Why <em>Dutton Ranch</em> Is a True <em>Yellowstone</em> Sequel

When Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) rode his horse straight into a wildfire to save a baby calf in the Dutton Ranch premiere, that’s when I knew that the new Yellowstone spinoff was something special. A whole action set piece? With real flames? In a Yellowstone show?! We must have died and gone to Dutton heaven, folks, because Dutton Ranch is looking like the Yellowstone sequel that this massive fanbase deserves.

The premiere also introduced possibly the best villain that Beth Dutton’s (Kelly Reilly) ever gone up against: Annette Bening’s Beulah Jackson. She’s already acting her massive cowhide belt off, but I’m still waiting for her menacing tone to reveal whatever sinister secrets she has buried beneath the cattle empire she’s built here in South Texas. “The ranch is my dominion,” she says in the second episode. Scary, but we’re just getting started. Elsewhere, episode 2 introduces another character who’s quickly become my favorite. Whether the writers intended it or not, he’s a walking quote machine.

Beth (Kelly Reilly) continues to prove why she earned the real Yellowstone sequel spinoff.

In the second half of the Dutton Ranch two-episode premiere, a flashback to right after the wildfire reveals that Rip received the idea to move south from an old friend. No, not Taylor Sheridan. The Yellowstone creator does own the Bosque Ranch in Weatherford, Texas, as well as the iconic Four Sixes (6666) Ranch in Guthrie. But while the production on this Yellowstone spinoff moved closer to home, it’s not like Beth and Rip are shacking up with their old buddy Travis (Sheridan’s in-universe Yellowstone character).

Instead, Rip says he heard the tip from Walker (Ryan Bingham). He was the song-slinging cowboy from Texas in the original series, who brought his offscreen romance with actress Hassie Harrison onto the series when she joined as Walker’s new love interest, Laramie. Maybe you’ve seen her recently, riding a mechanical bull in those Dodge Ram commercials. They don’t make a cameo appearance in Dutton Ranch, so that’s about all you’ll get from the couple other than Rip’s name-drop—but it helps explain why we suddenly start the spinoff with Beth and Rip looking just about settled in the fictional town of Rio Paloma, Texas.

This man is nothing but bad news.

It’s still a bit tough to put together why Rob-Will (Jai Courtney) killed one of his fellow cowboys at the beginning of the series. According to his accomplice, Chet (Hart Denton), word was getting around the bunks at the Jackson camp that “some of the ear tags get flagged in the tally book [for auction], and some don’t.” Then, when Rob-Will picks up a cowboy named Wes and questions him out about “his operation,” he shoots him in the head before he can explain what’s going on.

It sounds like Rob-Will is embezzling cattle from his own ranch somehow. It’s also possible that Beulah’s in on the scheme, but it doesn’t seem like it. She orders Joaquin (Juan Pablo Raba) to fix it, which turns into a bigger issue because Rip found and moved the dead body at the end of the first episode. I don’t know why he touched it all without calling the authorities. Perhaps he’s trying to remove violence from his life so hard that he’s accidentally drawing it in anyway. But a missing cowboy is a big issue for everyone.

The dead man’s wife is knocking down doors at the Jackson estate looking for her dead husband, and Joaquin attempts to cover it up by suggesting that he ran away with another woman. It’s a terrible excuse, and it leads me to believe that Joaquin is as bad at his job as Yellowstone’s previous buttoned-up fool: Jamie (Wes Bentley). I wouldn’t be surprised if he was adopted either.

Oreana (Natalie Alyn Lynn) kicks off a new romance with Carter (Finn Little) after he saved her in the ‘Dutton Ranch’ premiere.

Newcomer Natalie Alyn Lynn is settling into her role as Finn Little’s romantic interest this episode. Despite sharing a nice date together, she tells him to take a hike after receiving a flurry of hilarious text messages from her father:

5 missed calls.

Where Are You?

Answer your phone.

She is sending me to rehab.

The big reveal? She’s Rob-Will’s daughter. So, there’s a bit of a Romeo & Juliet situation brewing here. She’s also next in line to run the Jackson ranch, according to Beulah, even if it seems like Oreana wants nothing to do with her family.

Still, Rip leaves Carter with some sound advice about women: “Just listen. That’s the deal. She says something nice to you? You listen. She says something mean to you? You listen. And if you don’t know what the fuck she’s talking about? You listen.”

Rip also brings up a Yellowstone memory by sharing a little wisdom that supposedly came from ol’ John Dutton: “The first day, she’s right. The second day, she’s right again. And the third day, you’re fucking wrong.”

Anyone who can make Rip smile like this is an ace in my book.

Finally, it’s time for my favorite new character: Zachariah (played by Ozark’s Marc Menchaca). Rip picks him up from prison and offers him a job on Azul’s (J.R. Villareal) request, and he serves up just one killer line after another. “You know how to cowboy?” Rip asks him. He replies: “I am a cowboy.”

Then, after he tells Rip that he found God while serving time, Rip asks him, “Well Zachariah, does your God prevent you from cowboying?” Put Zachariah’s response on a T-shirt right now, because he says: “No sir. God loves cowboys.”

“You’re damn right,” Rip says, smiling. The crew grows, and I love ‘em all so far. Can’t say why Zachariah was in prison just yet, but he also harbors some dark past with Azul. I suspect it’s some sort of situation where they had to do something awful to protect someone good.

Speaking of the crew, Everett (Ed Harris) takes Beth to meet a butcher named Claudio, who runs a whole prime-grade operation. I’ll stake our work against the big boys any day,” he says. If this was an Ocean’s 11 for cowboying, our team is looking amazing.

The only thing that could ruin these immaculate vibes would be if Rip woke up in the middle of the night and threw that dead body to the bottom of a well. Luckily, he didn’t do that. Right, folks? Wait… you’re telling me that he did throw that dead guy down a well? Uh-oh! Let’s hope that it wasn’t as terrible as a decision as it sounds.