Beth’s Most Heartbreaking Moment In Yellowstone
'Yellowstone' Star Kelly Reilly Talks Most 'Heartbreaking' Moment of 'Intense' Season 4
Yellowstone recently wrapped up its fourth season, earning more fans and high ratings for Paramount Network and shifting the world of the Duttons just a bit more. It was a roller-coaster season that ended with less bang than the prior season. That doesn’t mean the ramifications won’t make their presence known or that the quality had slipped. It just means Yellowstone is prepared to deliver and surprise as it moves forward to its conclusion.
Season four left all the Dutton family feeling their wounds, but it was Kelly Reilly’s Beth Dutton that seemed to walk out of the flames to accept the darker part of her life. The finale saw Beth placed on the edge of exile from the family before getting married in a wild moment of happiness to counter “the darkest thing she’s ever done” shortly after.
Kelly Reilly’s Beth Dutton is unmatched. #YellowstoneTV pic.twitter.com/h6QPuEoYE5
— Yellowstone (@Yellowstone) January 6, 2022
Beth turns to tell Carter that he can’t call her mama, and he wears his pain clearly across his face; he thought she’d been a mother to him all along. Beth explains that she’s acted as his friend because that’s all she is. She tells him that he lost his mom and didn’t get a new one in her absence — Beth sure didn’t.
To hit an already painful moment home, Beth says that she’s never going to be anybody’s mama, and fans took a collective heartbreaking sigh as the words left her mouth. Beth can’t be someone’s mama, not how she thinks she should. Beth sometimes wears her pain as a shield, and this is one of those moments. Is she still a force, even in the hurt? Yes, but it all landed differently this time around.
Not on Beth’s watch
Beth isn’t naive enough to think that her father doesn’t have relations with women; he’s grown closer with Governor Lynelle Perry in each season of Yellowstone. Beth isn’t naive to the fact that people are willing to do anything to get close to the Dutton family, so when she sees a strange woman in her kitchen, she has a strong opinion about it.
So strong that when the mystery woman asks Beth who the f— she is, Beth grabs a kitchen knife and goes to attack her. The guest is a woman named Summer, and she tells Beth that she didn’t know John was married. He then walks in and slams a cabinet door before saying this was a situation he “couldn’t have dreamed up in a month of Sundays.”
The women then sit down with John to have breakfast in an undeniably awkward mealtime celebration, but hey — it’s the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch; anything goes.
Beth is as quick as she is fierce, and as we said before, always ready to sprinkle in a bit of sarcasm and vulgarity to any conversation. Someone who constantly bore the brunt end of her attitude was Roarke, that is, before Beth’s beau Rip gave him a special gift in a cooler.
Anytime Beth had something to say to Roarke, it w as laced with sarcasm and damaging. While Roarke certainly took a lot of heat from Beth, he’s not the only one. If you’re not one of the few people in this world she loves and trusts, you will only ever get a snarky side of our favorite sassy Dutton. The thing is, she’s never giving it to anyone that doesn’t deserve it.
Giving Jamie a choice with only one correct answer
In episode 7 of Season 3, we see Jamie as he’s faced with heartbreaking news: the bloodline of the Dutton family stops with him. That’s right, Jamie was adopted into the Dutton clan, and while that’s never made him any less family to them, he feels betrayed nonetheless.
Jamie goes on to discover the identity of his biological father, and the two form a close bond in the following episodes. Jamie finally seems ready to do what viewers always had a feeling he’d do, run from the Duttons and never look back. Of course, Beth isn’t letting that happen, especially when she discovers something about Garrett (Jamie’s father).
Garrett is responsible for the attacks on the Dutton family that left fans speechless. At the end of Season 3, we were unsure who would live or die, and to learn that Garrett had a hand in that felt like an ultimate betrayal. In Season 4, Beth gives Jamie a choice to kill his father or, well, to kill his father. Ultimately, he wasn’t really given much of an option at all.
Beth used the age-old tactic of blackmail to let Jamie know what he must do, and he certainly got the job done. With one of the stronger foes against the Duttons gone, Season 5 will allow them to breathe just a little easier, but we know it won’t be long before a new one emerges. The beautiful thing about Beth is that she’ll know exactly what to do to take them out too.
Beth’s apology to Rip
Beth has loved Rip Wheeler since before she knew the word’s meaning, and long before she was willing to say it out loud. She felt him growing close to her and wanted to push him away, so she started spending time with Walker. It was as hard for Rip to watch as it was for fans, but the thing is, he still knew where her heart belonged.
She saw Rip working on the ranch one afternoon and offered him an apology, to which he told her that “I’m sorry” were two words she never had to say to him. The vulnerable side of Beth that Rip brings out is something we never get tired of seeing. It’s powerful for Beth to have a soft place in her heart for Rip; it’s the kind of power that could break her completely, but she leans into it in the most beautiful moments, and we love seeing them.
Beth’s big proposal
Nothing is more powerful than allowing someone to love you and openly loving them back. It’s one of those jumps that, once you’ve leaped, there’s no reaching for a ledge to steady yourself again. You’re out there; you’ve said it, the doors for heartache are open, and you’re choosing not to believe in it. For someone like Beth, that’s the most powerful step she could ever take.
Beth has lived a life of hurt, of hearing that she’s the reason behind one of the most immense heartaches she’ll ever experience, and she’s carried it all with her. She knows loss like an old friend, telling it, “not today, not here.”
Beth loves Rip with abandon; she’s wild with him, fearless even, because she knows he’ll catch her. There’s beauty in giving that power to someone else to break your heart or heal it. She doesn’t just give Rip a ring; she mutters words to him that bring tears to all of our eyes.
“It means that you have me, that I’m yours. It means come live your life with me. Only thing I ask is that you outlive me so that I never have to live another day without you.”
We’re not crying; you’re crying.
You can see more of Beth Dutton’s finest moments in the first four seasons of Yellowstone, streaming now on Peacock.
