Kayce Dutton and other characters deal with death in the latest “Yellowstone” episode

yellowstone Fans tuned in to a new episode Sunday night titled “Tall Drink of Water,” but a more apt title would have had something to do with the heartbreaking and life-changing effect death can have on a person or family, especially theirs duttons

Okay, maybe that would have been too wordy a title, but you get the point. The episode we braced ourselves for was riddled with death at every turn and how it thrusts itself at you when you least expect it.

In this episode, it first raises its head when Beth and John are talking on the porch

“You can love a memory all you want, but it can’t love you back,” she tells him before heading to Salt Lake. What John doesn’t see next is her crying in the car before pulling out of the driveway, sitting with death just long enough to feel its impact on her life, now and in the years since her mother’s accident . At this point, it’s a trusted friend and foe to them as well.

Monica and Kayce lost their son in the season five premiere yellowstone, and they’re still learning how to process that pain. Death bites again at the moments they share as they try to plan a ceremony for their son.

They turn to Chief Rainwater and his right-hand man, Mo, for help in making things right in their culture and with their son, John. They told the leaders their current home was a rental property and decided to bury it at the ranch.

Mo says they need a “four-legged friend” to take him on the trip; a horse. Rainwater realizes that her son’s spirit needs a horse to get him to the other side. Kayce is upset that they have to kill a horse, but Mo assures them that if their son’s spirit is, a horse will be ready.

It’s heartbreaking, but the idea that he won’t cross to the other side alone is somewhat reassuring.

Rainwater tells them that death is private, “perhaps the only thing we do alone”. He tells them the ceremony is private too, not for anyone else in their family; it is for John to be sent on the “right path”. This means that the ceremony is not even for mourning, even by his parents; It’s for nothing in the world but the little boy they lost.

The death also impacts Kayce by “making a choice,” and fans are realizing it has something to do with his vision quest. He makes a choice: give up his title of livestock commissioner and find work that doesn’t hurt him or Monica every time he does it. Kayce feels deeply responsible for the loss of her son because he was not there when she was suffering from cramps.

Mo reminds him he’s done a lot of good as a cattle commissioner, but Chief Rainwater says he understands his choice. In the moments after, we hear things breaking in the kitchen; and death makes itself felt again. Monica feels the weight of her loss and it’s too much to bear. She cuts vegetables, cuts her hair and sobs on the floor while clutching her stomach. It’s the most brutally honest moment we’ve seen her deal with loss, and we know it won’t be the last.

Kayce is forced to watch from the porch, told she must do this alone, death steps back in and calls the shots.

Another way Death wormed its way through the episode was when agents welcomed Rip from the Fish and Wildlife Service to take him on a drive to find out what happened to the wolves. Yes, the animals they killed came back to bite them, just as we suspected.

Luckily, Rip is a brilliant man and was able to throw him off their trail, at least for now, but nothing ever dry in Yellowstone.

Be it the loss of a life yet to be truly lived or the loss of animals on the ranch, death has left multiple marks on Yellowstone Dutton Ranch and we certainly haven’t seen the last of them.