Nearly forty years after the Dutton clan uprooted from their homes and moved to Montana, the family ranch is now managed by Jacob Dutton (Harrison Ford) and his wife, Cara (Helen Mirren), who oversee the ranch's day-to-day livestock operations and are well-respected among local law enforcement and business owners. As the series opens, Montana is in the grip of an economic depression caused by a locust infestation destroying most of the pastures used for grazing livestock. This causes strife among local landowners and cattle/sheep farmers and leads to increasing concern whether the local landowners will be forced to give up their land. When Banner Creighton (Jerome Flynn), a Scottish sheepherder, runs afoul of the Duttons and swears vengeance against them, Cara and Jacob are forced to band together with other family members and associates — including Spencer Dutton (Brandon Sklenar), the youngest son of James and Margaret Dutton, who is overseas in Africa working as a big-game hunter — as a war breaks out for control of the Yellowstone valley.
The show also stars Timothy Dalton, Julia Schlaepfer, Darren Mann, Brian Geraghty, Aminah Nieves and Isabel May (reprising her role as narrator from 1883).
The series airs on Paramount+, and was renewed for a second season in February 2023.
Tropes used throughout the series:
- Accidental Murder:
- A US marshal kills Teonna's grandmother while serving a warrant at her homestead, looking for the runaway. Not fully understanding the warrant, the old woman yells at him to get out of her house and he pushes back. She hits her head on the stove and dies. Not that he's too broken up about it...
- Spencer doesn't mean to kill Arthur during their duel, he's more interested in beating the crap out of the petulant aristocrat after he keeps taunting his former fiance, Alex. However, after getting the crap knocked out of him, Arthur pulls a pistol and charges Spencer on the deck of a luxury liner. Spencer's defensive gesture ends up sending Arthur over the railing and to his death overboard. One of Alexandra's friends is the only one who's willing to come forward and tell the truth of the events, letting the captain release Spencer because the killing was in self-defense.
- Agony of the Feet: Banner's feet are bleeding and sore after he arrives home after walking a very long distance after surviving the frontier justice lynching that the Dutton's put him through.
- Ascended Extra: The young Spencer only appeared in two episodes of Yellowstone's fourth season via flashbacks (and as a child in 1883), with most of his role relegated to reacting to the presence of a Native tribe on the Dutton land and the death of his father during an unrelated incident. 1923 positions him as the nominal main character, as he's forced to step up and protect the family home after the majority of the occupants are infirmed or put out of commission due to Creighton's machinations.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Despite getting up in years, Jacob Dutton functionally rules the Yellowstone with an iron fist, as he's in league with local law enforcement and won't hesitate to directly fight opponents one-on-one if he has the opportunity.
- Badass in Distress:
- The pilot episode ends with a Cliffhanger where Spencer is jumped by the other surviving leopard that wasn't threatening the camp he'd been contracted to protect. The following episode has him fight it off with a knife in the opening sequence, just before it flees, though not without sustaining several wounds in the process.
- The fourth episode of the first season ends with Jacob on death's door after he's seriously wounded during an attack by Creighton and his men. Fortunately, he pulls through, though it takes several months to recover.
- Blood Is Squicker in Water: The first visible sign of Elizabeth miscarrying her and Jack's child is blood forming quickly in her bathwater.
- Boarding School of Horrors: The Indian School is this, as the young girls there are beaten for every minor mistake and molested.
- But Now I Must Go: Subverted; Spencer tries it with Alex, attempting to sneak out of her room while she's sleeping and leaving a letter in his stead explaining that the path ahead is too dangerous, and that he'll head back to the U.S. alone. She wakes up in the middle of him setting the letter down, and tells him that he's not going anywhere without her.
- The Call Knows Where You Live: The setup for the back half of the first season is motivated by Cara convincing Spencer (via her letter) to come back home to Montana, after he'd functionally forsaken his family obligations to hunt dangerous prey in Africa.
