Why Beth Dutton Had To Kill Jamie In Yellowstone, According To A Producer

It was a rivalry that burned through the entire run of "Yellowstone" and came to a brutal end in the show's final episode. Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) killed the man partly responsible for her father's death and the misery that had plagued her for most of her life — her adopted brother, Jamie Dutton, played by Wes Bentley. Even with the uncertainty that troubled the show's final season with the departure of Kevin Costner, the one thing audiences could count on was that Beth was going to get the man she hated, after making a promise to her late father.

Even without this pact in place, though, director Christina Voros believed it was always on the cards. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about Beth's final deed against her brother, Voros said, "I feel like Beth is a woman of her word, so when she said it, I believed it. Their relationship feels almost Shakespearean to me. There was no way that was ever not going to end in some kind of tragedy."

It's a family feud that felt more fitting of something like "Game of Thrones" or "The Sopranos," but creator Taylor Sheridan applied it perfectly, leading to Beth's cathartic act that finally put her at ease. "They earned it because they are fairly equal adversaries," Voros theorized. "If you knew who was going to win going into that fight, it wouldn't have been interesting, and it wouldn't have been worthy of all the effort that has gone into creating that rivalry over all these years."

Considering the characters at the heart of this sibling spat, it was no surprise that blood, sweat, and screams fuelled the grueling war between them. Beth walked away victorious, and Jamie made his last stop at the train station. Breaking down the battle between the two, Soros said "It needed to be the fight to end all fights, and that was very important to Taylor from the beginning. He had a very clear vision of what that fight needed to be to do justice to the relationship."

Admittedly, Jamie had gone through struggles of his own up to this point (with Bentley feeling the occasional gut punch for the character), which led to him turning on his family. Following the release of the final episode, Reilly herself posted an image on Instagram, chronicling her iconic altercation with Bentley as the sneaky estranged son of the Dutton household. Both caked in blood, Reilly wrote, "Wes Bentley and I after that scene ... One of the greatest scene partners I have ever had. Love you Wes xx." Now with the family issues laid to rest, Beth can rest easy in her new ranch with her childhood sweetheart, Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) knowing that no further clipping of the Dutton family tree needs to be done. Well, unless someone comes out of the woodwork in their planned "Yellowstone" spin-off, of course.