‘Yellowstone’: 10 Times Jamie Dutton Was the Absolute Worst
Yellowstone’s Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley) is slowly becoming the new villain of Taylor Sheridan’s neo-western. After being blackmailed by his sister Beth (Kelly Reilly) at the end of season 4 and being bullied into doing the Dutton family’s bidding as Montana’s Attorney General, Jamie is once again turning against his adopted family and has seemingly started scheming to take them down.
Whether you love him or hate him, there’s no doubt that Jamie has done some terrible things during the first four seasons while trying to win his adopted father’s love and approval. And sometimes, he had to ruin his own values in the process. Here are 10 times that Jamie Dutton was the absolute worst.
1. Keeping the truth secret about the hit on the Dutton family in ‘Yellowstone’ Season 3
The explosive season 3 finale ended with a coordinated attack on the Dutton family in an attempt to kill John (Kevin Costner), Beth, and Kayce (Luke Grimes). The final moments saw John getting shot on the side of the road while helping a woman change a flat tire, a group of gunmen storming into Kayce’s office, and a package exploding in Beth’s office.
In season 4, it was revealed that the man behind the attack was Jamie’s biological father, Garrett Randall (Will Patton). When Jamie discovered the truth about the attack on the Duttons, he kept the information a secret.
2. Jamie kills his biological father in the Season 4 finale
Jamie’s decision to keep the truth from the Duttons ends up coming back to bite him in the season 4 finale. Once Beth discovers that Jamie’s known the truth, she confronts him and gives him an ultimatum. Jamie must kill his own father, go to prison, or lose his own life at the hands of her husband Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser).
He chooses to kill his own father, and then gets blackmailed by his sister when she takes a photo of him dumping the body. This whole entire situation makes Jamie the absolute worst.
3. Accusing Beth of being responsible for their mother’s death
It was revealed via flashbacks that the Duttons lost their mother, Evelyn, in a horseback riding accident that occurred back in 1997 when the siblings were teenagers. She was out riding with Beth and Kayce when she fell off her horse, and Jamie blamed his sister for the loss in a nasty confrontation in the barn.
4. He calls his sister ‘cancer’
That confrontation was way back in season 1 when it looked like John was dying from cancer. Jamie and Beth had a conversation that resulted in one of his worst moments when he compared his sister to the disease.
“It’s the body’s cells so deformed, they turn on the body itself. Start feeding. Cancer doesn’t have much foresight so it kills its hosts, which kills it,” he says. “Cancer is suicide from the inside out. That’s what you are, Beth.”
5. Falling for Sarah Atwood’s schemes in ‘Yellowstone’ Season 5
Is Jamie really this naive? In Yellowstone Season 5, Jamie has hooked up with Market Equities lawyer Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri) amid his villainous turn and appears to be falling for her schemes. After having sex she asks him “why aren’t you Governor?”
“You clearly have the skill for it. You orchestrated the lease and the build, leaving no legal recourse for the company that’s completely f***ed,” Sarah tells him. “Get you elected Governor, reinstate our lease and push through our project with a contract you cannot weasel out of and save this state from its policy of hiding its head in the sand and hoping that the rest of the world just walks by.”
Jamie seems just fine with bringing about the downfall of his adopted father and the family’s precious ranch. And the absolute worst part is he’s dumb enough to trust her.
6. Cutting himself off from the Duttons
After his family is attacked in the Yellowstone Season 3 finale, Jamie gets a call from Rip telling him he can’t get ahold of anyone. In response, Jamie tells Rip that he shouldn’t call him anymore — which is bad enough. But, Jamie essentially cuts himself off from the Duttons and doesn’t contact John in the months that he was recovering in the hospital.
7. Telling Beth to pull the trigger
When Jamie picks up a drunken Beth from the Deerfield Club in season 1, the siblings once again get into an argument that features a moment when Jamie is the worst. Their fight in the car turns physical, as Beth calls her brother “soft” and insists he doesn’t know real loss.
Then, she grabs a gun from the glove compartment and holds it to her chin while telling her brother, “You gotta watch ’em die to lose ’em.” Calling her bluff, Jamie tells Beth to pull the trigger, not thinking she would actually do it.
She does pull the trigger but misses. And Jamie wrestles the gun away. After sitting in silence, one of Jamie’s worst moments actually turns into one of his best. As Beth cries, he tells her, “If hating me keeps you from hating yourself, I’ll be that for you.”
8. Spilling family secrets
In the first season of Yellowstone, it was clear that Jamie would do anything to win his father’s love and to protect the family’s secrets. But out of anger, he spills those secrets to journalist Sarah Nguyen (Michaela Conlin) and then goes to great lengths to keep her from publishing the story.
9. He murdered a journalist to protect the family
In Season 2, Episode 6 “Blood the Boy,” Jamie meets with Sarah in a remote area to discuss the story and make it clear he refused to be quoted. But he can’t actually do that, and Sarah won’t stop the story.
Jamie insists he said hurtful things about his father out of anger and says it would destroy his family and their legacy if the story were published. But Sarah disagrees with one man owning such a large part of the country and says the Dutton land should be a national park. That’s when Jamie loses control and smashes her head into a car window before putting his hands around her neck and killing her.
10. ‘Yellowstone’ flashbacks reveal Jamie agreed to have his sister sterilized without her consent
Beth’s hatred for Jamie began when they were teenagers, and she turned to her brother for help when she got pregnant with Rip’s baby. Beth asked Jamie to help her get an abortion. But in an effort to be discreet, Jamie took her to the reservation clinic, which required a hysterectomy when terminating a pregnancy.
Jamie agreed to the procedure without Beth’s knowledge or consent. Taking away Beth’s ability to have children was definitely a moment when Jamie was the absolute worst. And, he’s still paying for it as an adult.
Yellowstone airs Sunday nights on the Paramount Network.
