The 10 Most Jaw-Dropping Deaths in Yellowstone—You Won’t Believe #1

For a series set on the peaceful plains of Montana, Yellowstone certainly has a lot of killing in it. The neo-Western drama created by Taylor Sheridan and John Linson sacrifices at least two significant characters per season for our entertainment, with death often coming in the most unexpected of ways and places for those associated with the Dutton Ranch. Retribution tends to be harsh for those who mess with John Dutton, his family, his business, or his political interests, and his enemies aren’t shy about pulling the trigger, either.

While not every main character in Yellowstone suffers the same fate across the show’s five seasons, there aren’t too many who live beyond the series’ final episode to tell the tale. With Yellowstone featuring several of the best villains of any Taylor Sheridan TV show, it’s no surprise that most of them meet with a sticky end. But just because their deaths are expected to occur at some point, it doesn’t make them any less shocking when they happen. Without dealing in gratuitous violence, Yellowstone delivers some of the most harrowing death scenes in recent television.

10Teal Beck

Season 2, Episode 10 – “Sins of the Father”

When John Dutton’s business rival, real estate developer Malcolm Beck, kidnaps his grandson, Dutton sends his son Kayce to take care of Malcolm’s brother and partner in crime, Teal. While we know the death is coming before it arrives, the act itself is still a shock to us, given the vulnerable position in which Kayce finds Teal when he shoots him.

After searching Teal’s house, Kayce finds his victim on the toilet seat and guns him down. Teal pleads to be allowed to die somewhere more dignified, a request Kayce duly ignores. This event proves to be a prelude to John Dutton’s killing of Teal’s brother, Neal McDonough’s terrifying Yellowstone villain, Malcolm Beck. Still, it’s by far the more shocking act of the two.

9Lee Dutton

“Daybreak” – Season 1, Episode 1

Lee Dutton’s death is Yellowstone’s first major tragedy, which sets the tone for the rest of the show. The killing of John Dutton’s eldest son, heir apparent to the Dutton ranch, by the inhabitants of a local Indigenous reservation in an armed conflict over cattle, determines the trajectory of the show’s plot. Lee was seemingly fundamental to maintaining the uneasy equilibrium between stakeholders both inside the ranch and in its surrounding environment. With him gone, events soon begin to unravel.

More than the consequences of Lee Dutton’s death, however, the moment itself is a shocking thing to happen in the pilot episode of the show. Within minutes of being introduced to one of Yellowstone’s main characters, he’s killed off in a devastating blow to the entire Dutton family. The manner of Lee’s death may not be all that surprising, given the shootout he was involved in at the time, but the lack of plot armor he’s afforded demonstrates that Yellowstone writers Sheridan and Linson mean business.

8Dan Jenkins

Season 2, Episode 10 – “Sins of the Father”

As soon as he returns to the fold at the start of season 2, land developer Dan Jenkins dies a stunning death in Yellowstone, at the hands of assassins in the employ of the Beck brothers. Previously a rival of John Dutton’s already left for dead in season 1, Jenkins seems to have been brought back in the show’s second season specifically to illustrate what Malcolm Beck is capable of.

Dan Jenkins appeared to have been killed off in the last episode of Yellowstone season 1, “The Unraveling”, when he’s lynched by Rip Wheeler, Kayce Dutton, and their farm hands. However, he survived the hanging to return for the start of season 2.

With Jenkins surviving the hangman’s noose in season 1, for nothing else, it’s to announce to us that Yellowstone is back with a vengeance a year later. Season 2 opens with an ominous dream of Thomas Rainwater’s, in which Jenkins has half his face destroyed. Though he survives most of the season, Dan Jenkins’ brutal Yellowstone death shows that the series’ antagonists will only get more and more vicious.

7Garrett Randall

Season 4, Episode 10 – “Grass on the Streets and Weeds on the Rooftops”

Garrett Randall is one of Yellowstone’s most irredeemable villains, a vicious and spiteful character whose manipulation and abuse of his son-by-birth, Jamie Dutton, is outdone only by the horrific murder of Jamie’s mother he committed before the events of the show. For these reasons, if anyone in the show deserves to die, it’s Garrett.

At the same time, Garrett Randall’s death in Yellowstone at the hands of his own son is still profoundly shocking, not least because they tell each other, “I love you” immediately before it happens. Jamie is put through the ringer throughout the show, but committing patricide shows that ultimately, he’s as brutal a killer as anyone else in the Dutton family.