- Citizenship Marriage: Spencer and Alex make their relationship official at sea in order to quickly bypass immigration for the English Alex. While the Captain does note that marrying for citizenship is illegal, he does concede that their wedding isn't purely for that reason.
- Contrived Coincidence: The fact that Spencer and Alex coincidentally run into the latter's ex-fiancé while boarding a ship on Sicily of all places, a location they themselves ended up by pure accident (and after lots of trials and tribulations at sea) in the first place; and want to leave behind ASAP in order to get to London.
- Convenient Misfire: When Cara Dutton chases an ambushing sheepherder with a shotgun, she initially has him cornered. The young man begs for forgiveness, stating that if she shot him now it'd be murder, and a great sin. After the death of her nephew — who she had raised like a son — and the grievous wounding of her husband, she doesn't exactly care. She fires, but the shotgun misfires. Cue a race while both parties try to reload, but Cara manages to load and shoot the sheepherder in time before he can fully aim, causing his shot to go wild.
- Corrupt Church: The Catholic order that runs the Indian boarding school.
- They basically see the girls as feral and aim at eradicating their native culture and forcefully assimilating them into the Christian faith.
- They groom the girls to essentially be serfs.
- They are highly abusive even for the most minor errors (stuff like not sweeping impeccably); and resort to outright torture when confronted with actual transgressions.
- And finally, they don't shy away from murder.
- Defector from Decadence: Alexandra is introduced as having been saddled with an engagement to an Upper-Class Twit who barely acknowledges her, despite her friends being in support of the marriage. When Spencer comes along and offers the opportunity to run away on a life of adventure, she abandons her friends and her high-society lifestyle to travel with him to Kenya.
- Defiant to the End: Knowing that the headmaster will only abuse her more, Teonna's cousin speaks defiantly to him in her native language, vowing that her people will get revenge upon them once they find out what actually happens in the Indian School.
- Dented Iron: Jacob Dutton is this even before he is critically wounded in an ambush. At the end of the season, he's just beginning to have lost feeling in his fingertips.
- Did Not See That Coming: Early on in the first season, Jacob punishes Creighton and the rest of the sheep-herders who drove their flock onto the Dutton ranch by stringing them up by their necks to a tree and sitting them on horses, with the caveat that anyone who manages to wriggle free of their bonds and get off the horse before it trots off will survive. Creighton is the Sole Survivor of this exercise and immediately plans reprisal against the Duttons, while Jack says he hopes at least one of the herders survived the ordeal. One episode later, Creighton and his men ambush the Duttons in a surprise attack, leading to the deaths of John Dutton I and Bob Strafford, Jacob being seriously injured, and Elizabeth and Jack being wounded during the altercation, with the rest barely surviving due to the arrival of The Cavalry.
- Did Not Think This Through:
- The whole reason why Alex becomes so smitten with Spencer (and is willing to abandon her upcoming marriage to spend time with him) is when she counters that the act of dying is romantic, in response to his comments that there's nothing romantic about working in a dangerous profession. She even inspires him to bring her along by saying they should "look death in the eye together." The moment she's thrown into a situation where she has no control, however (the rampaging elephant that totals their car and has to be put down by Spencer), she immediately becomes a panicked wreck. This culminates in her screaming for help (making their situation worse) when the duo are besieged in a tree by a pack of encroaching lions and hyenas in the middle of nowhere at night. When they are finally rescued, she says she never wants to go through that experience again.
- The same holds true for Alexandra's friends, who put her up to talking to the "great hunter" at the bar, are surprised when she falls in Love at First Sight (and quickly try to ward him off), and then attempt to reassure her that marrying the Upper-Class Twit she's engaged to is a great idea because it will bring a sense of domesticity and calm to her life. They're left gobsmacked at the end of the episode when she decides to run off with Spencer.
- Fittingly, only one of them seems to support their relationship, especially after seeing that her and Spencer are married. She frees Alexandra from her quarters when she's locked in to try and let her reach Spencer, who is being escorted to a nearby port after he killed a nobleman in a duel.
