‘Dutton Ranch’: Who Dies In The Season Finale?

This post contains spoilers for the season finale of Paramount+’s Dutton Ranch.

Taylor Sheridan shows love to kill off major characters and series regulars. Dutton Ranch is no different.

The Yellowstone spinoff closed out its debut season with a firefight, cartel involvement and cows with fentanyl being shipped across the border – exactly the kind of things you’d expect from Paramount+’s expanded universe.

What you might not have seen coming is exactly who perishes in Texas at the end of its initial nine-episode run on Paramount+.

[SPOILER ALERT] Beulah Jackson, played by Annette Bening, is mother to two men, Rob-Will Jackson, played by Jai Courtney, and Joaquin Jackson Reyes, played by Juan Pablo Raba,

In the first episode of the season, Rob-Will Jackson, the drug-crazed enforcer of her 10 Petal Ranch, finds himself on the wrong end of Rip’s fist and things don’t get much better towards the end of the season.

But did you expect him to be killed by his brother?

During the episode, it emerges that Mariano Reyes, played by Raoul Max Trujillo, the father of Joaquin Jackson Reyes, is a cartel chief who is shipping fentanyl across the border in the bellies of cows.

Mariano has a long history with Beulah Jackson; he was meant to be chaperoning her to a honkytonk when she was much younger but got distracted and she was subsequently raped by a stranger. Mariano, who was her father’s ranch hand, helped her dispose of the body after she later killed the man and, being scared of her father, took the heat for the crime and was sent south of the border.

He’s now back in Rio Paloma with some demands.

After Beulah named Rob-Will to take over the family business over Joaquin, Mariano tells his son that he must kill his brother and Joaquin drives to his house and shoots him to death.

This came moments after Rob-Will had a poignant moment with his wild child daughter, played by Natalie Alyn Lind.

“This place eats what it loves and keeps the bones,” Rob-Will says.

“Why are you still here?,” she asks. “Somebody got to stand in the doorway when the wolves show up,” he replies. “I know I haven’t been much of a father, I keep thinking I’m going to have the time to fix that but truth is I’m not gonna fix a damn thing. It just buries what’s broken. You are the only thing in this house that ain’t crooked. The one thing I ever did right.”

“Everything ok?,” she adds. “Everything’s fine, baby,” he concludes before he walks down the stairs to his death.

The cast is well aware that Sheridan shows like to kill off their main characters. Lind joked to US Weekly, “Nobody dies. Everybody dies… Oh, wait, they’re all dead.”

That could well be a possibility in future after Dutton Ranch was renewed for a second season.

Courtney won’t be off screens for long; he is starring in Blood on the Promontory, a Western drama from Warfare’s Ray Mendoza, and has upcoming projects including Netflix’s Protecting Jared from director Ruben Fleischer, comedic thriller The Very Best People, and writer-director Blaise Beyhan’s Callback.