Life Is a Promise

With Costners abrupt departure, I think they salvaged the show as best they could. I could have done without the long drawn out pointless side quest stories that didn't really add value but it was better than if they would've just ended the show completely after Costner jumped ship. Overall a forgetful & semi disappointing ending to what is overall a fantastic series.

Just repeating stuff here to meet the word requirements - With Costners abrupt departure, I think they salvaged the show as best they could. I could have done without the long drawn out pointless side quest stories that didn't really add value but it was better than if they would've just ended the show completely after Costner jumped ship. Overall a forgetful & semi disappointing ending to what is overall a fantastic series.

For me, the biggest failure of Season 5.2 was the mismanagement of expectations. I first heard of this term when 'The Killing' was on years ago viewers were led to believe it was a one season show. We suddenly found out it wasn't. Viewers were furious.

I watched 'Yellowstone' from the beginning, because it was supposed to be a modern day western set in Montana starring Kevin Costner. Then this last season Costner left. Much of the season was set in Texas at the Four Sixes Ranch seemingly starring Taylor Sheridan with some characters building up his mystique. The Texas scenes were pretty boring. If I wanted to see this kind of horse training, I would watch Sheridan's reality show 'The last Cowboy'. I watched a couple of episodes of that show and found them boring.

To me, Costner's John Dutton grounded 'Yellowstone', Beth was the backbone, Rip the heart, Kayce mostly irrelevant, Jamie almost a guest star type villain. I never liked him. With the characters that were left, the prophecy that after seven generations the land would go back to the native Americans, Kayce's lack of interest in the ranch, Beth and Rip relocating, this ending was predictable. There was little dramatic impact, plus it was an insulting disservice to Costner, his character, and viewers expectations from a show that many viewers started watching, because of Costner. This is how I feel. It was a betrayal of trust.

Is seeing Rip handle the pain of his boss being gone. The portrayal is really powerful and you can feel the pain. But then again Rip has been the main character for a long time now.

The rest of the episode is very much mopping up all the loose threads, not in a very good way to be honest. Its Beth in her very much boiled down "highly functional alcoholic" role, its Kayce going all native and speaking to spiritual animals, you get the compulsory song event and some of the banter that has become kind of a staple of the series.

And of course we get Sheridan, just to show himself off in every series...

Ill watch it for Rip. The rest is forgettable. Except the pics of the Montana view, that will always be easy to watch.

I agree with the consensus that the series was phenomenal. By every measure Taylor poured his heart and soul into this story. Knowing that it was going to conclude at the end of this season anyway made the last episodes emotional and poignant.

I have no idea what Taylor planned for the penultimate conclusion, but it feels like the last episode got us to the that place. Thank you Taylor Sheridan for this journey.

The characters were grounded, strong and the writing stayed true to them all. We'll never know but it feels like the death of John Dutton was intended for the last 1 or 2 episodes with the viewer left with suspicions of what might happen next.

The final 6 episodes of "Yellowstone", delayed by the writer's strike and thrown into chaos by the departure of Kevin Coster have finally arrived, around a year after the initial 8. Whilst it's hard to shake the feeling that this is a bit of a rushed job, to find an ending from the departure of the shows leading man it's a satisfactory reset for a series that seems like it is essentially going to continue in various spin offs.

Governor Dutton apparently commits suicide in his mansion, though neither Beth (Kelly Reilly) nor Kayce (Luke Grimes) believe that this is the case, with Beth immediately blaming it on Jamie (Wes Bentley). She is technically correct, though Jamie is initially unsure about how explicit his instructions to Sarah (Dawn Olivieri) were. The rest of the ranch team are in Texas participating in a cattle saving relocation, alongside the Four Sixes Ranch, this provides some new concerns for them and means that Rip (Cole Hauser) isn't around when the news about the Governor breaks.

These last episodes do feel like they're truncating several aspects of the story, particularly the airport storyline and the reaction of Market Equities to what happens. Naturally the stories involving John and the specifics of his Governorship are dropped, and Summer (Piper Perabo) gets just a single scene to finish off her interest. It's all complicated by these episodes, certainly the first three or four, jumping backwards and forwards in time, to accommodate the fact that most of the 'cowboys away' storyline has to take place before the assassination, but they couldn't just do that whole storyline first and ignore all the rest of the characters.

Other than the rapid pace - though still finding time for a few interminable musical performances - generally this was as decent a ending as the show was going to get, given the extenuating circumstances and I look forward more to resetting with the spin offs in the near future.