‘Yellowstone’ Star Wes Bentley Drops Big Hints About Jamie in Season 5 Finale — And It’s All So Dark
Wes Bentley Reveals Details of Yellowstone Finale!
As TV’s most popular show readies for its final episodes, the actor who plays the onscreen son to Kevin Costner explains why he is ready to say goodbye.
The actor, who portrays Jamie Dutton in the neo-Western drama, spoke at a panel for the series at the Screen Actors Guild headquarters in Los Angeles Friday and expressed his belief that his character won’t make it to the end of the series.
Asked if he believes that the show will end with one or more members of the Dutton family dying, he replied: “I’m not a Dutton.”
Bentley went on to say that despite not being an official member of the family, he isn’t feeling very confident that Jamie will survive. In fact, Bentley thinks Jamie has considered himself dead ever since he killed his biological father in the season four finale.
Per Deadline, he said: “I don’t think he’s playing a game here. He does want to see something left for his son. I think he has seen himself [dead] from before the beginning of the season.”
“He’s already end-gamed what is happening to him. He knows what’s coming and he’s trying to get what he can out of it by making some moves and taking opportunities.”
“Is he just holding onto power, or is he actually trying to do something with the land?” Bentley then speculated.
“I think Jamie has valid questions about a lot of things and that’s what’s complicated about him. He has a good argument. He doesn’t go about it the right way necessarily, or I guess in ways people hate, but it’s his way and it’s who he is.”
For Bentley, playing the morally complicated and often denigrated Jamie Dutton — the son and antagonist of Kevin Costner’s John Dutton, the family patriarch — is something that sticks inside his head after the cameras stop rolling.
“Jamie stays with me. I don’t always want him there!” Bentley admitted. “When I see people talking about Method acting, my experience is that I’m trying as hard as I can to shake him.”
That being said, Bentley admitted that because of the delays in production — due to contract breakdowns and public and private spats between Costner and series creator Taylor Sheridan as well as the recent writers strike — it can get “tricky” when it comes to keeping the character alive in his mind.
“Life happens and it drifts a bit,” Bentley shared. “But I have a feeling it’s so ingrained that once we start really gearing up, it will all just come flooding back, and be overwhelming again.”
Bentley has long said that playing a character like Jamie can be hard because the character might be killed off at any time, and he might not know about it until the scripts for that episode come in. Now, with the show coming to an end, Bentley knows the character will meet a permanent fate of some kind.
“There is both relief and trepidation because we put so much into this. You feel like it’s a part of you. Whatever the outcome is, it’s a part of you,” Bentley explained. “But I am excited to see the culmination of all of this… I’m intrigued like everyone else.”
Bentley admitted that the uncertainty of a character’s fate has been a core element of the show since the beginning.
“You never really know who is going to be in or out or, the way shows go now, who is going to die and what season. You are half mentally prepared for that happening at any moment,” he admitted. “It created a real interesting thing for me with Jamie. Because I think Jamie also feels that his family could dispose of him at any second.”
Regardless of his character’s fate, the show will be coming to an end, and it’s something Bentley has conflicting feels about.
“I’m going to miss the challenge. Every single scene is literally the hardest scene I’ve ever had to do,” Bentley shared. “It will always be there as one of the hardest things I’ve ever accomplished, or tried to accomplish, bringing out all the facets and nuances of this complicated character.”
“So I will miss it, but I will also celebrate it being over,” he added.
That being said, Bentley has no real idea what the ultimate fate of his character is going to be, but he says he’s “open” to the possibility of reprising the character in some future spinoff series set in Sheridan’s Yellowstone universe.
“Taylor has something in his mind about where this story goes and if Jamie fits in, I definitely would be interested in being a part of that. But if it’s the end of the road for Jamie, like I said, I’m ready to wrap him up and celebrate the attempts at accomplishing this character,” he said.
