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Taylor Sheridan’sYellowstonefinally ended last year with its fifth season. Despite feuding with lead star Kevin Costner, the show returned without him and gave not necessarily a satisfying, but poetic ending with its finale. While the series has ended, there are still prequels and spinoffs in various stages of development.
The reception forYellowstone’s final season was polarizing. Many fans accused Sheridan of playing it safe and not staying true to its core themes of moral ambiguity. The biggest examples of this were the heel turn and eventual death of Jamie Dutton, played by Wes Bentley. His death did not seem like a natural end for the character but was a statement.
Taylor Sheridan’s ‘cowboy good, city boy bad’ narrative claimed the life of Jamie Dutton
Taylor Sheridan’sYellowstonedepicted an aspect of American life that was not portrayed in the mainstream for the past few decades. The accurate portrayal of rural America and the challenges it faced from developmental projects made the show a hit (and also got critics calling it a Red State show).
While Sheridan has denied such labels forYellowstone(viaTHR), the later seasons ofYellowstoneseemed to bifurcate the narrative into good and bad quite clearly. Fans began tocriticize the shift in themesas the show progressed, which also seemed to affect the quality of the series.
One of the biggest collateral damage in opting for this direction was the heel turn of Jamie Dutton and his death in the series finale. Played by Wes Bentley, the adopted Dutton was always the black sheep in the family, and his conflict with Beth had been built up from season one. But his death in the finale just seemed too much on theme and not on character.
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Fans onRedditcriticized Taylor Sheridan’s decision to villainize Jamie Dutton and kill him off in the final episode. The lack of any clear-cut antagonism on his part also led to his death not being satisfying for the fans.
Jaime became one of the show’s villains because he was a lawyer/politician instead of a cowboy. That’s literally the only thing that makes him different than most of the other male characters in terms of the evil things he has done. I’m not saying he was ‘good’ but like I said compared to most of the other characters he definitely didn’t seem worse than them.
Jamie is killed by Beth (with some help from Rip) after the season 5 part 1 finale pits them directly against each other. He is shown as the main villain in the series but the events surrounding it just do not make as much sense.
Wes Bentley thought Jamie Dutton was going to get killed much earlier inYellowstone
Wes Bentleyseems to have little luck on screen. His character Seneca Crane inThe Hunger Gamesis last seen with a bowl of the deadly nightlock berries while he is swept away by the mountains of waves on Miller’s Planet inInterstellar. While he got a longer role in Taylor Sheridan’sYellowstone, Jamie Dutton met the same fate years later.
The Fate of 1923 Season 2 Looks Terrifying After Taylor Sheridan Proudly Ruined a Beloved ‘Yellowstone’ Character After John Dutton
Bentley, however, reportedly thought that he would be around for an even lesser time. He toldTV Linebefore the airing of the final season that he was dreading the wait for Jamie’s death as early as season 2 and said that the adopted Dutton felt like a character who would die. He said,
I thought Jamie was going to be killed off in Season 2. I was waiting for that dreaded script to come along [saying] that Jamie would be gone because it just felt like that kind of a character. That’s been the journey the entire time and I don’t want to say anything about this season, but it was no different. I was sitting there like, ‘Am I still here?’
While it may just be his past experiences talking, many fans still believed that his death in the series had little to do with the character but Taylor Sheridan’s ideology.
Yellowstoneis available to stream on Paramount+.
Nishanth A
Senior Writer
Articles Published :2415
Nishanth A is a Senior Entertainment Writer at FandomWire, majorly focusing on TV shows with over 2,000 articles published. He has been an entertainment journalist for the past two years and a scriptwriter at various corporations before that, working on educational content. With a Communications, English Literature, and Psychology triple major, Nishanth usually covers news and analyses on Star Trek, particularly Strange New Worlds and The Next Generation; Doctor Who, the DCU, and more.A Nolan fan, Nishanth spends his time exploring the filmographies of various directors with an auteurial style or can be found making short movies of his own. He has also contributed as a feature writer for Film Companion, focusing on the South division.
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