- Dies Wide Open:
- At the end of the third episode, John Dutton I is fatally shot by Creighton (courtesy of a Tommy gun) and dies in this fashion.
- Sister Mary also dies in this fashion after Teonna smothers her to death.
- Driven to Suicide: Emma Dutton spirals into depression after the murder of her husband, and shoots herself some time afterwards.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- Sister Mary may be an amoral thug in a habit, who goes around disciplining Indian girls by beating them, locking them in a Punishment Box or worse... but even she finds it beyond the pale when she catches a fellow nun about to molest Teonna, causing her to quickly make her presence known and stop the act. Though she quickly askes Teonna about why she is so quick to hit her and not the other nun, wondering if Teonna somehow enjoyed it. Teonna was, at the time, so exhausted from her time spent in the punishment box that she could barely even speak.
- Banner's look of consternation when he sees the prostitute's Thousand-Yard Stare after Whitfield had his way with her.
- Famed In-Story: Spencer is a well-respected big game hunter (albeit in more of a Bounty Hunter fashion) who is routinely contracted to kill troublesome animals attacking local camps, which nets him a reputation for feats of daring. This is exemplified early in the series when Alexandra's friends at the engagement party put her up to asking him if the stories about him are true.
- Great White Hunter: Played with - yes, Spencer Dutton hunts exotic animals, but he is hired to kill the ones that have been preying on people.
- Hotter and Sexier: Compared to Yellowstone (which began with this mindset but gradually dialed back the amount of nudity/sex scenes in later seasons) and 1883 (which was generally more focused on the historical aspects of the setting), this series goes much further with nudity, sex and suggestive themes, including women shown repeatedly stripping down for their partners and much more emphasis on budding relationships between couples.
- How We Got Here: The pilot begins with a cold open that follows Cara Dutton as she chases a male assailant, while reeling in shock, into a forest before she's forced to shoot him when he tries to reload his weapon. The third episode of the series reveals that this was the tail-end of an encounter that led to Elizabeth being shot in the abdomen, John Dutton Sr. being fatally shot and Jacob being critically injured during an attack instigated by Creighton.
- The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: Exemplified early on in the first season, when Spencer is forced to protect Alex after they're pursued by an angry elephant, then forced up a tree, where he fights off a pack of lions and hyenas before The Cavalry arrives.
- I Am a Humanitarian: Runs His Horse, after killing a priest who was beating Pete, falls back and comes back with a bloody mouth. "I ate his soul," is his only response. The body is later found with his heart cut out and nearby.
- Improvised Weapon: Teonna uses a pillow case with two Bibles in them to bludgeon a particularly vicious nun to half unconsciousness. She then finishes the job by asphyxiation.
- Inadequate Inheritor: Downplayed; Jacob fully intends to have Jack take over the ranch some day. However, he considers Jack to be too young and inexperienced to lead during the current crisis.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Lucca (the tugboat captain Spencer and Alex hire to travel to the Suez Canal) frequently sputters blood and phlegm into a rag, which he unsuccessfully tries to downplay for his passengers' benefit. By the end of the episode he appears in, Spencer finds him dead at the wheel, having coughed up enough blood to slick the floor (along with a half-finished bottle of whiskey in his hand).
- I Need a Freaking Drink: When Alexandra decides to read some of Cara's letters written to Spencer out loud (which inform her opinions on the state of World War I), Spencer takes to getting drunk in order to blot out the horrible memories from that time period, when he was serving overseas.
- I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine:
- Ford and Mirren previously worked together on The Mosquito Coast.
- Ford and Robert Patrick previously appeared together on Firewall.
- Jurisdiction Friction: The setup of the series comes from a territorial dispute between Jacob Dutton and Banner Creighton, who run into friction over the latter sending his flock of sheep over the property line into the Dutton ranch to graze. This ignites a land war between both sides, particularly after Jacob punishes Creighton and his men after they knowingly cut down wires to get their herd on the Dutton property, as well as shooting at them when caught.
