Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | March 30, 2025
Spoilers for Season 2 of ‘1923’
Last week’s episode of 1923 gave us a brief respite from the relentless misery of these Yellowstone prequels. 1883, recall, ended with a cruel twist when Sam Elliott’s character — the series favorite — took his own life, and the show’s nominal lead, Elsa Dutton, also died. That hasn’t stopped Isabel May from continuing to narrate the bleakness in the next prequel.
Next week’s episode — a two-parter expected to serve as the series finale — will likely end in a similarly grim fashion. We’ll be lucky if there’s even one happy storyline to offset the carnage (if Spencer and Alex don’t reunite, I swear to God). Yellowstone does exist, so at least Elizabeth or Alex has to survive to continue the family line. Since Elizabeth is pregnant, she’s the most likely candidate to be the mother of Dabney Coleman’s (RIP) John Dutton II.
Hopefully, she’ll have both Spencer and Alex to help her raise the child and tend the ranch, because it sure won’t be her husband, Jack (Darren Mann), who was gunned down in a weirdly anticlimactic scene by a couple of Banner Creighton’s (Jerome Flynn) men. Jack was on his way to the train station to assist Jacob Dutton (Harrison Ford) in the inevitable shootout between Creighton’s crew and Jacob’s men, whenever it is that Spencer finally shows up. I cannot stress enough how pointless Jack’s death was. Just a complete waste. Anyway, Spencer spent the episode on a train. Jacob spent it in a train station waiting for him, alongside Sheriff McDowell (Robert Patrick), who almost certainly will not survive the finale.
Who will is the question. The two men who killed Jack are heading to Yellowstone to wipe out whoever’s still there—Elizabeth and Cara (Helen Mirren) remain behind, protected only by a couple of men (including Zane (Brian Geraghty) and his wounded head). I honestly don’t expect either Jacob or Cara to survive what’s coming. There’s no season three planned, and Taylor Sheridan seems determined to kill off as many characters as possible, no matter how gutting.
Case in point: Alexandra had the good fortune to meet Hillary and Paul (Janet Montgomery and Augustus Prew) last week. They basically saved her from prison, took her into their home, and volunteered to drive her from outside Chicago to Montana in the middle of winter. That’s a 1,500-mile journey. They had a lovely time … right up until they ran out of gas in a snowstorm. Hillary and Paul froze to death because of course they did. Alexandra is left in the middle of nowhere, in the snow, and she, too, is near death. The only silver lining is that I think the car ran out of gas next to a train track. Either that, or the Native Americans they passed while driving through a reservation are her only hope of survival. This lovely couple, whose only mistake was helping Alex, died so that Kevin Costner could one day run a ranch into the ground. Again, two more completely pointless deaths, unless the point is to exacerbate the devastation (which it obviously is).
And then there’s Teonna Rainwater (Aminah Nieves), who has known almost nothing but suffering since her storyline began. The brief joy she felt after reuniting with her father, Runs His Horse (Michael Spears), and falling in love with Pete was just a setup for heartbreak. Pete was killed last week by Marshal Kent, and this week her father was murdered by Father Renaud. I suppose we’re meant to find some solace in the fact that Teonna finally killed Father Renaud, but now she’s alone on the plains, with no one left. We know she returns to Montana eventually — she’s an ancestor of Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham), who does reclaim Yellowstone — but what a devastating journey she’s endured.
And that, increasingly, seems to be the point of these prequels: the cruelty. I’ll grant that Taylor Sheridan has created characters we care about, thanks largely to the actors who play them, but there has to be more to life than dying, right? Because that’s what these prequels mostly feel like: emotional manipulation through relentless, unflinching tragedy. Sheridan builds characters we love only to brutally, gleefully destroy them.
To that point: We once again watched Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton) graphically torture a sex worker, because apparently that’s Sheridan’s go-to shortcut for establishing a villain. Yes, congrats, Sheridan! I hate Whitfield. I’ll enjoy watching him die in the finale. But was it really necessary to subject sex workers to that kind of grotesque, gratuitous violence to get there? I’m not a pearl-clutcher, but the excess was completely unwarranted.
