Yellowstone’s season 5 finale missed the opportunity to highlight Tate’s significance. Tate’s positioning in the Dutton family tree is critically important to the franchise and the outcome of season 5. In the Yellowstone finale, Kayce Dutton sold the Yellowstone Ranch to the Broken Rock Tribe, whose ancestors owned the land before the Dutton family. Consequently, Beth and Kayce could move on from the ranch, settling with their families in Dillon and East Camp, respectively.
Kayce, Tate, and Monica had a full circle ending in Yellowstone, with the patriarch’s bold decision blending his desire to protect the ranch and to put his family first. Kayce’s negotiations allowed the youngest sixth-generation Dutton to escape the dangers of protecting his family’s massive Montana land legacy, the largest contiguous ranch in the US. The exoneration of this burden is why Kayce keeps saying they are free after selling the ranch. Kayce’s choices brought the Dutton family prophecy in the 1883 Yellowstone story to fruition. Tate had a vital role in that, which Yellowstone failed to mention.
The 1883 Prophecy Explained In Detail
The 1883 Prophecy Foreshadows Yellowstone’s Ending
After neo-Western creator Taylor Sheridan launched his flagship series, he produced two Yellowstone prequel series that contextualized the Dutton family’s Montana land legacy. The sagas, titled 1883 and 1923, are named for the year they occurred. The first Yellowstone prequel, 1883, told the story of the earliest members of the Dutton family. The prequels serve as period pieces for the Dutton family throughout their journey on the Oregon Trail and into the Great Depression, adding rich history to the Yellowstone story and explaining how John Dutton III’s family established itself in the American West.
The Dutton family searched for a better life in the American West by traveling a variant of the Oregon Trail, traversing the wilderness with a wagon train of emigrants led by Thomas and Shea.
James and Margaret from the 1883 cast made a northwest journey from Texas to Montana with their children, John and Elsa. The Dutton family searched for a better life in the American West by traveling a variant of the Oregon Trail, traversing the wilderness with a wagon train of emigrants led by Thomas and Shea. The Dutton family faces the extreme hardships of the open wilderness, forging rivers and braving tornadoes as they cross the plains. Ultimately, Elsa succumbs to infection after she’s shot through the liver with a poisonous arrow, establishing that other people are the Dutton family’s threat.
As James and Margaret accept their daughter’s wound is fatal, their prospective journey to Oregon is cut short, with James vowing to settle wherever they bury Elsa. As the father and daughter travel across the plains on horseback, they meet a Crow elder named Spotted Eagle, who James tells about their need to settle. Spotted Eagle then tells James Dutton about Paradise Valley, instructing him on how to get there with a warning that his people will rise and take the land back in seven generations. James Dutton promises they can have it in seven generations, establishing 1883’s Yellowstone prophecy.
Yellowstone Season 5 Finale Fulfills Taylor Sheridan’s 1883 Prophecy
Kayce Dutton Fulfills James Dutton’s Promise To Spotted Eagle
The Yellowstone season 5 finale brought the prophecy to fruition. Kayce’s decision to sell the ranch to Thomas Rainwater and the Broken Rock Tribe restores the land to Montana’s Indigenous people, which James Dutton, Kayce’s ancestor, promised would happen. Yellowstone season 5’s ending also followed through on Thomas Rainwater’s threat to John Dutton in Yellowstone season 1, saying that he would buy the ranch when John passed away, embodying Spotted Eagle’s promise that his people would rise and reclaim their land. Therefore, Sheridan fulfilled all aspects of the prophecy, enriching Yellowstone’s ending.
Kayce’s decision to sell the ranch started to permeate in Yellowstone season 5, episode 13 after Beth held an auction to liquidate the ranch’s assets. After verifying his plan with his sister, Kayce tells Monica that the only way to save the ranch is to give it away. The decision was informed by Kayce’s visions in Yellowstone season 4, which Mo Brings Plenty helped him interpret. Kayce’s vision told him he must choose between the ranch and his family. By surrendering the ranch, Kayce discovers he can save the ranch while freeing himself and putting his family first.
Yellowstone Failed To Point Out Tate’s Significance As A Seventh-Generation Dutton
Tate’s Status As A Seventh-Generation Dutton Was Significant
If you look deep into the lore of the Dutton family, it is clear that their time at their massive Montana ranch was up, according to Spotted Eagle and James Dutton. When Jamie Dutton introduces his father after John III wins the Montana governor’s race, the attorney general notes that his father is a fifth-generation rancher. Therefore, Sheridan’s writing reveals that Kayce is a sixth-generation Dutton, making his son, Tate, the seventh generation of the Dutton family in Montana. Thus, in plain sight in Yellowstone season 5, the Dutton family’s time at the Yellowstone was almost up.
Yellowstone failed to point out Tate’s context, which didn’t spoil the ending since there was some room for interpretation. Since Kayce married and had children with Monica, a member of the Broken Rock Tribe, Tate has one foot planted in both worlds. Thus, if Kayce ended up possessing the ranch at the end of Yellowstone and died trying to protect it, leaving the land to Tate, that also would have fulfilled Sheridan’s prophecy. Tate inheriting the land would have technically seen it return to Montana’s Indigenous lineage. However, Sheridan’s Yellowstone ending with Thomas Rainwater is more satisfying.
Why Yellowstone Didn’t Get To Focus On Tate
Yellowstone Season 5 Was Strapped For Time
Despite Tate having a great story to tell, Yellowstone season 5 didn’t get to focus on Tate. The seventh-generation Dutton’s role in the final season was mostly limited to quips responding to his parents and a few conversations with his father where Kayce used Tate as a sounding board. Thus, we didn’t learn much about Tate or his motivations, although he did get to tell his father that he didn’t see himself running the ranch but wanted to stay at East Camp. That conversation between Kayce and Tate, too, foreshadowed the family surrendering the ranch.
Standing somberly among the Dutton family headstones would have been the perfect moment for Kayce to point out to Tate that seven generations of his family had occupied the land.
There’s another season 5 conversation between Tate and Kayce when the father and son stand in the family graveyard, and the scene is a missed opportunity to connect Tate’s lineage to the prophecy, letting Yellowstone viewers in on the foreshadowing. Standing somberly among the Dutton family headstones would have been the perfect moment for Kayce to point out to Tate that seven generations of his family had occupied the land. That said, Yellowstone season 5 was pressed for time, forgoing the development of main characters like Jamie, so Tate’s story didn’t get the time the prophecy warranted.