The Detail From Yellowstone's Season 3 Finale That Really Bothers Fans
Contains spoilers for the Yellowstone season 3 finale
Another wild season of Yellowstone came to a close on Sunday, August 24, 2020. The finale didn't disappoint when it came to literally explosive cliffhangers, but that doesn't mean all fans of the show are pleased.
Season 3 of Yellowstone continued the Duttons' fight to protect their massive Montana ranch from being subsumed by outside forces. In the final episode, the shadowy hedge-fund Market Equities seems poised to make a significant move against the family. But at the last minute, CEO Willa Hays (Karen Pittman) becomes embroiled in a PR scandal planted by Beth (Kelly Reilly). For a moment, it looks like the Duttons have vanquished another foe — but they should have known that no beef stays dead for long in Montana.
In the final act of the episode, we see a package bomb go off in Beth's office while she and her assistant are packing. Next, Kayce's (Luke Grimes) office is visited by an armed man who opens fire on him. Finally, John (Kevin Costner) stops on the side of a deserted road to help a woman with a flat tire. Partway through the good deed, a van stops. After confirming that he is, indeed, John Dutton, one of the men in the van shoots John in the chest with a spray of gunfire. His cell phone stops one of the bullets, but he's still gravely injured and stranded in the middle of nowhere.
There's no denying that it's an exciting finale, especially as it leaves the fate of three of the show's main characters in the balance. However, in the aftermath of the possible Dutton massacre, some fans took to Reddit to air their grievances about the major plot hole they saw in Yellowstone's season 3 finale.
Some fans aren't convinced the logistics of Yellowstone's finale add up
In a thread titled "About the last ten minutes of the season 3 finale," Reddit user u/MichaelJordansToupee aired their grievances with the episode. They began by clarifying, "Let me preface this by saying I know, I know it's a tv show with tv show rules," before going on to point out that the coordinated hit on the Duttons was too complex an operation to pull off in the few hours between the heated meeting with Market Equities and the attacks.
"[T]here's no way on earth they're just gonna have a team of shooters on standby 24/7 AND a bomb all made and ready to go," they said. "That's gonna take at least a couple of weeks to plan and do surveillance."
Other commenters agreed with the analysis. User u/mitch_michaels17 called into question another detail of the coordinated attack: "And they're supposed to win by killing everybody in broad daylight? How does that work?" Another Redditor, u/That_personoverthere, brought up, "Realistically, FBI would get very involved with this."
It doesn't take a professional to know that if you're trying to orchestrate a shady land deal by murdering the competition, having the feds involved is probably something you'd like to avoid. But the logistics of the (attempted?) hits aren't the only part of the finale to which fans are objecting. While everyone loves a good cliffhanger, some aren't so pleased with how this one was executed.
Not everyone buys that the Duttons are in actual danger
As we mentioned earlier, three Duttons look poised to potentially lose their lives at end of the season 3 finale: Beth, Kayce, and John. All three of these characters are pretty vital to the show, so even one of them being killed off would be a major event in the run of the series. In a thread for viewers to discuss the finale, Reddit user u/deternonistic didn't buy that the show is ready to take out a major character, no matter how the finale ended.
"[It's] obvious kayce is going to go john wick on whoever came after him, john is shown alive, and the assistant opened the mail bomb," they reasoned, "so i'm sure beth will be in a coma or something but ultimately live."
User u/c_burdette agreed, and used other shocking TV dramas to prove their point: "They all will survive — if [Game of Thrones] taught me anything it's that it is easy to kill main characters. If you want them dead from a writing standpoint you don't do it in the last five minutes. Those scenes always turn into survival arcs and are shot to create off season hype."
U/Flashdance007 replied to u/c_burdette's theory, adding, "Agreed. If one of the main characters was going to die it would have been two or three episodes ago because it would be such a shock-moment, they'd want to immediately follow up on it and milk it."
Yellowstone star Wes Bentley addresses the season 3 finale
The fact that the Yellowstone season 3 finale was shocking and contentious amongst fans likely isn't lost on the series' cast — and it truly isn't on Wes Bentley, who plays Jamie. Bentley recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the season-ender, and admitted that even he doesn't know where Yellowstone might go from here. All that Bentley is sure of, however, is that the events of the season 3 finale have cleared the slate and will allow for truly anything to happen during season 4.
"As an audience, it feels like the board got wiped and we can write some new things on that board," he told the outlet. "I think big, big, dramatic things happen — violent things happen — and in a lot of ways, it defines the show because that's who gets the ultimate say. It comes down to that [brutality]. Outside of aliens landing, I don't know where [creator] Taylor [Sheridan] is going to go from here. He gave himself the ability to go from any angle now. To restart or refresh, he definitely has left himself an open door for a lot of options. I think that's clever."
Bentley then reassured fans, "He has a plan, so I think he was ahead of it."
Whether fans are correct in their assumptions or we really are losing someone from the Dutton clan remains to be seen. Either way, it's going to feel like an extra-long wait for Yellowstone season 4 premiere.