6 minutes read
Spoilers below.
It’s official: Taylor Sheridan Dutton Ranch has been renewed for a second season with a new showrunner, so this won’t be the last time we’ll see Beth and Rip in their new Texas home. After a pretty strong season this Yellowstone The sequel takes us to the finale, in which the simmering tension between the Dutton Ranch and the 10 Petals Ranch finally comes to a head, and somehow Carter finds himself at the center of the drama.
The episode begins with Beth and Rip watching a new batch of cows at the 10 Petal Ranch. (Beth looks amazing in that cowboy hat, by the way.) When Rob-Will approaches the house and threatens them both to leave, it’s just “yay.” Rip won’t budge because technically Beulah is still in charge of the 10-Petal; Rob-Will informs him and his “little bitch” that they still need to leave. A single insult thrown at Beth results in Rob-Will being punched in the face, leading to a fight. Rip, of course, wins the fight in the end. Does Rip ever lose a fight?
Using Rob-Will’s account book and a list of cows marked “doctor on arrival”, the pair separate a group of cows they suspect may be involved in Beulah’s smuggling business. At the Dutton Ranch, they invite Everett to dig into the cows’ stitched wounds, which the veterinarian discovers packaged fentanyl. They are drug couriers! (Even if, of course, they are not literal mules.)
Beth, Rip, Everett and company end up pulling three buckets of drugs worth at least $2 million from a group of cows. They are shocked. What is the overall reality of what they are facing here? So did Beulah manage to keep the ranch afloat? Everett goes looking for answers, and Beth goes looking for Carter, who has gone missing. Rip stays with Zack and Azul, who are warned to get home before things get bad. But they are loyal cowboys, ready to stand their ground with Rip and protect the ranch next to him.
By the time Everett arrives to confront her, Beulah has almost fully recovered from her heart attack and subsequent angioplasty. got angry. Beulah tells the whole story almost immediately: the smuggling business actually has long roots. It goes back to when she was 16 years old and Mariano helped her bury the body of a man who had attacked her. What are we didn’t What is known so far is that her father eventually found out about the attack and blamed it on Mariano, who made a deal with him: Mariano would take responsibility for the murder and disappear to Mexico, leaving his son, the motherless child Joaquin, in the care of Beulah.
This is a pretty boring exposition, but wait, there’s more. Everett asks the right question here: What does any of this Are they related to drug couriers? As it turns out, 15 years ago, 10-Petal had fallen on hard times due to a drought, so Joaquin and Mariano suggested drug smuggling as an option, and so far everything had gone smoothly. Beulah also admits that she always wanted to find a way out of the deal and hoped that Beth and Rip could be the key to it. What a mess! After still lying to his face, Everett kicks Beulah out. Like many other situations before them, this one too seems to be short-lived.
Meanwhile, a column led by Mariano (Raul Max Trujillo) arrives in the city. (Apparently, he was at a fancy baptism in Mexico when his son called, but he dropped everything to help Joaquin.) Father and son meet at a motel, and Joaquin tells Mariano about Rob-Will taking over the 10-Petal, as well as Beth and Rip’s involvement. Mariano then goes to meet Beulah at her mansion and they have a heated argument. He accuses her of raising weak sons and criticizes her decision to hire outsiders at the ranch. His demands are that Joaquin be made head of the ranch and that Beth and Rip be fired immediately – or else. To make matters worse, when they are alone, Mariano asks Joaquin to kill Rob-Will.
Emerson Miller
While all this chaos is calming down, Beth is still playing the Find Carter game. She can’t reach him by phone, and Oreana doesn’t have one. She even stops by Sheriff Wade’s office to file a missing person’s report. Little does she know that Wade just saw a boy at Dwight’s last night, but he chooses not to tell her. Actually Carter still at Dwight’s, drinking beer and trying to figure out his next move. Oreana, who just found out she’s pregnant!, comes to visit him. Carter finally gets the chance to apologize for his shenanigans at the party, and Oreana convinces him to call Beth and let her know he’s okay. Carter and Oreana, now in love again, plan to leave town and run away together that night.
Beth, who apparently loves nothing more than running around town, decides she wants to find Beulah. She appears at the 10 Petals cow processing facility, where she first had a confrontation with Denise, the front desk manager, back at the beginning of the season. Walking around Denise (“suck dick, Denise”), she breaks into the facility but can’t find anything, no cows or Beulah. Tommy, one of the ranch hands, tries to put his hand on Beth to stop her before turning to find Rip. Today we add another outstanding cowboy to the list! The cowboy, having just passed out, is strung up like a cow ready to be slaughtered, and the couple leaves after receiving a call from Zachariah: Beulah has just shown up at the Dutton Ranch.
Arriving at the ranch, Beth doesn’t hesitate to point the shotgun at Beulah’s head. They chat inside while Azul and Zachariah load her car with fentanyl. Despite all the drama, Beth and Rip show that they just want a clean way out of this mess. Remember when they just wanted a peaceful life?! Now they are paying a high price for it. Beulah is already leaving when Mariano calls them with threats and asks for the very drugs that are now in her trunk. A classic awaits us Yellowstone shootout.
As darkness falls, everyone at the Dutton Ranch loads their weapons and prepares for this intricate fight. Firmly believing that Carter may be in danger, Beth leaves the men to their fate and sets out once again to search for her adopted son. (Oh my God, maybe they should just leave him alone!) The cameras catch several of Mariano’s men in the bushes, but Rip, Zachariah, Azul and Everett are well prepared. A firefight ensues and the men make quick work of the invaders. Rip chases down one straggler who tries to escape and captures him for questioning while the rest of the bodies are dumped down the shaft. (As I predicted, this is the new “train station.”) Beth, despite her best efforts, still can’t find Carter.
Oreana, back at the 10 Petals, packs her bags to prepare for her grand escape with Carter. But Rob-Will bumps into her and starts talking candidly about his poor parenting skills. Is it too little, too late? For Oreana, however, hearing her father truly express his feelings is enough to bring her to tears. But this is Sheridan’s project after all: immediately after this tender moment, Rob-Will comes downstairs and is shot dead. The assailant escapes before we can see who is responsible, although we can probably safely assume that it was Joaquin, acting on his father’s orders.
Oreana—and Beulah, when she returns home—are both left in shock and dismay. I, for one, am not against the end of Rob-Will’s journey. He was by far the least likeable character on the show.
Either way, it turns out that Beth’s maternal instinct was correct: in the final few minutes of the finale, Mariano’s goons capture Carter. Over the phone, they inform Beth about their hostage while Rip interrogates his hostage, a victim of the raid attempt. “They don’t need Carter, they need us,” Rip Beth says.
“Then they’ll catch us,” she replies.
And that’s where the season ends: on a cliffhanger! This is frustrating on several levels. Above all, Carter’s insistence on acting like a boy got him into such deeply predictable trouble. Secondly, why hasn’t Beulah delivered the drugs to Mariano yet? Wouldn’t this clear up the whole situation? I guess the violence train has already left the station; Mariano must want the Dutton Ranch wiped out so he can keep his drug smuggling operation going. But I would really like to see the Dutton Ranch team rectify this situation. As we know, if there’s anyone you don’t want to mess with in this universe, it’s Beth and Rip.