Every time Yellowstone reaches another season finale, we’re left on the edge of our seats. Oftentimes, the Duttons are thrown headfirst into some serious trouble, and we wonder just how they’re going to get out of it this time around. But at the end of Season 3, the dial was turned up to eleven on our favorite Montana family, and everything became a lot more explosive. “The World Is Purple” changed Yellowstone going forward, and has since proven to be a finale unmatched by anything that came after.
“The World Is Purple” Seemingly Sets Up a Final Season for ‘Yellowstone’
Everything in Yellowstone’s Season 3 finale pointed to the next season possibly being the last, and honestly, it probably should have been. Throughout the season, Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) and Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) had gotten closer, and as a result, they each got a bit softer too. In many respects, the third season is the most character development we get from Beth throughout the show (which isn’t saying much), and as these two veered towards settling down together, the end seemed nigh. Similarly, Kayce (Luke Grimes) finally made a life for himself with his family on the ranch, and things were going up for his career too. And let’s not fail to mention how Jamie’s (Wes Bentley) decision to turn on the Duttons felt as if it would have some serious ramifications going forward.
But just because the series’ fourth season failed to live up to the hype (more on that in a bit) doesn’t mean that the Season 3 finale wasn’t any less spectacular. With “The World Is Purple,” Taylor Sheridan does what he does best: putting all his Duttons in a row before he plows right through them again. “Have a good day, dad,” Kayce tells John (Kevin Costner) before going to work, to which the patriarch replies, “I’m all out of those.” While one could argue (and, in fact, we have) that John Dutton made more of an impact on the series when he believed he was dying, here we see another side to the face of the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch. Here, we see a man who, although he no longer believes he’s dying, still sees that his time is short. That’s some damn good television.
With Market Equities succeeding what Dan Jenkins (Danny Huston) first attempted back in the show’s inaugural years, and Chief Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) hiring a new Beth-like expert (played by Q’orianka Kilcher) to fight back for the people of Broken Rock, it seemed as if the finale was setting the next season of Yellowstone up to be a big blow-out between all three parties. The power struggle between these three camps is noteworthy and memorable, and as everyone fights against each other, it seems like anyone’s game. Despite this, “The World Is Purple” makes us feel safe and secure in where the Duttons currently are in the fight (minus Jamie, of course), at least until the episode’s final moments.
‘Yellowstone’s Season 3 Finale Changed the Direction of the Show
In the last ten minutes, “The World Is Purple” changes the entire landscape of Yellowstone. After helping a mother and child on the side of the road (“because it’s the right thing to do,” which––as Beth even admits earlier––isn’t exactly the Dutton motto, but we’ll let it slide), John is shot by a band of assassins and left for dead. Meanwhile, in The Godfather-like fashion, Beth is seemingly blown sky-high by a bomb mailed to her office, Kayce is attacked in his building by masked assailants, and even Jimmy (Jefferson White) is thrown for his horse after trying to “get back on.” Except for Rip, who is left to pick up the pieces, and Jamie, who has officially switched sides, it looks as if the Duttons may not make it out of this after all. Though Yellowstone has often been called “soapy” in the past (including by this writer), it’s cliffhangers like these that make a season of unsteady drama worth it.
But part of what makes “The World Is Purple” stand out is that the effects of this finale are still felt in the series to this day. Jamie’s betrayal has yet to be fully resolved as of the first half of the fifth season. Jimmy’s actions resulted in John sending him to the Four Sixes Ranch in Texas (where his life drastically improves, go figure). Even Beth still bears the scars on her face and body that she gets as a result of surviving the explosion. That’s not even to mention how Kayce’s family is affected after they too are revealed to have survived an assassination attempt themselves. No doubt, “The World Is Purple” ends in a spectacularly dramatic fashion that feels more like it belongs in a gangster picture rather than a neo-Western, but it certainly changed the narrative and showed the Duttons what they’re really up against.
Compared to “The World Is Purple,” the following season finales “Grass on the Streets and Weeds on the Rooftops” and “A Knife and No Coin” (which is technically a mid-season finale marking the split in Season 5) both feel a lot more personal and intricate. There’s room for that, of course, especially on a drama series such as Yellowstone, but this speaks to a problem that the series often has concerning drawing things out longer than necessary. Nevertheless, Taylor Sheridan got wise and Yellowstone never attempted to suspend our disbelief so much again as it did by setting a bomb off in the middle of downtown Bozeman, Montana; and, although it would be nice if the show revved things up every once in a while, that’s actually a good thing.
“The World Is Purple” Had Some Serious Effects on ‘Yellowstone’ Season 4
Despite the excitement in the final moments of Season 3, the episode had a strange effect on the following season. Josh Holloway’s Roarke Morris is almost immediately done away with (unceremoniously by Rip, who doesn’t even take him to the train station), Beth finds herself working at Market Equities for a time––and for some reason, they agree to hire her––and Jamie’s biological father Garrett Randall (Will Patton) turns out to be the culprit behind it all. Sure, some of these developments are only revealed at or near the end of the season, but none of them are particularly satisfying when it comes down to it. Though the most unsatisfying is by far Jamie’s confrontation with his biological father, which ends with him not siding with the Duttons but (unsurprisingly) betraying them yet again. Been there, done that, onto the next scene.
Unfortunately, despite the finale’s impact on Season 4, the following season was rightly criticized for feeling disjointed, unfocused, and like an extended backdoor pilot for other Taylor Sheridan shows, particularly 1883 and the still-yet-unproduced 6666. Rather than taking all that Sheridan set up and running with it, Season 4 of Yellowstone played it incredibly safe by slowing things down, introducing multiple (and usually unconnected) storylines, and refusing to honor the stakes that had already been raised. No, we didn’t want the fourth season to be filled with needless explosions and gunfights, but we did hope that the neo-Western would stop preaching about “land,” “legacy,” and “family” for a minute and instead do something to end the fight once and for all.
With only half a season left to wrap things up, revisiting “The World Is Purple” now is a bit strange. On one hand, it’s exciting to see how the season finale pushed every character into their proper place to deal with the problems at hand, be it Market Equities or the Broken Rock Indian Reservation. Overall, the episode still holds up pretty well, and while it was understandably criticized at the time for the shocking ending, it felt as if the series could only go in that direction. There’s a lot of potential that Sheridan bottles up and lets loose in the same episode, and the future of Yellowstone seems wonderfully unknowable as a result. But knowing how the series progresses after Season 3, we’re left to wonder if Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone hasn’t already peaked.
When Will ‘Yellowstone’ Return?
Because of the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes earlier this year, Yellowstone was forced to halt production on the back half of its fifth season, leaving us wondering what the Duttons are going to do about Jamie in the final batch of episodes. With the news that Kevin Costner is exiting the show following the fifth season in favor of his upcoming Western epic Horizon: An American Saga, the show will be ending with Season 5 Part 2. But that doesn’t mean it’s the end for the Yellowstone Universe. More Dutton adventures are coming in the form of prequels and spin-offs, and a sequel series (sans Costner) is even in development at the Paramount Network, which hopes to continue the story.
Now that the strikes are over, Yellowstone is set to resume production in 2024, with the intent of releasing the last batch of episodes that same year. In the meanwhile, the earlier seasons of Yellowstone have been airing on CBS as the network has been pulling from its Paramount+ catalog in the wake of having no new material to show. With the series doing double duty on CBS and the Paramount Network, there’s no slowing this neo-Western down. Now, if only the series itself could speed up before it comes to an end, granting us the satisfying conclusion to the Dutton saga that we’ve been chomping at the bits for all these years.