'Beth still wants to protect it': Dutton Ranch star on why including John Dutton's Yellowstone legacy in new Taylor Sheridan spinoff was a non-negotiable

Even though Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Rip (Cole Hauser) have had to relocate to Texas after a devasting wildfire, the Yellowstone spirit hasn't been completely forgotten in new spinoff series, Dutton Ranch.

In a nutshell, Beth and Rip are starting over in the small Texan town of Rio Paloma, even though they bought a brand-new Montana ranch at the end of Yellowstone season 5 part 2.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn't take too long for Dutton patriarch John (Kevin Costner), who was killed towards the end of the main series, to get a mention. As the Montana fire breaks out, Beth immediately packs a photo of them from their younger years, his hat and his knife.

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Months later, when she's settled in Texas, Beth admits to Rip just how much she misses her dad. "We brought the best parts of him with us," Rip replies.

Even though we're only two episodes in to Dutton Ranch, I suspect this isn't going to be the last we hear about the Yellowstone ranch. In fact, the cast is convinced that John Dutton's legacy remains Beth's "reason to live."

'Beth carries her dad's legacy with pride and love'

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"I think the legacy has been a lot for Beth, and for all of these years has been her reason to live," Reilly tells me. "It was how she moved, her only dream and her only reason to exist, protecting the land for her father. She was his strongest soldier.

"I think she carries it in her with pride and love, and I think there is something that she's wanting to protect around that. She doesn't want to blow it up to be something that she could use in a gratuitous way, but something in her heart that is hers and her family's.

Reilly continues, "But she saw the damage of what preserving a legacy does, the price of it. I don't think she has much interest in that. I think she's now moving into a place where people in her life are more important than land."

If Dutton Ranch episodes 1 and 2 are anything to go by, I'm not completely sure that Reilly's last sentence is true. But what she says does mean that we can guess how John Dutton and the Yellowstone ranch might be referenced moving forward.

In short, don't expect the spinoff to suddenly pivot to becoming Yellowstone 2.0. John Dutton will remain background context for Beth and Rip's new beginnings, and will possibly inform how others, such as ranch rival Beulah (Annette Bening) view them in kind.

As Hauser puts it, "The Dutton ranch obviously harks back to John Dutton, but other than that, the show is about us as a small unit, going to Texas and finding our own way."

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