Despite all the success and acclaim that Yellowstone has had throughout its run,

its fifth and final season has been an unusual affair. With all the behind-the-scenes drama,

along with several other contributing factors, the show is currently on hiatus, but the second

half ofSeason 5 is still scheduled to premiere later in the year. In the meantime, there are still plenty of unanswered questions that the fans are desperate to have answers to. It turns out that a few of these unanswered questions extend to one of its supporting characters: the loyal Yellowstone ranch hand, Lloyd.

Throughout the show, Lloyd has displayed many qualities that have turned him into such a fan-favorite character. As the series has progressed, his role in its story has gotten even bigger and more integral. Especially as of recently, he’s been through some pretty tough

times that have even threatened his life at several points. As of now, Lloyd’s future is uncertain, and with the show nearing its end, there are plenty of different ways that it could go about concluding its journey. But how exactly has that journey unfolded, and where has it left him as of the end of Season 5’s first half?

Updated by Jordan Iacobucci on July 22, 2024: Yellowstone is officially set to end with Season 5, Part 2, which premieres on November 10. While fans are all concerned about the fates of their favorite characters, one who can’t be forgotten is the fan-favorite Lloyd. This article has been updated with additional information and to adhere to CBR’s current formatting guidelines.

Introduced in Season 1, Lloyd is a middle-aged man who has served as one of the ranch hands on the Dutton Family’s titular Yellowstone Ranch for several years. Like most of the other ranch hands, he also bears the mark of the Yellowstone brand, indicating that he also harbors a criminal past and has traded a lifetime of service to the Dutton family and their property for protection from the law. Throughout the show’s first two seasons, his role was relatively small. Both his participation in the overall story and his given lines of dialogue were extremely limited, but the brief interactions that did occur between him and the Dutton family showed his loyalty and commitment to them. There was also the wholesomeness of the friendship between him and Rip, as well as the father-son-like dynamic between him and fellow ranch hand Jimmy, which the fans also grew to love watching.

As brief as some of these moments were, and while they didn’t have much impact on the overall main story of Yellowstone, they did reveal that there was more to his character and helped to make him the fan-favorite he became. His role in the show has been that of a mentor figure to the lesser characters, one who shows them the ropes and hopes they follow through. His role was expanded a bit in Season 3 when he gained a love interest through barrel racer, Laramie, but it was within Season 4 that he truly became a much more realized and fleshed-out character.

In Season 4 of Yellowstone, viewers got to see a bit more development and complexity from Lloyd’s character, as he was even given his own little story arc that lasted several episodes. The already bitter rivalry between Lloyd and Walker, one of the other ranch hands at Yellowstone, reached a new level of animosity after Laramie abandoned the romance she had with Lloyd in favor of a more serious relationship with Walker. The tension between the two finally came to a boiling point when Lloyd smashed Walker’s guitar and even threw a knife in his chest (barely missing the heart) after being challenged to a fight.

As the result of the two hands having broken the rule of “no fighting in the bunkhouse,” both John and Rip forced them to settle their situation by making them fight to exhaustion over several hours. However, even though Lloyd emerged as the fight’s victor, Rip still felt that Lloyd needed to be taught a lesson for all of his behavior; his method of doing so was by jumping him and practically beating him to a pulp. Despite the severe emotional and physical beatings that Lloyd endured, it had little to no effect on his friendship with Rip, and both he and Walker mutually agreed to finally settle their differences.