There are going to be some changes with John Dutton (Kevin Costner) now governor of Yellowstone — and not everyone is going to be pleased.
Season 4 ended with Beth (Kelly Reilly) forcing Jamie (Wes Bentley) to kill his biological father after learning that Garrett (Will Patton) was the one who orchestrated the attempted hits on the Duttons. She snapped a photo, and now she and John pretty much own Jamie. So how does Jamie handle his anger? Read on for five things to expect in Season 5 from Bentley, Gil Birmingham (Thomas Rainwater), and Cole Hauser (Rip Wheeler).
Jamie vs. His Anger
Jamie may be angry — and dealing with that is a major challenge for him this season — “but they have him checkmated and that’s the first time he’s ever felt that, which has caused some insecurity in his normal planning that he does,” Bentley told TV Insider. And that doesn’t make it easy for him to help John be a good governor to maintain the ranch. “He’s really going through a lot under the surface, and it’s boiling and getting dangerous.” And after what Beth did and how John treated him, Jamie may only have warm feelings toward Kayce (Luke Grimes).
Jamie vs. Beth
“What she’s done is just horrible,” Bentley said. After all, because she made him kill his biological father, “all he had as far as blood,” his personal life is pretty much “empty.” And while he wouldn’t call his character “broken,” he does think Jamie has been “changed in a sense that he has to reassess who he really is.”
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If you think that where Season 4 left Jamie and Beth will lead to some wild confrontations, you’d be right. “Somehow, on the end of those [in the past], you feel like it might be OK. Well, this time there are clashes, and it might not be OK, and maybe they’re really actually dangerous now,” Bentley warned. (Speaking of dangerous? When that inevitable Rip vs. Jamie fight comes? “It’ll be quick, I promise you,” Hauser says.)
Governor John Dutton vs. …?
John may be governor, and Jamie may be trying to help him, but he’s not happy about it. “In John, he sees a hypocrite now as he took the governorship,” Bentley explained. “Someone who bashes politicians and lawyers now wants to run the state, and I think to him, that’s weakness. And so he’s now seeing that John’s not quite the hero he once thought he was.”
How dramatic is the new season of #YellowstoneTV? @_JeffersonWhite, AKA Jimmy Hurdstrom, lets us know. pic.twitter.com/tA45WuerV8
— TV Insider (@TVInsider) November 11, 2022
Also not entirely pleased about this new leadership is Rainwater. “He’s got some definite precarious uncertainties based on decisions that are gonna be made by John [as] governor,” Birmingham previewed. “John becoming governor affords him the leverage to be able to make decisions that are gonna affect so many people, primarily for him to save the ranch. And for Rainwater, he doesn’t necessarily have that kind of leverage. He doesn’t have those kinds of resources. So all opposition is equal for him. But the challenge is to try to find the alliances that he knows that he needs to have to be able to even survive.”
Rainwater’s Conflicts
Rainwater has “a lot of plates in the air” in Season 5, Birmingham said. There are the aforementioned uncertainties, other adversaries to face, and difficult decisions to be made. “And then we could possibly have some internal conflict too that he’s gotta deal with,” he adds.
John and Rainwater have worked together in the past when it benefits them — and they do need an alliance to go up against “a bigger, more impending, disastrous kind of outcome,” like posed by Market Equities — but that’s only until they “can get back to the nature of what we really want to do. And that’s just to keep the land undeveloped and out of the hands of greedy corporate interest.”
Rip’s New Responsibilities
With John now governor, the main responsibilities of running the ranch fall on the foreman, and he doesn’t have John to lean on that much, though “he does come in here and there and give him advice,” Hauser says. Now, he has to “understand the politics of the ranch that he’s never had to deal with, that John’s always dealt with. He’s been pretty much running the bunkhouse … but never really the actual whole scope of it.” But that’s a new experience and role that he’s embracing.
And the ranch hands in the bunkhouse aren’t going to make it any easier for him. Expect more drama there. “They’re constantly f**king up. That’s just the reality when it comes to a bunch of cowboys, and when you add alcohol to that, usually it doesn’t end well,” Hauser points out. “There’s some pretty good blowups this year, which I think the audience will love, some funny s**t that happens as well.”
Yellowstone, Season 5 Premiere, Sunday, November 13, 8/7c, Paramount Network
