While the controversy surrounding Yellowstone’s fifth and final season generally centered on the departure of John Dutton actor Kevin Costner, Wes Bentley’s Jamie Dutton was the character who actually came off worst. Jamie began the show as the most complex member of the Dutton family, but ended up being portrayed as a straightforward villain.
Jamie’s relationship with Sarah Atwood in the final part of Yellowstone was the last straw for many fans who’d already lost patience with the direction of the character. By the show’s conclusion, there was apparently no lengths to which he wouldn’t go, simply to destroy his own family. He’d become a caricature of the morally ambivalent outcast from season 1.
As The Black Sheep Of The Dutton Family, Jamie Had The Potential To Be A Great Character
Jamie never quite fitted into the Dutton family tree in Yellowstone, and this aspect of his character initially made him the most intriguing figure in the show. Jamie’s biological father, who made several menacing appearances in the series, killed his mother, which is why Jamie was adopted by John and Evelyn Dutton.
At the same time, it felt as though Jamie is never fully trusted or wanted by his adoptive family. He was the Dutton equivalent to Fredo Corleone, an ambitious sibling who wasn’t respected by his father and his siblings, but longed for their acceptance, and so showed them unswerving loyalty in return.
As conflict inevitably ensued when Jamie’s own ambitions clashed with John Dutton’s interest in maintaining his grip over his land, it was an opportunity to develop Jamie’s character into one of the show’s two most important characters. His evolution into an adversary of his adoptive father could have been gradual, and one with which we could sympathize.
Instead, their mutual antagonism escalated into a sudden physical altercation, in which John repeatedly punched Jamie to the ground and told him to get off ranch property. This incident was just one of many in which the black sheep of the Dutton family was mercilessly attacked by those who were supposed to love him.
Yellowstone Turned Jamie Into Beth’s Punching Bag
Nobody hurled more abuse at Jamie than his sister Beth Dutton. She looked to undermine him at every single turn, to the extent that their dialogue became exhausting to watch, and their conflicts occasionally became physical.
It was no surprise when Beth was responsible for Jamie’s death in Yellowstone season 5. She’d already warned us that she was going to end his life in a previous episode, and seemed to be gunning for the chance to get rid of him every time she saw him.
A flashback in a season 3 episode revealed that the reason for Beth’s hostility towards Jamie was his decision to have her sterilized when she was looking to end an unwanted pregnancy as a teenager. Beth had resented him ever since she found out he took this decision, without her permission, even if his intention was to help her.
She certainly has a good reason for feeling so angry with Jamie, then. But her constant attacks against him throughout Yellowstone become torturous for us to sit through as an audience. They’re as repetitive as they are repugnant, and undermine Jamie to the point that it’s hard to take him seriously as a character.
Jamie’s Descent Into Villainy Robbed The Character Of His Nuance
When he openly turned against John Dutton and the ranch in season 5, conspiring with Market Equities lawyer Sarah Atwood to force through a construction project on Dutton land, Jamie was cast as an outright villain. After John wound up dead in the second part of the season, Jamie was the prime suspect.
However, Sarah was the true villain of Yellowstone who had John killed, leaving Jamie devastated by his adoptive father’s death. Yet, the series finale treated Jamie as though he was the one behind the murder, ensuring that he got his comeuppance in a fight to the death with his sister, Beth.
This character trajectory removed any semblance of nuance from Jamie’s story, and undermined any sympathy we might have had for him in previous seasons. His progression from black sheep of the Duttons to patricidal pariah of the series was a gross mistreatment of someone whose complex backstory deserved so much better.
Yellowstone Wasted Wes Bentley’s Talent (Especially In The Final Season)
Jamie’s death in Yellowstone was an insult to Wes Bentley, one of the show’s most accomplished actors, whose résumé includes the Oscar-winning movie American Beauty as well as The Hunger Games and Interstellar. Bentley had conveyed his character’s inner struggle with the choice between family loyalty and personal ambition so powerfully that we couldn’t help but sympathize with Jamie.
By contrast, the climactic moment in Yellowstone’s finale depicted the character as though he was an entirely unsympathetic antagonist to be vanquished by the other Duttons. Even worse, before that moment Jamie had been used increasingly sparingly in the show’s last season. When he did appear, he was a caricature of the piteous figure from earlier seasons.
Yellowstone wasted the committed and affecting performance Wes Bentley was giving as Jamie Dutton. What’s more, it rode roughshod over a character worthy of at least some sympathy and understanding in addition to unrelenting scorn and hatred.
