[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Yellowstone Season 4, Episode 7 “Keep the Wolves Close.”]
“I’m just full of surprises,” John Dutton (Kevin Costner) tells Governor Perry (Wendy Moniz) in the latest Yellowstone episode, and in this case, it means especially bad news for Jamie (Wes Bentley), who’s already estranged from the family that adopted him. As for Beth (Kelly Reilly), who’s made her (murderous) feelings about her brother very clear, she very much enjoys the position he’s in by the end.
While Jamie spends time with his son, his biological father Garrett (Will Patton) floats the idea of him as a politician — specifically governor — to his ex-girlfriend and the mother of his child, Christina (Katherine Cunningham). And he’s not the only one thinking that. In fact, Perry later tells John that she’s planning to run for senate (to go where she can make the biggest difference) and endorse Jamie to take over for her. “Absolutely not,” John says immediately. “It’s too much power.”
But the other options don’t want the Montana they do, Perry argues. There are things about Jamie that she doesn’t know that make him unfit for her office, he says. “He’s the devil we know, John. I’ll take the risk,” she tells him — or he could run, and she’ll endorse him. He decides to accept her endorsement, and he’s running so his son can’t because “that’s how bad he’ll be for everything you and I worked so hard to protect. He’ll destroy it all,” John explains. “If you want a devil you really know, here he is.”
Beth is completely on board when he tells her and figures this is their way to get rid of Jamie due to “any of the 50 f**king things that Jamie has done that make him unfit to hold public office.” Plus, as governor, John would have the power to essentially put a stop to the building of the airport. This is another way to save the ranch. Too bad that John had hoped for help finding a way out of it.
So poor Jamie checks his appearance in his mirror before heading down to Governor Perry’s press conference, thinking she’s about to endorse him. To his surprise, John and Beth are waiting with her. His father tells him they wouldn’t miss this for the world. But when Governor Perry announces her choice to be the next governor, Jamie begins walking down the stairs only to be crushed when she names John.
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“You don’t see it on your way to work, through the fields or on the mountain, but there is a war being waged against our way of life,” John tells the press. “They’ll tell you all the reasons why our way of life is bad for Montana, bad for this country, bad for our future, how it’s immoral that you live here, walk here, grow their food here. They will tell it so much you might even start to believe it yourself, question what you do and who you are. They’ll tell you that the land’s only hope is for them to be its steward. The ugly truth is they want the land, and if they get it, it will never look like our land again. That is progress in today’s terms. So if it’s progress you seek, do not vote for me. I am the opposite of progress. I am the wall that it bashes against it, and I will not be the one who breaks.”
Jamie can only back away as Beth warns him, “This is just the beginning.”
Elsewhere in “Keep the Wolves Close”:
- Beth officially starts in the Market Equities office by firing her assistant, who’s sleeping with the receptionist. “I’m 0 for 3 with assistants anyway. Turns out working for me’s pretty f**king dangerous,” she tells him. And upon seeing the plans for the airport, resort area, condos, shopping plazas, and restaurants, she ends up cluing Summer (Piper Perabo) in and suggesting she turn her protesting to something where she can make a difference.
- With Mo’s (Mo Brings Plenty) help, Kayce (Luke Grimes) tracks down Avery’s (Tanaya Beatty) family’s horses and returns them. But it’s Rainwater’s (Gil Birmingham) advice that really matters: Watch out for Avery. “When they look at you like that, they’re all trouble,” he says. Kayce reminds Avery he’s married and has loved Monica (Kelsey Asbille) since he first saw her. But, the ranch’s former ranch hand tells him, “That’s how I felt when I first saw you.” Uh-oh.
- After John kicked the women out of the bunkhouse in the last episode, Teeter (Jen Landon) returns to plead her case and to point out that she wears the brand that apparently means nothing. John agrees to let her come back, and Rip (Cole Hauser) assures her the brand “means something.”
- Carter (Finn Little) apologizes to Beth and agrees to follow her terms just in time for John to invite her and Rip — the stray kid can come, but no stray dogs — to move into the lodge. Beth makes her father ask Rip (ask, she stresses) first.
- After their blowout in the last episode, Lloyd (Forrie J. Smith) buys Walker (Ryan Bingham) a guitar. Everyone in the bunkhouse breathes a sigh of relief that they don’t have to break up another fight.
Yellowstone, Sundays, 8/7c, Paramount Network