We could have had a “Yellowstone” finale. Instead we got this.

After five seasons of epic family drama – betrayals, estrangements, impossible decisions and countless murders, all in the service of preserving the Dutton family-owned Yellowstone Ranch – Yellowstone limped to a lackluster and unimaginably boring conclusion. (Probably. The Paramount bug in the corner of the picture insisted that it was the season finale and not the series finale, despite a long final sequence in which people literally dismantle the ranch board by board.)

If the goal were to wrap up one of the many dangling storylines and themes, the second half of YellowstoneThe fifth season didn’t use its time efficiently. For example, the Dutton family has been dumping their murder victims in a top-secret pit full of bodies in Wyoming for decades. Maybe someone will discover this corpse pit? And there could be interesting consequences for their crimes? Instead of showing any of that, however, much of the second half of season five is devoted to killing patriarch John Dutton, then retelling his death, and occasionally killing him again for good measure. Meanwhile, Beth, Kayce and Jamie Dutton argue over the family’s future with the ranch, and in the past the series has delivered fairly nuanced, tense portraits of the futility of fighting against encroaching modernity. As another option for the finale, perhaps the key tensions between family vs. profit and modernity vs. tradition could have been expressed through a storyline? Something that might have ultimately shown that these binaries are stubborn, intractable, quintessentially American quagmires? But no, because that would have taken up the time to tell us that Bella Hadid plays the girlfriend of Travis, a very cool cowboy played by Taylor Sheridan. Another possibility: A Yellowstone The finale could have tackled the incredible burden of loyalty that Yellowstone employees had to place on the Dutton family, thanks to the fact that many of the cowboys were literally branded like cattle!

Instead, creator, writer, director and actor Sheridan has boldly charted a new course, a striking and impressive abandonment of what one might reasonably expect to be the main tasks and opportunities of this finale. He could have written a big, exciting ending! But at practically every turn, he chose…not to do that. So here are all the things Sheridan chose for the finale of YellowstoneThings that took up time in the nearly 90-minute episode, so he didn’t have to produce any plot or character development or dramatic tension.

The opening dialogue in the finale is of course spoken by Travis, who sits at the table in the bunkhouse and tells funny stories about cowboy exploits from the past. The ranch employees and remaining non-estranged Dutton family members stand around him, smiling and laughing and marveling at how cool Travis is. He offers strange outsider Teeter a job at the ranch, which means Travis’ storyline is over and there’s no reason at all why he should show up again in this episode.

This is important. Of course, most of the narrative momentum comes from the ending Yellowstone was supposed to revolve around the fate of the ranch, which was the biggest question of the entire series. How to maintain this unprofitable business (excuse me, way of life) despite the march of progress? How do you negotiate the Dutton family’s wishes versus the Broken Rock Reservation’s traditional right to this land? One would assume that some dramatic tension would be almost inevitable here, but no. At the beginning of the episode, Kayce and Beth announce that the Duttons will simply sell the ranch to the reservation at a greatly reduced and historically symbolic price, thereby somehow allowing them to avoid paying inheritance taxes. Everyone immediately agrees to this. No one has any regrets, although John Dutton made Beth promise never to sell it and she said, “Okay, Daddy.” No one thinks anything else should have happened at any point, except Jamie, who wants to sell the land, um to build an airport, a shopping center and some luxury resorts out of it. But he is evil and no one cares about him and he will be dispatched shortly.

John Dutton needs to be buried, so there’s a whole scene where Rip tells the cowboys to dig the grave themselves, presumably as a gesture of appreciation, although they don’t say so directly. An excavator is mentioned.

If the goal is to fill the time with as little action and unmotivation as possible, a useful means is to play through a full-length ceremony, without time cuts or action omissions. We need to listen to the entire Ashokan Farewell. We have to see how each rose is placed individually on the coffin. Sheridan undermines himself here by having Beth insist that there are no speeches or religious frameworks; A sermon could have taken three to four minutes, no problem. Still, in two separate scenes, he had Beth lean over the coffin and whisper vows to her dead father, first to tell him that she had taken care of everything and he can now rest in peace, and then to completely contradict the previous message by vowing to avenge him. Rip also had to enlighten the poor preacher who suggested saying a prayer. (Why was the preacher even there?!)

