Everyone knows there are some occupations in culture of which you want to steer clear: Star Trek redshirt, Spinal Tap drummer … whatever it is Sean Bean’s up to these days. They’ve become synonymous with a grisly fate and a certain degree of expendability.
Now, fans of Paramount Network’s unsentimental modern western Yellowstone think they’ve found a new one to add to the list of jobs to avoid at all costs when you’re scanning the want ads, and it’s neither breaking horses in on the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch or breaking legs as part of the show’s unseemly underbelly of Montana power struggles.
Instead, it’s working as an assistant in the office of Dutton family daughter Beth (Kelly Reilly). You stand a better chance making it home to your family as a cowboy or an enforcer than you do answering phones for the foul-mouthed f inancier.
The grim fate of Beth Dutton’s first assistant
As /u/ApollosBucket puts it on Reddit, working for Beth tends to end the tenure of characters on the show via “the most gruesome deaths ever oh my goodness. First an armed robbery where they’re tortured and executed and now a BOMB!? RIP.”
The first time one of Beth’s assistants was killed on her behalf, because this is the sort of thing that needs that qualifier, came in the seventh episode of season 2, when two of black hat Malcolm Beck’s (Neal McDonough) goons arrive and hold her and her employee Jason (David Cleveland Brown) hostage as part of Beck’s scheme to take over the ranch’s land.
Beth tries to steel a panicked Jason, but their captors kill him in an attempt to make her lose her nerve. She doesn’t, which speaks mostly to the strength and ruthlessness of her character and maybe a little to how expendable the help is. Beth herself is saved by the timely arrival of Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser), so at the very least audiences learn an important lesson about the value of having a tough and ruthless love interest around.
What happened to Beth Dutton’s assistant in season 3?
Fortunately for Beth, in the aftermath of the attack she was able to find applicants who didn’t ask too many questions about the history of the position. Unfortunately for one of those applicants, she signed on the dotted line in time to open a mail bomb addressed to Beth that explodes in the office in the final episode of the third season.
The fate of Beth, farther away from the device, is left up in the air at the end of season 3, but given the size of the explosion and the windows it blows out, it seems almost certain this assistant will be joining Jason at the great front desk in the sky.
At least one of Beth’s assistants has escaped a grisly fate, as /u/shayshay8508 points out. After dropping some coffee in the office, she received a mere angry tirade and a swift termination (of her employment, not her life). “And then she totally cussed out one of them before she fired her. 1/10 would not recommend working for Beth Dutton.”