitmen provided, but the number was no longer in service. She was drinking the stress away when Jamie arrived home and blamed her for his recusal. When she insulted John and his death, Jamie punched her in the face. She hit him back, stormed out, and drove away.

He quickly called her to apologize, and Sarah’s feelings for Jamie started to feel real. That’s when strangers rolled up in the lane next to her car. A man and a woman were inside asking for directions, and then the man asked, “Are you Sarah Atwood?” Before she could finish replying, “How could you know that,” he shot her in the head and multiple times in the chest. Jamie heard it all happen.

Could this be retribution from the hitmen because the John fallout didn’t go smoothly? They did hint in the premiere that this was a possibility if clients messed things up. Or perhaps it was Beth who hired them. Earlier in the episode, she told Kayce to leave Jamie to her. Whoever did it, Jamie is now connected to Sarah’s final moments through the call on their personal phones and the glass of vodka with her DNA in the kitchen. The burner phone covered in her fingerprints is also still in the trash can.

Their sexual relationship was a secret so far (who knows how well it was actually kept), but Sarah’s death is undoubtedly going to cause suspicions. As Kayce left the detective’s office earlier in the episode, the officer worried that the hitmen would kill whoever hired them before they could be discovered. Kayce said that even if they were killed, that would at least give them their answer. And now there is physical evidence directly connecting Jamie to it all.

Yellowstone‘s final season is halfway done. With this latest development, do you think there’s any way Jamie walks free or physically unscathed from this nightmare? Let us know in the comments below.

Yellowstone, Sundays, 8/7c, Paramount Network