[This story contains spoilers from the first two episodes of Yellowstone‘s fifth season.]
If you ask Wes Bentley, there’s one factor he’ll agree with Beth Dutton about relating to his character: Jamie Dutton’s probability of redemption is over.
The formidable Beth, performed by Kelly Reilly, says as a lot to her brother Jamie (Bentley) within the second episode of Yellowstone‘s fifth season. The Taylor Sheridan-created neo-Western returned to Paramount Network Sunday night time with a two-episode premiere that set a scores report.
“I want to believe that you’re advising what’s best for the family, I do. But then I remember, this isn’t your family. And he’s not your father. And we both know how you treated your own father,” says Beth, reminding Jamie (and viewers) that he’s the adopted son to patriarch John Dutton (Kevin Costner) and that he murdered his organic father for his assault on the Duttons — a selection he made underneath Beth’s strong-armed steerage within the season 4 finale. “Just stop thinking that you have a chance to earn redemption, Jamie. You don’t.”
Throughout the primary two episodes, Jamie faces insults, orders and dagger glances from each Beth and John, with the latter at one level telling his Attorney General son to sacrifice his personal political ambitions and strengthen his “weak, self-loathing heart” for the sake of the household. “I love Montana, but I’m doing this for the ranch,” John makes clear to his youngsters as he’s sworn as Montana’s governor, after working an anti-progress marketing campaign. “We measure every decision against what good it does for the ranch. The ranch comes first, always.”
No matter what’s hurled his manner, Jamie takes it. He nods, stays quiet and follows orders. But, because the Dutton household’s new enemies (performed by Jacki Weaver and collection newcomer Dawn Olivieri) see from his dejected expressions, Jamie is on a decent leash — and he’s able to battle.
“Inside, he’s boiling. And it will explode,” warns Bentley when chatting with The Hollywood Reporter about what’s to return. “Jamie’s potential for being the threat is real. Is that redemption? Is that revenge? Or, is it survival? I don’t know. But something like that is going to have to happen. I don’t think Jamie comes back from season four events; I think he is a changed man now.”
With Beth blackmailing him and John pushing his manner into the governor’s workplace, “any love that was there is gone with Beth, and his father basically took any job Jamie would like out of this whole arrangement, so now he views John differently, too. Jamie is a broken man, but at the moment, he’s a broken man under someone’s thumb who doesn’t have a way out, so he’s boiling and looking for that way out.”
Courtesy of Paramount Network
When the season begins, Bentley says Jamie hasn’t begun to course of the trauma that he skilled by killing his personal father. The selection was made in a bid to avoid wasting himself after Beth came upon that Jamie’s father was the one who put the hit out on the Duttons — and she or he threatened him with sure dying if her father or husband Rip (Cole Hauser) ever came upon.
“In the first episode, Jamie is trying to survive,” says Bentley, following his finale selection. “Jamie has a strong sense of right and wrong, but it’s his own sense of right and wrong and it definitely has to do with his benefit. So, part of it was about him surviving rather than his dad surviving. He sized out that what his dad did was wrong, so when faced with the options from Beth, he decided it was right to kill him. As painful as that is to say or do, he was really left with no choice. But, despite that, that’s now led to some intense hatred and anger of Beth deep inside.”
He continues, “It’s devastating and it’s only going to be more devastating as time goes on, as Jamie realizes what he doesn’t have. His father [played by Will Patton] was his only real family. And I think in Beth voicing for him to kill his father, she has opened a deep wound. So now he has to figure out what he’s going to do about it. But, he is under her thumb and can’t do the instinctual thing, so he has to play her game — at least for a bit.”
That effervescent anger sits atop Jamie and Beth’s deep-seated hatred for each other. As has been explored in flashbacks, when Beth was a teen and in search of an abortion, Jamie took her for a sterilization process with out her understanding, and her infertility in consequence has pushed a lot of Beth’s hostility towards her brother.
Airing in a post-Roe world, Bentley notes that their well timed historical past may elicit much more passionate viewers emotions across the Beth and Jamie fractured relationship, however he additionally spots one other political parallel.
“More than his politics, John running for office sort of mirrors what’s happening now in the sense that there are a lot of people who don’t believe in government or democracy that are running on selfish, self-promoting reasons,” says Bentley of the self-serving motivations behind John’s governorship. “John just wanted to be governor for his own personal gain, not for the people. And there are a lot of people running like that who don’t believe in government or democracy, who are just trying to get what they want, despite the opinion of the people.”
Courtesy of Paramount Network
For now, Jamie is concentrated on making an attempt to be the voice of purpose and hold John and Beth from making selections that he thinks will lose them the household cattle ranch, like going up in opposition to the coastal elites and any highly effective billionaire developer who scouts in Montana. “He’s the only one who really understands how this works in the modern time. He thinks everyone else is playing a game of cowboy,” says Bentley of the land politics. “It’s very frustrating for Jamie because he has a stake in this — he wants a piece of Yellowstone as well. We have a lot of new people and new angles that are being attacked at the ranch, and a lot of relationship changes like between me and John and Beth. I think it’s going to bring up a lot of new and different feelings than in the last four seasons.”
And Jamie will not be the one menace. There are indicators {that a} reckoning may very well be coming for the Dutton household: Youngest son Kayce (Luke Grimes), after seeing an ominous imaginative and prescient in regards to the “end of us” within the season 4 finale, misplaced his unborn son after spouse Monica (Kelsey Asbille) bought right into a automobile accident on the finish of the premiere.
“It feels like they’re at an inflection point, almost entirely from their own decisions,” says Bentley of what the Duttons will likely be up in opposition to in season 5. “It does feel like the world is coming down on them, or at least they’ve run themselves into a corner and they can’t get out of it. And also, not being able to deal with the emotions of all of this has got to be something that’s interesting that they struggle with.”
Yellowstone airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on Paramount Network, with episodes or the complete season accessible for buy on choose providers. (The collection isn’t accessible on Paramount+; earlier seasons stream on Peacock.)
