'Yellowstone' Season 3 Episode 3 Explained: Jamie expertly covers up the two murders by Agent Hendon
Spoilers for 'Yellowstone' Season 3 Episode 3 titled 'An Acceptable Surrender'
Early on in Episode 3, Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley) visits Livestock Agent Steve Hendon (James Jordan) in jail. They are to discuss the dramatic turn of events of the previous episode and find a way out of the whole mess. On his very first day as livestock commissioner, things go awfully wrong as Agent Hendon happens to take matters into his own hands and goes a bit too far with them.
After a barrel racer girl (played by Abigail Snarr) is brutally attacked, deputies catch hold of two young boys and hold them in a horse stall. Hendon was told to send them a "clear message". So what he does is throw them in the back of the trailer and, in the process of teaching the two a lesson kills them by working the breaks a bit too hard.
Now Jamie must cover this up to avoid the deaths coming back to the Duttons to bite them. There is no doubt that he would upset all the Duttons if this got out. At the station, after a brief discussion, Jamie has his story set: Hendon loads them in the trailer because his vehicle cannot accommodate two perpetrators who were already injured by the deputies.
When moving to another location to find the horses, another vehicle pulls in front of Hendon's and that is how the breaks were worked "pretty hard". After acoiding the accident, Hendon checks on the perpetrators but they had already succumbed to the injuries inflicted upon them by the deputies at the fairgrounds. Straight and simple. He also makes sure that County Attorney Randy (KC Clyde) tells authorities that the two perpetrators were John Does and his deputies pulled them out from a truck with three times the alcohol limit in their system.
Now that Hendon's account of the incident is taken care of, Jamie must find out a way to pacify the next person who could pose a problem to this account — the victim. He brings the trailer to the victim's house, where he meets with her father Phil (Mark Rowe). Jamie spins a long, emotional tale equating the victim's suffering to his own sister's, tells the father all about avenging the deed for his sister, doing this for the family. Jamie proceeds to show him the bloody interiors of the trailer truck and tells him he did it for every father who would have lost their families if they did the same.
The emotional father of the victim is grateful for Jamie taking care of the perpetrators the way he did. Phil also promises that his daughter won't say anything against the agent. Now Phil owes Jamie a favor. And Jamie can take a breather.
If you ask us, Jamie handled that issue rather expertly. We weren't expecting damage control of these proportions from the one Dutton who is always predestined to mess things up. Now he can only hope that the girl never says anything. 'Yellowstone' airs on Mondays at 9 pm ET/ PT on Paramount.