Warning: The following article contains spoilers for the mid-season finale of Yellowstone.
The season five finale of Yellowstone brought with it incredibly high stakes, big emotions, and one of the most heartbreaking moments in the series so far. Beth Dutton was told about a sordid family secret from her estranged brother — Jamie — and the look of betrayal and pain on her face made a more significant impact than the vitriol-laced insults hurled toward him had done.
Jamie and Beth’s tumultuous relationship has been a cornerstone of the story since before we got our first glimpse into the Dutton family. The siblings had a history that first existed with love and trust and has evolved into something toxic and chaotic. When season five approached its mid-season hiatus, one thing was more evident than ever — for either Beth or Jamie to continue living a comfortable life, the other must be taken out.
That idea was made more complex, or perhaps more enticing, by the revelation Beth had during her chat with Jamie after she broke into his home. Beth was suddenly made aware of the final resting place of the Dutton family enemies. While there’s a lot more to that conversation, viewers know that the train station is where those who cross our beloved cowboy family go to never return. A final ride, if you will.
Beth, not knowing about the train station, immediately felt betrayed, but she soon realized that her new knowledge could push forward an idea she’s sat with for some time — the end of Jamie. She could use this lawless piece of land to finally rid the world of its most prominent source of evil, and it’s an idea she’s not going to wait to move forward on. So what exactly did Jamie say to Beth about the station, why did it hurt her to find out, and what should we expect next? Let’s take a look.
How did Beth find out about the train station?
One of the most heart-wrenching scenes of the mid-season finale, and quite possibly the series as a whole, was the moment in which Jamie told Beth about the train station. In what was undoubtedly a shocking moment for fans, we saw Beth’s face drop as she learned about her long-kept family secret.
We have to preface that by saying that Beth wasn’t naive about the enemies of the Duttons and how they were dealt with, but there was a piece of the puzzle that didn’t quite make sense. Beth has been the subject of several attacks on the Dutton family, and she’s seen others take place — she knows enemies of her family don’t remain enemies for long because they don’t live long past any attacks that happen.
Of course, Beth knew they were taken care of somehow, but shocked audiences realized that she was unaware that the train station existed as Jamie laughed about it in her face. There’s a special kind of relentless taunting he saves for Beth in the few situations he gets the upper hand over her, and this was one of them. He laughed as she sat with pain and betrayal, realizing she’d been kept out of one of the biggest secrets in her family.
When talking to her about the place he picked to “rid the world” of his father, he almost yells at her as he questions her standing within the family.
“Did you think I just picked a turnout in the Wyoming border of f**king random?! There is a centuries worth of our family’s secrets at the bottom of that canyon!”
Jamie isn’t wrong, there is a century worth of Dutton secrets at the bottom of that canyon, and Beth knew that her next steps had to be strategic. She didn’t let it show to Jamie, but she was already working on a plan of action in her head, and as she saw Sarah Atwood, draped in a sheet, waiting for Jamie — she knew just how dirty this fight was going to be.
An overly confident Jamie told Beth that the war was over now, that nothing she held over him could win, but she bit back with her usual Beth greatness and a promise of her own.
“No, Jamie. The war is just beginning.”
Jamie left with a plan, and she executed it immediately upon visiting her father and asking him to spell it all out for her, not to leave any detail out. With a look of pain on his own face, he filled his daughter in, and we quickly learned that Beth’s heart wasn’t the only one breaking at that moment. The next step forward won’t be easy for anyone; even though Jamie isn’t a stand-up guy, he’s still John’s son, and he’s already lost one to a tragic end. It wasn’t something he was looking forward to experiencing again.
Wait, didn’t Beth find Jamie at the train station in season four?
Fans know that Beth found Jamie at a desolate stretch of road at the end of season four and snapped pictures of him sending his biological father over the hill. We didn’t know at the time that Beth wasn’t aware the ground she was standing upon was the Dutton family train station.
More casual viewers of the series might have had a hard time with this one, but it’s because they don’t know the inner workings of the Beth and Jamie relationship. They aren’t aware of the depths of disdain they share for one another, not aware of how they’d each give it all to ensure the other would break. Beth didn’t initially know where Jamie would take the body of Garrett Randall, but she knew he’d have to get rid of it somehow. She knew she had to be at the right place at the right time, and she’d been writing Jamie’s narrative all along; she’d all but ensured that he’d take the life of Garrett because she left him with no other options. All she needed was the evidence.
So when she snapped the picture of Jamie as he pushed his father off the cliff, she knew she’d stumbled upon the proof she needed to keep Jamie in her pocket, but she’d not yet discovered her family’s long-kept secret.
Some viewers are torn about that scene and think it was a bit of a plot hole. Did she follow Jamie? She told Jamie how to navigate killing his father, so did Beth also force him to tell her where he planned to dump the body? We’ll likely never know the actual mechanics of the situation, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Jamie all but mapped the location out for Beth; we saw a terrified version of Jamie in those moments — a character who felt that there was no other way out.
What does it mean now that Beth has found out about the train station?
First things first — it means Jamie’s days are numbered. While that’s a realization fans of Yellowstone have been sitting with for some time, it puts it into perspective that Beth’s aware of just how to rid the world of her brother in a way that her family won’t have to pay for it later.
We’ve told you about the train station before and how the location of the Dutton dumping ground makes it the perfect place to dispose of an enemy, and there’s no enemy more pressing for the family right now than one of their own. Jamie is the family’s undoing, and with the last conversation we were privy to between him and Sarah Atwood, he’ll have a bounty on their heads when new episodes return this summer.
It always seems like Beth is one step (or several) ahead of Jamie, and we imagine that the last chat we hear between Beth and her father, John, will be the most important to focus on. After asking him about the train station and hearing the words directly from his mouth, she gives him the proposition of a lifetime.
“If there’s a place that our enemies go and they never come back, then I think that’s the place for Jamie. What do you think, daddy?”
Jamie has spent his last days trying to cross his family, and while we didn’t hear John’s response to Beth, the look on his face during their entire conversation said it all. He carried a lot of weight: pain, frustration, and something we’ve only seen very few times through the series, a sense of longing. Could it have been for easier days? Of course, but it felt more like he longed for a world where they didn’t have to kill Jamie.
However, that world is long gone, and it’s something John has known for some time. He’s spoken of his son with regret, disdain, and still a sense of love throughout season five; he’s as torn about loving him as he is hating him, but John knows what has to come next; it’s life or death for the Dutton family, and the threat has never been closer.