“Yellowstone” finale review: Taylor Sheridan offers a bloated (maybe) goodbye

In his season (series?) finale of Yellowstone, creator/writer/director/actor Taylor Sheridan left us with more questions than answers. Could Kayce (Luke Grimes) really sell the Yellowstone ranch to Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) for $1.25 an acre without facing serious legal challenges from the state of Montana? After spending the last six years as the Yellowstone’s avenging corporate angel, is Beth (Kelly Reilly) really going to be content living on a small, isolated ranch with nothing to do but stare lovingly at her cowboy husband, Rip (Cole Hauser)? And did we really need a full five-minute scene tying up the already-forgotten love story between tertiary characters Ryan (Ian Bohen) and Abby (Lainey Wilson)?

Not everything in “Life Is a Promise” — written and directed by Sheridan — made sense, but that’s okay. Yellowstone’s appeal wasn’t so much about the story as the idea Sheridan was selling with his wildly successful Western soap opera. The series, which proved linear television could still produce a gargantuan hit, ended as it began, celebrating an idealized America where a man (always a man) can live life the way his God intended — independent and free from the tyranny of the Other.

The finale was the culmination of a long-delayed batch of episodes, the back half of season 5, which returned in November after a nearly two-year break. That pause, of course, was caused in part by disputes — and ultimately a break-up — between Sheridan and Yellowstone’s original leading man, Kevin Costner.  Undaunted, Sheridan killed off Costner’s character, Yellowstone patriarch John Dutton, in the series’ Nov. 10 return, and recalibrated the remaining six episodes to focus on the aftermath of his murder and the Dutton siblings’ efforts to save the ranch from evil corporate developers.

Related: Here's how Yellowstone ends — and how it might set up a spinoff

Sheridan, who famously writes (wrote?) every episode of the series, faced the unenviable task of reworking the back half of a season he had already mapped out — and his struggles showed on the screen. The first few episodes were rife with clumsy and, at times, confusing time jumps, many that seemed tacked on to preexisting scenes in an effort to retrofit them for a new, Costner-less reality. Some of the flashbacks to Governor Dutton’s death — a staged suicide by mercenary assassins — felt gratuitous. “Dead in his PJs on the bathroom floor” was probably not the hero’s exit Costner imagined for his character, but it seems Sheridan wanted to remind us that the actor was no longer in charge, and maybe never was. The rift with Costner also gave viewers a glimpse that we never asked for into Sheridan's psyche, as the Yellowstone overlord seemed compelled to assert his dominance by inserting himself prominently — via his character, horse trainer Travis Wheatley — in the season’s final batch of episodes.

Related: Yellowstone recap: The long goodbye

While the ensemble’s remaining stars — Reilly, Hauser, Grimes, and Wes Bentley, as John Dutton’s duplicitous (and adopted) son, Jamie — did the real work of holding the narrative together, Sheridan turned his character into a focus-pulling co-star. Travis was the one who broke the news of John Dutton’s death to a heartbroken Jimmy (Jeferson White); Travis was the one Beth came to when she needed help selling the ranch’s horses to help pay for the estate tax (he agreed, but only after demanding she play him in strip poker); and Travis was the one holding court in the Bunkhouse in Sunday’s finale, as the cowboys gathered to swap stories about the good old days one last time. Of course, Sheridan has never been shy about writing himself into his series (he’s all over Lioness this season), but the tone of gleeful hubris in these Yellowstone vignettes — Bella Hadid as Travis’ girlfriend? — felt especially deliberate.

“Life Is a Promise” gave the key characters their endings, some happier than others. Beth stabbed Jamie in the heart in retaliation for his decision to have their father assassinated, and then she and Rip settled on a small ranch in remote Dutton, Mont. — where the hideous class of humanity known as tourists never dare to tread. For Beth, Hell is other people, and Heaven is a place where outsiders aren't allowed. After selling the Yellowstone to Chief Rainwater and his tribe, Kayce launched a family cattle ranch with his wife, Monica (Kelsey Asbille) and son, Tate (Brecken Merrill) — content, like Beth, to keep his family unit isolated from the ugly world around them.

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Related: Yellowstone director surprised by fan reaction to John Dutton's death: 'You are not supposed to be OK'

The nearly two-hour finale had plenty of filler (again — five full minutes on Ryan and Abby?), which would have been better spent with Rainwater and the residents of the Broken Rock reservation. In the episode’s most moving sequence, we watched Rainwater and his tribe take possession of the Yellowstone land. As men in a drum circle raised their voices in ceremonial song, Rainwater stepped away to take in the vast horizon, his eyes filling with tears of bittersweet joy. How does the tribe plan to move forward with the ranch and battle the looming oil pipeline? We’ll never know — unless Sheridan revives the story in the Rip and Beth spinoff, which is reported to be in the works.

Clearly, Paramount Network is not ready to let go of Yellowstone. The network touted “Life Is a Promise” as the “season” finale, even as Reilly thanked fans on Instagram, saying, “Whatever the future holds this is the ending of the show we have been making for the past 7 years.” Maybe, but Yellowstone is too valuable, and too all-pervasive, to end. Sheridan is so confident about fans’ investment in the YCU (Yellowstone Cinematic Universe) that he included an extended voiceover from Elsa Dutton (Isabel May) — John’s great aunt and a character from 1883, the Yellowstone prequel series — in the mothership’s finale. Those who didn’t watch the prequel or 1923 (Elsa has popped up as narrator there as well) may have been confused, but Sheridan would probably tell them they only have themselves to blame. This is his world, dear readers, and we just watch it.

Finale grade: B-
Season 5 grade: B+

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