The first time viewers see John Dutton (Kevin Costner), he’s sporting a head wound and is the sole survivor of a collision between his horse trailer and a large tow truck (we’re not counting the injured horse which Dutton puts out of its misery).
As he wanders around the wreckage, he inspects the machinery the truck is carrying before finding some paperwork with the heading “Paradise Valley Capital Development.”
At this point, audiences haven’t learned of Dan Jenkins (Danny Huston) or his plans to build a casino next door to the Dutton ranch, so the significance of this isn’t fully understood on first watch.
It isn’t until the season finale that Jenkins reveals that the accident happened after the tow truck intentionally drove into John’s trailer. He calls it a “convenient opportunity,” hinting the aim was to kill the rancher.
When Kayce (Luke Grimes) takes his son Tate (Brecken Merrill) to the Dutton ranch for the first time, a brief conversation between the Navy S.E.A.L. and his sister suggests that she has recently come out of a relationship.
“How’s Mr. Daniel?” Kayce asks her, to which Beth (Kelly Reilly) responds with a dismissive shake of her head.
“Good for you,” he then says.
“Yeah? You’re the only one who shares that opinion,” she responds, further hinting that the demise of her relationship with the mysterious Mr. Daniel was something the rest of her family were disappointed by.
One thing Beth and Kayce have in common is that they are both free spirits who can’t abide being under other people’s thumbs. The audience is left with the impression that Beth’s former lover was someone who attempted to control her or turn her into someone she’s not.
While everyone else around her might have welcomed a man into her life who would be able to do that, only Kayce can recognize that Beth is better off alone than with such a partner.
Since Kayce hasn’t seen his sister in a long time, the relationship must have also been somewhat serious or long-lasting.
Several times throughout season one of “Yellowstone,” Kayce exhibits his unmatched skills with firearms and his ruthless ability to take down almost anyone who tries to fight him.
When his brothers-in-law take a look at his medals from his time in the army, they see he has a Navy Cross.
According to the US Department of Defense, the Navy Cross is awarded for extraordinary heroism. It is the second highest military decoration a member of the Navy or Marine Corps can be awarded.
When John’s eldest son Lee (Dave Annable) is killed in the premiere episode, the Dutton patriarch takes him to a quiet, leafy spot on the ranch and sits down under a tree as he cradles his dying body.
There’s a callback to this moment in the finale of the prequel series “1883.” James Dutton’s (Tim McGraw) eldest child, Elsa Dutton (Isabel May), is fatally injured in similar circumstances after a land dispute between the family and the indigenous people who claim the land as theirs. Realizing that she won’t survive her wounds, James sits down with her in a similar-looking spot on the land that the ranch will eventually be built on.
Both James and John tell their dying children that they will “rest” for a while to soothe them in their final moments before being greeted by a chirping bird.
In episode two, audiences see variations of the same family portrait, showing John’s late wife Evelyn (Gretchen Mol) with three of their children: one teenage boy, a preteen Beth (Kylie Rodgers), and an elementary school-aged Kayce (Rhys Alterman).
It only becomes clear that the teenage boy is meant to be Jamie rather than Lee later on in the season during a flashback scene of the Duttons celebrating Christmas in 1996 when the same actor (Dalton Baker) as the one seen in the family picture is addressed as Jamie. A much older actor (Kip Denton) plays Lee in the flashback.
Lee’s absence from the family photos is perhaps an allusion to the fate that he befalls in the pilot, which essentially removes him from the picture as John’s successor in the running of the ranch. Instead, it’s the other three that the patriarch must look at now when deciding who to inherit his life’s work.
When Kayce grows frustrated with his unsuccessful attempts at trying to remove a tree stump near his and Monica’s (Kelsey Asbille) trailer on the reservation, he decides to blow it up.
In the wreckage, they find what is shown to be an almost perfectly preserved dinosaur skeleton.
It seems possible that this storyline was inspired by real-life events. Two years before “Yellowstone” season one premiered, a Montana rancher made headlines across the globe for “accidentally” discovering a new dinosaur species on his land.