- Killed Offscreen: The narration reveals that Margaret Dutton froze to death in the year 1894 and her body was found in a snow drift. Her two sons, John and Spencer, were still alive although they were half-starved and could barely speak. Jacob and Cara Dutton, who were childless, raised the two boys as their own.
- Lethally Stupid: Spencer is hired to kill a man-eating leopard, but his client omits the fact that a second leopard has also been spotted. Spencer kills one of the animals, but the second then ambushes the camp and kills more people, including a native African who was both a friend and a guide for him, before Spencer can kill it. If the client was honest from the beginning, Spencer would have taken more precautions and the deaths could have been avoided. Spencer briefly considers killing the client for this reckless stupidity.
- Like a Son to Me: Both Jacob and Cara Dutton treat their nephews, who they raised since they were children after the death of their parents, as the children that they never had.
- Love at First Sight: It's heavily implied that Alex falls in love with Spencer instantly after their conversation at a local bar, during her engagement party to an Upper-Class Twit. The experience is enough for her to abandon her fiancee and his family and race after Spencer to take her with him on his adventures.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: Subverted. While Zane Davis's Chinese wife is officially arrested for violating Montana's anti-miscegenation act, it's merely an excuse for Whitfield's men to beat Zane to death or near-death when he reacts like any husband would.
- Married at Sea: Spencer and Alex make their relationship legally official after they're rescued. The actual legality of it is played with, as Spencer is quick to point out that the ship is in international waters at the time.
- Misplaced Wildlife: Given that the series takes place in 1923, after the extinction of the Rocky Mountain locust
, the locusts in the series are presumably High Plains locusts— a species that is not, in fact, found in Montana. - The Narrator: Isabel May narrates the series like in 1883, where she played Elsa Dutton.
- One-Steve Limit: A Native rancher tells Teonna that he took the name "Hank" because when the whites were making his tribe take Anglicized names, and everyone else was choosing "George" or "John". In the next episode, while picking an Anglized name for herself while she's Disguised As A Boy, notes that "White men like their names so much they give them to their children" and soon they just become numbers.
- The Patriarch: As it will be exemplified by John Dutton III after him, Jacob rules the Yellowstone with an iron fist, and imparts the realities of running a sprawling ranch to his children and for the benefit of local law enforcement.
- Period Piece: Takes place in the 1920s as Montana starts to suffer from economic hardships before the Great Depression.
- Posthumous Narration: Elsa Dutton (Isabel May), who has been dead In-Universe for 40 years, narrates the series, telling the story of her family's difficulties.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: When Teonna's father catches up to one of the priests chasing his daughter, and who also has kidnapped Pete Plenty Clouds, he spins around The Lord's Prayer that the priest is yelling while beating Pete. "If His will is done on Earth and my blade is at your throat, this must be what He wants!"
- Punishment Box: The Indian School has these. They're about the size of an outhouse, and out in the blazing hot sun.
- Race for Your Love: Less than a day after meeting him, Alex races after Spencer's departing car in order to ask to come along with him on his hunting adventures, as she's functionally become a Defector from Decadence.
- Rape and Revenge: When Teonna Rainwater escapes from the Indian school, of the two nuns she kills, one of them was the one who molested her.
- A Real Man Is a Killer: Defied; Spencer has killed all manner of dangerous prey (and other soldiers, during World War I), but he generally refuses to talk about it due to suffering from being a Shell-Shocked Veteran. When questioned about it by Alexandra in her first scene, he tells her there's nothing glamorous about killing or being in danger of dying.
- Right Through the Wall: Jack and his fiancé begin to make love in her room at the ranch as Jacob and Cora talk outside. They soon become audible in their lovemaking until Jacob bellows that they can hear them. The two shut their open window quickly.
