Yellowstone, Season 5, Part 2

Movie of the Week, January 6, 2025

Yellowstone, Season 5, Part 2

Five years ago, Catherine selected Yellowstone as Solari’s 2019 Movie of the Year, praising the series (at the time, just two seasons in) for its “remarkable insights regarding the nature of American land and resource wars” and its realistic portrayal of a variety of deep state tactics, ranging from lawfare to physical violence.

These themes remain prominent in the show’s just-completed last half of the fifth season. As land grab strategies—both sneaky and in-your-face—proliferate all over the world, Yellowstone is far from fictional escapism. If you don’t yet understand what the land-grab-related events in the Netherlands, Lahaina, Gaza, and many other places have in common, Yellowstone may help connect some of the dots.

Kevin Costner played the Yellowstone patriarch John Dutton for the first five seasons. He had himself written out of the last half of the fifth season. Even without Costner, Yellowstone’s excellent cast— British actress Kelly Reilly as Dutton’s fearless and feisty daughter, and creator and writer Taylor Sheridan as the Texas horse trainer and broker—makes the series eminently watchable.