Montana has yielded numerous well-preserved dinosaur fossils, and the idea that treasure hunters would ransack Kayce’s trailer and steal the bones for themselves, as we see later in the season, doesn’t seem so implausible given that theft of such fossils has happened in real life too.
While Thomas (Gil Birmingham) — along with the other Native American characters on the show — comes from the fictional Broken Rock tribe, many of the customs the characters are shown taking part in in the show are rooted in real practices and traditions.
At one point, he shows Kayce the scars he has on his chest which he says speak to his loyalty to his tribe. The scars likely come from him participating in the Sun Dance, a sacred ritual found among many Native American communities.
According to the Aktá Lakota Museum, the ritual sees men dance while they are fastened to a pole with rawhide thongs which are “pierced each side of their chests with a length of bone.” The ceremony goes on for four days, during which the men fast and dance with the goal of hopefully receiving a vision.
The six-piece country band, who hail from Texas, makes an appearance in episode four of season one.
Beth takes Dan Jenkins to a Bozeman dive bar to show him the “real” Montana, and the band is seen onstage performing their songs “Frogman” and “Stones.”
Three other Whiskey Myers songs appear on the soundtrack for season one; “On the River” was used in the pilot, while “Bar, Guitar and Honky Tonk Crowd” and “Broken Window Serenade” were used in later episodes.
The title for episode four appears to reference the early 2000s country song, “The Long Black Train” by Josh Turner.
Audiences learn what the Duttons do with their adversaries in this episode.
On John’s instructions, Rip (Cole Hauser) and Lloyd (Forrie J. Smith) take enemies to what they call the “train station,” a Dutton code word for a roadside ditch a few miles over the Wyoming border (which it seems was inspired by a 50-square-mile area of Montana called the Zone of Death, where legal jurisdiction over crime is murky).
As Lloyd and Rip dispose of their latest victim in episode five, Lloyd invokes the episode title, telling the confused ranch hand that he’s going to “the long black train.”
“The Long Black Train” is also the name of a 2003 Christian country song by singer Josh Turner, which uses the metaphor of a long black train to symbolize the fate of those who stray away from their faith and give in to sinful behavior.
In the world of “Yellowstone,” John Dutton is portrayed as his own god. He makes his own rules and is essentially untouchable to those who try to bring him down, so it’s fitting that those who go against him end up on the long black train.
Sheridan plays Travis Wheatley, a horse trainer and rodeo competitor who visits the Dutton ranch with a handful of million-dollar horses for John to check out.
The role is also a meta one for Sheridan, who was best known for his recurring role on “Sons of Anarchy” before he pivoted to screenwriting. The 53-year-old actor turned filmmaker is an accomplished rider who’s competed in western horse-riding competitions.
The role mirrors Bingham’s own career. He was a rodeo rider in his youth, according to NPR, and forged a successful music career.
He is perhaps best known for collaborating with producer T. Bone Burnett on the soundtrack for the 2009 film “Crazy Heart.” He earned several accolades, including an Academy Award and a Grammy Award, for the film’s theme song, “The Weary Kind.”
When Christina (Katherine Cunningham) is introduced to Jamie (Wes Bentley) for the first time, Governor Lynelle Perry (Wendy Moniz) proudly says that she “interned for Chris Messina.”
“Obama’s campaign manager,” she adds.
However, it was Jim Messina who led Obama’s presidential campaign in 2012, not Chris Messina, who is an actor best known for his roles in “The Mindy Project” and “Birds of Prey.”
“Since 1886, every Dutton who died is buried 300 yards from my back porch,” John tells the audience at the Stockman’s soirée in episode seven.
However, as “1883” viewers know, this is only partially true.
In the prequel series, John’s ancestor Elsa Dutton dies on the land that becomes the ranch in the show’s titular year — three years earlier than John says in his speech.
Given that Sheridan began developing the origin story several years after season one of “Yellowstone” aired, it’s entirely understandable that these details about the Dutton family history were not ironed out completely at this point.
John also mentions that everyone from his “great-great grandfather” has been buried on the land, which is seemingly a reference to James Dutton. However, the question of how the family tree fully connects — and who is John Dutton’s grandfather — remains a mystery.
