‘Yellowstone’ Season 5 Episode 13 Recap: The Penultimate Chapter Teases an Explosive Finale

The end is near for Yellowstone fans, and Sunday night’s (Dec. 8) episode drove that point home clearly as the Duttons appear to be getting ready to say goodbye to the ranch… or, are they?

Season 5, Episode 13 of Yellowstone is titled “Give the World Away,” and it opens with Rip (Cole Hauser) and Beth (Kelly Reilly) seemingly getting ready to do exactly that as they prepare all of the machinery, horses, cattle and everything else not nailed down on the ranch for a massive auction to help deal with their cash flow problem.

That can’t happen without Travis Wheatley (Taylor Sheridan), who has a remarkable knack for getting top dollar for horses, but who’s also not one of Beth’s favorite people due to his arrogance and misogyny. When Beth goes to see him, Rip warns her he’ll try to hit on her, but he does not. Instead, he tries to see how far she’ll go in a game of strip poker before ultimately agreeing to help her out at no charge.

When an exasperated Beth demands that Rip explain why he’s friends with such a man, we see a different side of the roguish rancher, who once took a beating alongside Rip that he didn’t have to out of sheer loyalty.

Elsewhere in the episode:

• Teeter (Jennifer Landon) returns to the Yellowstone to prepare for the end and grieve Colby’s (Denim Richards) death, and Beth comforts her in her own inimitable way, which involves both of them getting drunk at a bar and insulting tourists.
• Jamie (Wes Bentley) seeks out his former lover, Christina (Katherine Cunningham), the mother of his child. and she agrees to help him decide how to move forward, if only because his legacy and her son’s are intertwined. She advises him to launch investigations into both John Dutton (Kevin Costner) and Sarah Atwood’s (Dawn Olivieri) deaths, and to deny any involvement with Sarah over and over so that he can pin John’s death on her — but first, he has to convince both authorities and the public.
• Jamie calls Beth and tells her that if she makes things more difficult for him, he will bring down the entire family, and she repeats her vow that the next time he sees her will be the last, adding, “Unlike you, I keep my promises.”
• Kayce (Luke Grimes) tells Monica (Kelsey Asbille) that he’s been trying to walk away from the ranch for his entire life, and it’s now time to do it.
• Rip tells the remaining Bunkhouse Boys and Teeter that they all need to look for work, as only Lloyd (Forrie J. Smith) and Carter (Finn Little) will be needed once all the equipment is sold. Lloyd thanks him, as the Yellowstone has been the only home he’s ever known.
• Chairman Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) tells Mo (Mo Brings Plenty) that the only ways to stop the project on the reservation are all illegal.
• Teeter gets to honor walk Colby’s horse with an empty saddle as the auctioneer pays touching tribute to him, John and everything that both of them stood for.
• There’s another touching scene between Beth and Carter, showing that she does have a maternal side, after all.

The auction ends up raising just over $30 million, which Beth says will keep them afloat for a year before they run out of cash again. But the episode ends on a slightly more optimistic note as Kayce appears to have developed a plan to save the Yellowstone, though it’s convoluted and involves much risk.

“The only way to save this place,” he tells Monica. “We’ve got to give it away.”

As we go into the final episode of the season — and, presumably, the show — Yellowstone still has a number of unanswered questions hanging. What will ultimately come of Jamie? Will he somehow get away with all of his transgressions, or will Beth finally catch up with him like she’s threatened so many times?

Will Kayce and Monica take Tate (Brecken Merrill) and make their life somewhere else? Or will he really be able to save the ranch? What will become of Beth, Rip, Lloyd, Carter and all of the other family of colorful characters we’ve come to know over five seasons?

And, of course, there’s still the central question of the show: Who will wind up in control of the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch when all is said and done?

Yellowstone airs on Sundays at 8PM ET on Paramount Network.