The Most Upsetting Rip Moment From Yellowstone Season 3
While Seasons 1 and 2 of "Yellowstone" put fan-favorite Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) through the proverbial wringer, Season 3 finally appeared to be going easy on the devoted Dutton protector and consummate anti-hero. Rip finally got the girl of his dreams, and was even permitted a few casual smiles over the course of the ultimately devastating season's 10 episode arc. And yet, it was out of all this too-good-to-be-true tenderness and cause for celebration that one of the character's most upsetting scenes in the entire series was born.
In Episode 7, "The Beating," Beth (Kelly Reilly) makes Rip the happiest man on earth when she lets down her steely guard and asks him to marry her. Despite all that they've been through, both individually and as a long-time on-again-off-again couple, they manage to hold on to the one thing that's kept them both going through their respective roller coaster rides of existence. Unsurprisingly, "Yellowstone" fans were thrilled by the prospect of a potential "happily ever after" for the couple. But that was all before a scene in Episode 10, "The World is Purple," that left fans more disturbed than starry-eyed.
Rip exhumes his mother's body in the Season 3 finale
A lot goes down in the "Yellowstone" Season 3 finale. So much so, that viewers would be forgiven for forgetting that before the episode's incendiary final moments, Rip exhumes his mother's decades-long deceased corpse in order to retrieve her wedding ring for Beth. Although the idea of Rip wanting to give Beth his mother's ring seems sweet, the particular way he goes about it had many fans feeling that the act was not so much sentimental as downright disturbing and creepy.
On a Reddit thread about the scene, u/Slade_Riprock said of the moment, "it was single handedly the worst scene in the 3 seasons of the show, no doubt. It was for morbid shock value." Many other users were in agreement, including one who wrote, "Zombies, gory battle scenes, even Teeter getting her head split open by the horse doesn't bother me. But a representation of an actual 'realistic' dead person being dug up and displayed like that really creeped me out ..."
Other fans were as perplexed by the narrative inconsistencies as they were unnerved. Redditor u/Delolcat pointed out, "I don't understand why he would want Beth to wear that ring when his mother had a sad and horrible marriage ..."
While some people may not have the same unsettled reaction to the idea of seeing the body of a dead family member, considering the tragic nature of his mother's death and the stronghold Rip's childhood trauma has over his very being, watching him exhume her corpse in order to take her wedding ring is a scene that is undeniably upsetting.