- The Roaring '20s: Takes place in the titular 1923.
- Sex Equals Death: Subverted; Elizabeth and Jack share Their First Time together after visiting a speakeasy in the third episode of the first season. At the end of the same episode, Elizabeth is shot in the gut by Creighton's men during the fight in the clearing, and she's left in a tenuous state by the end of the episode. The next episode reveals that the doctors arrived quickly enough to save her. Jack is also wounded in the same ambush, but it's treated Its Just A Flesh Wound.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran:
- Spencer Dutton served in World War I and narrowly survived a mustard gas attack. Unable to deal with his experiences during the war, he left Montana and went to Africa, working as a big game hunter in an attempt to feel more alive. It's only after he meets Alexandra, and she helps him confront his demons, that he starts to move past this mindset.
- Lucca, the tugboat captain that Spencer and Alexandra use to try and reach the Suez Canal, served aboard a hospital ship in the war, as well, and recognizes Spencer's mustard gas burns on site.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Banner Creighton.
- Sole Survivor: After his ambush group is caught by Jacob and the rest of the ranchers and given a dangerous punishment (tied and strung up to trees and forced to free themselves before their horses spook and run away), Creighton is the only one of the five sheep herders to make it before hanging to death, leading him to swear that It's Personal.
- Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: John Dutton Sr., one of James and Margaret Dutton's sons in 1883, only makes it to the third episode of the series before he's suddenly shot down during a fight against Banner Creighton's men in a clearing. James and Margaret themselves are a subdued example, as it confirms that James died of his wounds sustained in a Yellowstone Flashback set in 1893, and that Margaret died soon after in a particularly harsh winter.
- The Dreaded: Inverted with Spencer Dutton. The guy is such a badass that his family in Montana is confident that he'll be able to single-handedly win the range war for them (and is presumably justified in doing so), but their enemies have never even heard of him (also justifiedly, since he has been away from home since World War One).
- The Man They Couldn't Hang: Banner is the only survivor of his group of sheepherders that were strung up by the Duttons after they trespassed on their land with their sheep and then started a gun battle when spotted.
- Time Skip: Used as part of The Reveal in the fourth episode of the first season, when the audience learns that Cara's letter to Spencer was only received months beforehand, despite the plot suggesting that both the main plotline of Jacob and Cara protecting the ranch / Spencer and Alex enjoying a vacation together are happening at the same time.
- Twilight of the Old West: This series deals with this. Especially in the third episode when the Duttons head to town and are talking with a salesman about new electric appliances.
- In order to smooth things over with Cara, Jacob promises her that the ranch will soon be electrified, and some of those appliances bought.
- Later in the same episode, an old west-style shootout with revolvers, lever-action rifles, and horses is brought to a violent and decisive end when one of the enemy sheepherders shows up in an automobile with a tommy gun.
- We ARE Struggling Together: The cattle ranchers and the sheepherders both belong to the Stock Owners Association which means that they are supposed to cooperate and together find a solution to the economic downturn brought on by the locust. However, the two factions distrust each other and are quickly at each others throats.
- We Hardly Knew Ye:
- The pilot episode sets up a Ship Tease between Spencer and a rich, attractive blonde English tourist who's clearly infatuated with him, setting up a potential romance arc. She dies at the end of the same episode, as she's ambushed outside her tent (while taking a bathroom break) by an encroaching leopard.
- John Dutton Sr. barely gets a couple episodes of screentime (and is never fully in focus), explaining his role at the ranch and love for his family, before he's unceremoniously gunned down by Banner Creighton during a battle in the third episode of the series.
- The same goes for Kagiso, Spencer's trusted guide and friend, who gets ambushed by the second leopard (from the end of the pilot) and bleeds out before he can get medical treatment.
- You Look Like You've Seen a Ghost: Jacob tells Banner this when Banner is arrested for his role in the ambush. Justified as Banner believed that Jacob had been mortally wounded in the ambush.