6Donnie Haskell

Season 4, Episode 8 – “No Kindness for the Coward”

Although his deference to John Dutton when there are scores to be settled doesn’t seem like the most legally upstanding course of action a senior police officer could take, Sheriff Donnie Haskell possesses a certain moral courage nonetheless. One of the Western genre’s best lawmen, Haskell feels like a character Yellowstone couldn’t do without throughout his time in the series.

Donnie’s heartbreaking attempt at a phone conversation with his daughter, with his last breath, only makes what happens to him even more galling.

Haskell’s death comes as even more of a shock to us because it’s one of the few killings in Yellowstone that comes about in wholly accidental circumstances. Donnie is mortally wounded in a gunfight with robbers holding up a diner in the show’s fourth season, and his death has nothing much to do with its main plot threads. His heartbreaking attempt at a phone conversation with his daughter, with his last breath, only makes what happens to him even more galling.

5Jamie Dutton

Season 5, Episode 14 – “Life Is a Promise”

Jamie Dutton is the malcontent whose presence in Yellowstone was always destined to lead to tragedy, and so it proves in the show’s final season. After playing a key role in the murder of John Dutton, Jamie faces an inevitable showdown with his adoptive sister and arch-rival Beth in the last episode of the series.

Yellowstone’s ending pits Jamie and Beth in a fight to the death, with Beth husband, Rip Wheeler, stepping in to ensure that Jamie is the one who’s ultimately vanquished. Beth driving a knife into Jamie’s stomach is no less shocking because it comes at the end of this lengthy fight scene, however. Nor is her morbid insistence that he looks her in the eye as he dies.

4Wade Morrow

Season 3, Episode 9 – “Meaner Than Evil”

Wade Morrow is another villainous figure who, in some senses, gets his just deserts in Yellowstone, but his death is still one of the most horrific crimes committed during the course of the show. Rip Wheeler has a hired ranch hand remove the piece of Wade’s skin bearing the Yellowstone brand with a knife, before he’s lynched on a tree branch.

The camera leaves the state of Wade Morrow’s chest once the knife blade is through it to our imaginations, but the sound of his flesh tearing is chilling enough in itself to make for one of Yellowstone‘s darkest moments. The shock value of this death is all about the scene in which it occurs.

3John Dutton

Season 5, Episode 9 – “Desire Is All You Need”

On the other hand, John Dutton’s death in Yellowstone occurs offscreen, as Kevin Costner had already left the show by the time it was written into the script. Dutton’s death might have been saved for Yellowstone’s finale if Costner had stuck around a little longer, but the suddenness of it being reported in the first episode of season 5, part 2 is highly effective in catching us off guard.

Without its central protagonist, the show couldn’t go on beyond a handful of further episodes, which is testament to just how important John Dutton is to Yellowstone. The series killing its biggest star off-screen in such a manner makes for one of its biggest surprises, even if we knew the death itself was coming the moment Costner’s exit was initially announced.

2Sarah Nguyen

Season 2, Episode 6 – “Blood the Boy”

The killing of investigative journalist Sarah Nguyen may well be Jamie Dutton’s worst mistake in the whole of Yellowstone, which is no easy feat. It’s one of the earliest murders committed in the show, and the first by Jamie’s hand. The fact that this deadly deed appears to be a snap decision on Jamie’s part when Sarah threatens to expose the Duttons’ crimes, and one which he almost botches while apologizing to his victim as he strangles her, makes it even worse.

Sarah Nguyen is no friend of John Dutton, but she’s a complete outsider to the show’s world of ranching and shady land dealings. As such, she appears as a relatively innocent figure whose cruel fate is a shockingly unhinged act from Jamie Dutton.

1Roarke Morris

Season 4, Episode 1 – “Half the Money”

Nevertheless, in terms of shock value, Sarah Nyugen’s demise pales in comparison to the death of Roarke Morris in Yellowstone’s season 4 premiere. Roarke might be a two-faced rancher looking to profit off undermining the Duttons, but nobody saw Rip Wheeler’s shocking murder of Roarke coming so soon into the season.

The timing of the death is one thing, but the manner in which Rip kills Roarke is utterly horrifying. Casually striding up to him with a cooler box while Roarke fishes in a stream, without warning, Rip opens the box to unleash an angry rattlesnake on his unsuspecting victim. Roarke’s face soon swells with poisonous venom, as life drains from his body. No other death in Yellowstone has shocked us quite as much since.