Yellowstone Fans Are Divided Over Kayce's Final Line In The Season 4 Finale
Spoilers ahead for the Season 4 finale of "Yellowstone," "Grass on the Streets and Weeds On the Rooftops."
"Yellowstone" Season 4 may have been the twistiest, most intense season the Paramount Network series has offered viewers to date. The season began in the aftermath of a literal bang — the Season 3 finale, which saw Kayce (Luke Grimes), Beth (Kelly Reilly), and John Dutton (Kevin Costner) targeted in a coordinated hit on the family. After a brief jump forward in time, Season 4 sees the Dutton family and the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch employees get placed on new, more high-stakes paths. These paths include (but are not limited to): John and Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley) entering into a gubernatorial race; the Duttons fending off threats as embodied by Market Equities and Broken Rock Reservation; Beth's unsteady recovery and, simultaneously, efforts to figure out who tried to hurt her and her family.
The fourth season of "Yellowstone" went out with a bang as Jimmy Hurdstrom (Jefferson White) leaves the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch for greener pastures — an existence outside of the cowboy way of life — with his fiancée, Emily (Kathryn Kelly). John expresses his disappointment with Jimmy's decision, especially in light of the ranch's shaky future, but allows him to leave. Tensions between Caroline Warner (Jacki Weaver) and Beth reach an all-time high, resulting in her firing from Market Equities. Later, she is re-embraced by her Dutton kin.
Elsewhere, Kayce tries to figure out how to best proceed with his life and receives a seemingly dire proclamation. Given that he has always been a character worth following on "Yellowstone," the place where Season 4 leaves Kayce is especially noteworthy. Here's why.
Kayce sees the end for someone (or something) in Season 5
At the end of Season 4, Kayce goes on a deeply transformative vision quest. He takes himself to a patch of deserted land and embarks on a spiritual journey that opens old wounds, forces him to deal with past traumas, and teases the end of someone (or something) in Season 5.
Alone and cold, Kayce experiences several flashes of memory that leave him shaken. These flashes include visions of his dead brother, Lee Dutton (Dave Annable), who appears just outside of the protected area where Kayce must sit during his quest. Lee scolds Kayce for not following instructions about the vision quest, devolving into a ghostly vision of the deceased Dutton that leaves Kayce shaken. At another point in the vision quest, Kayce is plunged into his memories of his time serving in the Navy, where audiences get a clear glimpse into the horrors the youngest Dutton experienced while serving, which have irrevocably impacted him.
As his vision quest nears the end, the appearance of a young girl leads Kayce to the precipice of a cliff. There, he's presented with two possible paths and is told the girl will help him walk the one he picks, but he must decide the way. His wife, Monica (Kelsey Asbille), later asks him what he's seen. "I saw the end of us," Kayce tells her. It's an ominous revelation, especially because it's unclear to whom or what Kayce is referring — and especially because his relationship with Monica has been tested repeatedly throughout Season 4.
What did Kayce see ending during his vision quest?
Kayce's dread-filled statement while in conversation with Monica has quickly become a source of much speculation amongst "Yellowstone" fans. Due to the opaqueness of the wording of "I saw the end of us," several interpretations have been suggested by fans who hang out on the r/Yellowstone subreddit as they debate what Kayce's final line of Season 4 ultimately means in the grand scheme of the Paramount Network show's future.
Redditors shared their mixed opinions about what these eerie words could mean. "Did he mean the end of him and Monica? The end of the human race? The end of the Duttons or the [r]anch? Or the end of their town or way of life?" wondered u/Potterhead07651, adding that Monica seemed to "understand" what Kayce was getting at.
Redditor u/dynamix811 suggested that the two paths represent Kayce being forced to pick between his relationship with Monica and saving the Dutton ranching empire: "Whichever path he chooses, the other relationship will be ended." Meanwhile, u/veilsix wrote that the divided path represents Kayce's choice between the white world of the Duttons and the Indigenous world of Monica and her family, who are fighting to get their land back from the Duttons. They called this the show's "ultimate" conflict, "venture capital firms be damned."
Fans will have to wait for Season 5 of "Yellowstone" to see what happens.