“How does this work?” Rip asks about the mechanism for lowering the coffin. “I think the poles turn and you lower the straps with the crank,” replies the preacher, thereby proving his goal. Rip removes the bars, lowers the straps with the crank, and stands for 56 seconds as the coffin descends. Then he takes a shovel. Then he removes the small artificial grass mat from the grave. He then tells the preacher that he will use the shovel. Exciting stuff.

Gator, author of The Official Dutton Ranch Family CookbookHe shows up for dinner after the funeral. “What are you doing?” asks Senator Perry. “Rib eyes,” he says. “Beans, sourdough cookies. Blueberry cobbler.”

Like the fate of the ranch, this sequence runs a high risk of being inherently interesting. Beth vowed to get revenge on her brother Jamie, finally ending their fight over… Honestly, the exact contours of what they were fighting about were pretty unclear. Someone always wants to do something with the land, but who wants what exactly is constantly changing, and then they throw it all away because John Dutton died (I’m not sure if you heard). Anyway, here they are Completedbecame a line crossed! In the past, Yellowstone The characters have pulled off relatively sophisticated deceptions and schemes with complex plans that require a lot of discussion and twists and time – about the time of several episodes. Instead, Beth just drives straight to Jamie’s house and stabs him in the heart. Rip dumps the body in the same place the Duttons always dumped bodies. No one finds Jamie’s body or any of the bodies. No one asks about the flimsy cover-up of setting Jamie’s car on fire. A newscaster announces that Jamie has disappeared, and that’s pretty much the end of the story, even though Jamie was the Attorney General of the state of Montana.

That’s it, that’s the scene.

After taking out Jamie, the Dutton ranch, and anything else that might provide a reason for this episode to continue,… Yellowstone The finale returns to a scene at Travis-Taylor Sheridan’s ranch in Texas. Travis yells mean things at Jimmy, Teeter arrives to start her new job, and Travis makes a horse spin in circles. Every time Travis says something, everyone shakes their heads in grudging affection.

At no point do any of them say, “Wow, it’s going to be weird having this giant “Y” on my back for the rest of my life. By the way, I promise not to say anything about the huge pit of murder victims!”

With all due respect, why is Lainey Wilson here?
Photo: Paramount Network

A cowboy named Ryan, who we’ve spent almost no time with, who has no last name and never had much of a storyline on this show, attends a Lainey Wilson concert. Wilson plays an entire song that lasts three minutes and 14 seconds, not counting the applause. At the end, Ryan goes backstage and tells Wilson that he is in love with her and that they can be together forever. Wilson is thrilled.

The sale of the Dutton ranch proceeded smoothly and without negotiations. Members of the Broken Rock Reservation begin dismantling immediately. There is a shot of the Yellowstone Ranch sign being removed from the road leading up to the ranch. Then there’s a shot of a stained glass door being ripped off its hinges, with a close-up of the door’s large Yellowstone building Y. Then There’s a shot of the big one Y You’ll be taken out of the barn just in case you missed the first two shots. Members of the Broken Rock Reservation drum and sing. It’s like the end of Flower Moon Killer except exactly the opposite in every way.

He goes to an auction to buy a cow. He probably buys more than one, but we only see one.

The woman who did the voice-over at the beginning plays over drone footage of mountains and pastures 1883 appears with some important takeaways.

One hundred and forty-one years ago my father was told about this valley, and here we remained for seven generations. My father was told that they would come for this land and he promised to give it back. Nowhere was this promise written. It faded with my father’s death, but somehow lived on in the spirit of this place. Men cannot truly own wild land. To own land you must cover it with concrete. Cover it with buildings. Stack it with houses so fat people can smell each other’s dinner. To sell it you have to rape it. Raw land, wild land, free land can never be property. But some men pay dearly for the privilege of managing. They will suffer and sacrifice to make a living and live with it and hopefully teach the next generation to do the same. And if they fail, find someone else willing to keep the promise.

Both Kayce and Beth now have their own ranches, consisting of land that they own. They probably didn’t rape it and don’t seem to suffer or sacrifice much for it, because in fact they are very happy! Beth finds a bar. Rip agrees to go to the bar with her. Everyone who watched this episode also decides to find a bar. The end.