For a long time, the streaming era had forgotten to deliver quality in lieu of quantity.
Taylor Sheridan changed that after he introduced Yellowstone to television and with it, the renaissance
of Kevin Costner, Kelly Reilly, and Wes Bentley in public consciousness. But the series was not only a revival
of the actors’ Hollywood glory but a stepping stone for Sheridan’s higher ambitions. With Taylor Sheridan standing to profit the most from Yellowstone‘s successful future, it is the creator himself who should have paid closer attention to the battered state of his prized series. Instead, Kelly Reilly stands up for herself (and unwittingly, a lot of the fans) when she voices her concern for the chaotic situation of her character (along with the rest of the roster).
Beth Dutton’s indomitable spirit and unbreakable will have always been a subject of fear and fascination among the fans. But while the character only ever showed her utmost spite for Wes Bentley‘s Jaime Dutton, in the latest seasons, that hatred grew to such an extreme that even the bonds of fiction couldn’t help the fans come to terms with the bitterness of the sibling drama.
For the past 2 years, the Yellowstone fan community has seen a drastic surge in negative opinion surrounding the character of Beth Dutton and her attitude toward Jaime. While Kelly Reilly‘s character arc was viewed as a force of nature and a source of empowerment for women all over the world, the mass consciousness seems to have shifted to the other end of the scale due to a recent turn of unfortunate events.
It is not only the fans who have expressed a severe lack of taste and culture in the evolution of Kelly Reilly’s Beth Dutton. While the character may have grown past her sociopathic tendencies and infrequent, volatile, and erratic outbursts, her violence toward Jaime remains the same, if not even more unstable than in the previous seasons.
Kelly Reilly has seemingly caught on to the growing resentment as well. In a featurette available in the Blu-Ray and DVD versions of the series, the actress claimed [via Us Weekly]:
I’m coming to it almost the same as the audience. I mean, I have my hopes and thoughts for the character. Also, as I’ve played her for over five years now, I feel like I know her so well, but I’m still learning. There are still things that I read and I didn’t expect, or sometimes I wish for something else for her, but that’s the same as the audience.
We’re all sort of beholden to the vision of the storyteller, and we serve the story. Who knows what’s going to happen?
While the rivalry was entertaining to watch in the first 3 seasons, the last season and a half have been getting repetitive in their insistence on the Beth vs Jaime rivalry. Fan complaints have risen as well, asking for a resolution to this never-ending drama that has now grown to such epic proportions that the remaining 8 episodes present too little scope for a redemptive or revenge arc.
As such, a proper closure or resolution to the drama is almost a negligible possibility in Yellowstone‘s Season 5 finale. However, considering the Oscar-nominated, genre-defying talents of Taylor Sheridan, serving the characters with a proper conclusion may not be such a tall order, after all.
Yellowstone Season 5, Part 2 will stream exclusively on Paramount+ in November 2024.
