What happened to Rooster on ‘The Ranch’?

When The Ranch premiered on Netflix in 2016, it was a great opportunity for That ’70s Show fans to see Danny Masterson and Ashton Kutcher onscreen again. Then, in 2017, sexual assault allegations against Masterson came out, and he was found guilty in 2023. But, since the show kept going for a few more seasons, how did Rooster’s character arc end after the actor was let go from the series?

The Ranch focuses on the Bennett family who work on a ranch in Colorado, and Rooster, whose real name is Jameson Ford, plays a prominent part up until Masterson’s firing. How did Rooster leave The Ranch?

What happened to Danny Masterson’s The Ranch character Rooster?

Masterson’s The Ranch character Rooster passed away after getting into a motorcycle accident. Fans found out the end of this character’s arc in The Ranch Part 6, “Reckless.” Colt isn’t sure that Rooster is actually dead, but their dad Beau (Sam Elliot) realizes the truth. Although it seems that Rooster drove right off a cliff since his motorcycle was lying beneath it, Colt thinks there’s still a chance that his sibling is okay, because his body hasn’t been located.

While some could say that Colt’s denial of his brother’s passing is a realistic portrayal of the stages of grief, it does strangely mirror Kutcher’s IRL reaction to Masterson’s allegations. In what was a terrible look for both of them, Mila Kunis and Kutcher penned controversial letters sharing their thoughts about his character. While they later said they “support victims,” it was a shame to hear about this.

As Entertainment Weekly noted, Masterson shared a strange message on Instagram when The Ranch season 6 came out. He called the cast of the series “incredible” and praised the writing staff for handling his character’s exit. He wrote, “The writers were given the ultimate worse case scenario and instead of throwing in the towel they worked longer hours to create new heartbreaking and hysterical story lines.” It’s hard not to cringe while reading those words, knowing Masterson’s not-guilty plea, and insistence that he was in the right.

When an actor leaves a TV show for a more positive and less disturbing reason than Masterson, writers still sometimes decide that the character should pass away. If it works for the story, then that’s what needs to happen. But when an actor’s off-camera behavior prompts their departure, it sometimes seems as if the only course of action is to kill off the character. This happened on Two and a Half Men when Charlie Sheen’s protagonist Charlie Harper died in Paris, and that’s just one series where the main cast member exited under a cloud.

As for Rooster, his ghost talks to Colt in a season 8 episode of The Ranch. When Colt gets into an accident, Rooster’s ghost says “Seriously? You’re just gonna give up? That’s some weak-a** sh*t.” Fans of The Ranch who thought that Rooster could still be alive realized in that episode that it wasn’t possible.