Marshals Is Ruining the Dutton Family Legacy

2 min readEver since John Dutton (Kevin Costner) died, the Yellowstone-verse has sought to do away with everything he stood for. Without the patriarch in charge, it’s dawned on his children, Kayce (Luke Grimes) and Beth (Kelly Reilly), that the man was too violent and too stubborn. So, Kayce sold the ranch and resolved to put his violent life behind in the spinoff, Marshals, while Beth moved to Texas in Dutton Ranch to try ranching her own way.It’s not really working out. Beth and her husband Rip (Cole Hauser) basically just moved the whole Dutton operation to Texas. And as much as Kayce’s plan to turn his last remaining acres of the Yellowstone Ranch into an equine therapy center would follow through on his plan for peace, he’s too busy continuing his father’s cycle of violence by running into danger as a member of a team of U.S. Marshals every week. Why? Well, because peace for the Duttons just isn’t good TV.Still, Marshals tries its best to weave the framework into season 2. The latest round of episodes to kick off the second season deals heavily with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the various ways the Marshals team handles their crazy, violent lives. Mostly, it’s by bottling it up and never speaking about it. After killing a man in the season 1 finale, Kayce’s son Tate (Brecken Merrill) says a line in season 2, episode 3 that could have been plucked directly from a Dutton family quote book: “What happened stays where it is.”Matthias ClamerThe sort of sign you might pick up as a father that your son could use some therapy.But try as they might, the Dutton children are becoming their father anyway. By now in the task force spinoff, Kayce’s likely killed more men on the ranch than his father ever did. And though he’s not branding people like cattle anymore—which still haunts Kayce’s dreams in season 2, episode 4—even John Dutton gave up that practice after Yellowstone season 3.Most likely, the Marshals team just wrote themselves into a trap. They might think they’re providing Kayce good backstory by tackling his inner quest for a peaceful life, but when he heads to work to kill criminals every morning, you can’t really believe the guy. Is he trying at all? And since he’s clearly not, maybe we should focus on that instead...?So, at the end of episode 3, Kayce demands that Tate break his family’s generational cycle and take his ass to therapy. “It’s the last place my father would’ve taken me, and the last place I would’ve gone myself,” he says.Two episodes have passed since that moment, and we haven’t seen Tate actually go yet. Plus, Kayce hasn’t exactly set a good example. Despite ordering his son to open up, Kayce didn’t give us any hints that he’s decided to see a therapist himself. And that equine center? We’ll be lucky if we ever see it until Marshals is over for good.