Major Yellowstone spoilers are ahead! If you are not caught up, you can stream Seasons 1 through 5A with a Peacock subscription and purchase 5B on Amazon.
As Yellowstone came to an end on the 2024 TV schedule, I realized one plot point was never addressed: Rip didn't find out what Jamie did to Beth when they were kids. Wes Bentley’s character giving a clinic permission to abort Kelly Reilly's character's baby and make her sterile is the lynchpin of Jamie and Beth’s feud. So, considering all of this and the fact that it’s the reason why Rip and Beth can’t have biological children, it feels weird that they never addressed the fact that Cole Hauser's character never found out about all this in the final episodes.
To recap, in the final episode of Yellowstone’s fifth season, Beth avenged her dad and got her revenge by killing Jamie. The two’s decades-long feud finally reached a head, and Reilly’s character beat her brother to a pulp before he died. Then, Rip showed up and took care of the body.
Now, to an extent, I understand why all this happened without Rip finding out that Jamie is the reason why Beth can’t have kids. If he found out about the abortion clinic and the choice to make her sterile, Hauser’s character likely would have gone into a rage and killed his wife’s brother without thinking twice about it.
Beth needed to be the one to take out Jamie, that much is clear. So, in that way, I get why she never told Rip. And overall, I liked how Beth and Jamie’s story came to a close.
However, this feels like a massive, massive plot point that feels incomplete, because Rip still does not know. Rip and Beth are married. They tell each other everything. So, this feels like a pretty big thing to not disclose to your significant other at some point or another – especially when the guy who caused all this is still alive.
While I don’t think Rip finding out about all this in any universe would end well for Jamie, I would have liked all three of them to get some closure on this massive life-altering event.
Also, for the most part, every plot line was wrapped up in the finale of Yellowstone. Jamie died. Kayce freed himself from his family's land and Rainwater got the ranch. Rip, Beth and Carter moved to a new ranch to start a new life. Even the bunkhouse boys got endings to their stories. However, this massive shadow still looms over Beth and Rip, because he’s still not aware of what truly caused her rivalry with her brother and why they can’t have kids, and that bothers me.
It feels weird to address it in the Rip and Beth spinoff, because the other person involved in the whole conflict is dead. Maybe Beth just wants to move forward and forget her past. However, I have a sinking feeling it will all come back, and I don’t want to see it harm Hauser and Reilly characters’ relationship because she didn’t tell him sooner.
Overall, not addressing this plot point in the final season of Yellowstone feels like an oversight, and now it’s hard for me to fathom how it could be addressed moving forward. I don’t love the idea of Rip never knowing about this event that changed his partner’s life forever. However, I also respect Beth’s want to keep this a secret.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if it’s addressed in Rip and Beth’s upcoming Yellowstone show, and in the meantime, we can all go back and rewatch Yellowstone on Peacock to see how all these dynamics developed and culminated in the death of Jamie Dutton.
