Throughout Yellowstone’s five-season run (ahead of whatever the Rip and Beth spinoff will be called), nearly every character who crossed paths with the Dutton family and their branded brood was in danger of being taken to the train station. Throughout that same amount of time, fans have been curious about when the border-hugging no man’s land first became a clandestine graveyard for characters like Jamie’s father Garrett in the Season 4 finale and more.
As it turns out, utilizing that location for corporeal refuse wasn’t even a Dutton-originated maneuver, as proven by the latest episode of 1923 to hit the 2025 TV schedule, “Journey the Rivers of Iron.” While I was indeed one of many who couldn’t wait to learn how things came about, I now realize how foolishly naive such an objective was in Taylor Sheridan’s dark and dour universe. And now I just want to take a bath after that bit of educating.
Donald Whitfield Is Responsible For Finding The As-Yet-Unnamed Location
There I was, trying to keep every bit of faith in humanity intact after the first three of 1923’s second outing, and that effort ceased to be as soon as Alex was beaten senseless in an actual train station. (She thankfully survived with her pride intact, even if missing her worldly items.) And then the episode brought things back around to this show’s core villain, Timothy Dalton’s greed-mongering Donald Whitfield, who’s now moving full-steam ahead with plans to take the land from the Duttons to utilize it for commercial purposes like tourist-friendly resorts.
The tycoon tyrant is so assured, in fact, that Whitfield brings in Jerome Flynn’s Banner Creighton specifically to alert the sheepherder to a plot of unseemly land that doesn’t have a whole lot of legal rigamarole tied to it. The way Dalton’s character described it made it impossible to assume he was talking about anything but what eventually became Yellowstone’s not-exactly-a-burial-ground. In his words:
This is a county map of Montana and Wyoming. It highlights every privately owned parcel of land. Look here, at the border. Right there, they’ve recorded a county with no township, no private land. All of this is still owned by the government. It’s a county with a population of zero. . . . So there are no 12 jurors of your peers. There is no judge, there is no sheriff, which is to say, there is no crime. I don’t care where you kill them, you dump them here.
Coming out of anyone else's mouth, those words might not have been dripping with quite as much privileged evil, but Whitfield has no reason to say any of these words outside of his unending goal of snatching the Dutton's land back from under their feet. If it was all to give back to the indigenous tribes who were driven away, it'd be on thing. But he's nowhere near so benevolent.
I Just Feel Grossed Out By The First Body In The 'Train Station'
To be sure, I can't think of anyone who could be left for dead in that area that wouldn't gross me out, especially after they've been left out in the sun for a few weeks. But in a show full of characters who deserve to get eaten alive wild predators, it was the anti-cherry on the cake to have Creighton's "practice" run at dumping bodies involve the unfortunate young woman Christy (portrayed by Caitlyn Rice).
Existing within Whitfield's circle of influence is no doubt a miserable life, and it's disturbingly heartbreaking to see that Madison Elise Rogers' fetishist Lindy exhibits just as much compassion and empathy as he does. She let the woman die because she forgot to loosen her restraints. And so this meaningless death will potentially be the first body to hit the ground nearly a century before Yellowstone fans first heard the term used. And it seemed more...exciting without Whitfield and his salacious cohorts involved.
Remember that point in the episode when Jake and Cara joked around with each other a little? That was adorable and warm and great, and didn’t make me want to disinfect everything I own the way Whitfield does.
Let's see what else that amoral shitstain can ruin next when 1923 streams its next episode for everyone with a Paramount+ subscription.
