With one spin-off underway and another in the queue,

Taylor Sheridan’s compelling contemporary Western drama

“Yellowstone” is showing no signs of slowing down when it comes

to keeping viewers coming back — or tuning in for the first time — week after week. Without a doubt, a major component of the series’ appeal is its most rugged anti-hero, Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser), whose devotion to John Dutton (Kevin Costner) and the Yellowstone Ranch appears to know no bounds.

And yet, there are bounds when it comes to what audiences are willing to accept with regard to the often criminal, inevitably violent actions Rip feels he must take in order to defend the Duttons and their ranch. Throughout Season 4, another beloved character, Forrie J. Smith’s Lloyd Pierce, has butted heads with one of the other ranch hands, an unwilling captive of a cowboy named Walker (Ryan Bingham). Walker unwittingly “stole” Lloyd’s girlfriend (because that’s how sentient female humans work), and the latter has been unable to keep his jealousy and anger at bay ever since.

After Lloyd breaks the “no fighting in the bunkhouse” rule in Episode 4, Rip and John ultimately decide the two should work their issues out by pounding the crap out of one another until “it’s finished,” and John tells Rip to “make an example out of the last man standing.” If that all sounds exquisitely melodramatic and unnecessary, it’s because it is, and the violence Rip demonstrated when he “had” to make an example out of Lloyd was difficult for many fans to swallow.

Rip physically destroying Lloyd felt unjustified

Paramount Network/ Amazon Prime
Rip not only pummels Lloyd repeatedly in Episode 4 after the latter’s initial fight with Walker, but he also beats him down aggressively in Episode 6, then graphically smashes Lloyd’s hand with his boot. Lloyd’s second beating, importantly, isn’t Rip’s way of reiterating his “if you want to fight someone, you fight me” rule. When Rip destroys his best friend’s (very necessary) hand, it’s because he refuses to back down from a fight that John Dutton ordered Rip to have Lloyd and Walker undertake until they could “work out” their issues. By the time Rip “nobly” shoulders the burden of taking Lloyd down for good, Lloyd’s been continually fist fighting with Walker for well over an hour. To put this lengthy fistfight into perspective, it’s worth noting that even UFC fights are broken down into three or five five-minute rounds.