Yellowstone‘s Wes Bentley has opened up about the potential of a powerful character meeting their demise as the Dutton family story continues being told. With the second half of season five on the horizon and seasons six and seven being teased by Cole Hauser, there’s still a lot of heart left in the tumultuous yet beautiful tale.
Someone narrating a particularly harrowing piece of the family puzzle is Wes Bentley’s Jamie Dutton, a character who you’d never say carries a sense of peace with him. Jamie seems to thrive off of chaos, or at least, he seems to have it so deeply interwoven into his being that he can’t escape it. Some of that chaos comes from his relationship with Kevin Costner’s John Dutton — in fact, some fans would say that’s at the root of all of it.
Life with John is hard for Jamie, but it would be a different journey entirely without him. Of course, in a world as volatile as that of the Dutton’s existence, death is something they’ve all had to spend time with. For Jamie, it almost seems that the death of his sister or father would push things forward for the exiled son, but it would still come at a cost.
Speaking to TVLine at SCAD TVFest, Bentley says that the death of John Dutton is something he’s thought about since the beginning of the series. Having already faced death, the patriarch of the family no longer on this side of Heaven would change things for everyone.
“I thought about this in season one, because it’s always a possibility in TV, right? We’re always ready to die… [And John] really has got this hypnotic pull on Jamie.”
A hypnotic pull is almost putting it lightly; John — despite Jamie’s best wishes and most ardent attempts at silencing him — has a profound and nearly magnificent way of threading his voice, his thoughts, and his mannerisms through his son. While fans discovered that there’s no bloodline connecting the men, it seems as if Jamie becoming a Dutton was written in the stars.
That doesn’t mean that it was the kind of story you’d wish for. In fact, the sordid tale of Jamie’s path to becoming a Dutton, and attempting to be the last one standing, is a central part of the storyline showrunner Taylor Sheridan is telling.
With the second half of season five on the horizon, set to be released this summer, and a bounty on the heads of three of the most prominent Dutton family members, the return of Yellowstone will bring with it higher stakes than ever before, and a rising body count at the train station.
For Jamie: Beth or John being the ones dumped at the faux burial site would mean a clear path to his ultimate goal; however, fans know John and Beth like the back of their hands, and they won’t be going down without a fight.