‘Yellowstone’ Season 3 Finale: Will Jamie betray John and miserable Dutton family for real dad Garrett Randall?
It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes fathers and sons. Paramount Network's 'Yellowstone' seems to be hitting the bull's eye on that note after Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley) finds out he is adopted. It starts when he gets his birth certificate with his name listed as James Michael Randall and realizes his real father is someone else as he stumbles upon two strang names under the parents' section. His father was listed Garrett Randall and mother was Phyllis Mary Randall.
A cluster of questions pop up in his mind and he confronts John Dutton (Kevin Costner). With a heartwarming confession on how Jamie will always be his son, John says, "I protected you, I guided you, I loved you, you can call me whatever you want, Jamie, but I will call you son because I have earned the right, it is the hardest thing I have ever done." Moreover, he sketches out a picture of his real father and says, "When he married the woman who gave birth to you, we begged her not to do it because we knew. But I guess she thought she could save him. I don't know how to explain the chemistry of attraction, the thing that drives us to kill ourselves."
Then John gives him an option: "You actually have the opportunity to choose." He tells him, "You are a resourceful man so I am sure you can find him and you can look at his black f**king heart, his rotten soul. You can look into his eyes, Jamie and you get to choose. You can choose who you call father."
In the last episode ‘Meaner Than Evil’, Jamie then decides to go and visit his real father. He finds his address: 1401 Buckhorn Meadow, Red Lodge, Montana. Without wasting a second, he scribbles it on a piece of paper and storms out of his office. The fact that his real father was convicted of second-degree murder — that too of his own wife and Jamie's birth mother — pains his heart. He decides to find the answers when he first sees Garrett (played by Will Patton).
"Why did you do it?" he asks. When Garrett says he doesn't need to know, Jamie says he needs to "for my soul and to understand who the hell I am". Garrett then says, "You won't know who the hell you are. Your mother sold her body for drugs and I killed her for it. That's who you are. That's where you come from." He adds, "I'm sorry but if things didn't happen the way they did, you'd be dead, you'd be in prison. You've got on a road, you stay on it son."
Now, with only one episode left in the series, one big question on many viewers' minds is will Jamie leave the Dutton family to go with Garrett? Well, it's clear that he is more like his real father than John. Jamie, too, is a criminal who killed reporter Sarah Nguyen after she threatened to publish his statements and made it look like a kayaking accident. Moreover, his rivalry with Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) doesn't seem to end anytime soon. And now, those cold vibes come from John and Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) too.
The fact of the matter is that the Dutton family is miserable indeed. Moreover, after Garrett Randall's introduction, his character might have some explaining to do and it is only human to make mistakes, isn't it? It's not that John Dutton doesn't have blood on his hands. Perhaps that's why many fans feel Jamie is better suited to be with Garrett than with John.
In a long Reddit discussion, one fan said, "Will Patton is such a likable and relatable actor. Already he's humanized Garrett Randall and made me feel for this vile character. I reckon Jamie must take after his mother because he looks nothing like Randall. If she was a prostitute, perhaps Randall isn't even his biological father?" Another said, "The Duttons are truly a miserable family. They're incapable of sitting down and enjoying even one meal together. In fact, they don't ever spend any time together. They really don't like each other. Beth is right, they are just an illusion of a family."
Another comment read, "Will Patton is going to be amazing in this role. Like you said he has already made the character somewhat sympathetic. He is nothing how I thought he would be by the way John described him. I liked when he told Jamie that he got the best parts from him and the mom. That was probably the nicest thing that Jamie has been told from a 'father figure' and that’s sad. That’s why I chuckle a bit when people keep saying John saved Jamie, because his family really is miserable. The only thing he saved that child from was growing up poor. I have been waiting on someone to bring up what John did to Kayce ever since this abortion/sterilization storyline started."
So will Jamie really leave the Dutton clan and follow his way to Garrett Randall's home?
As the last episode, ‘The World is Purple’ began, Jamie was still at his birth father's place. Catching him in a dazed state, Randall asked: "You're looking for connections to this place, you won't find any." Quizzing him about his siblings and familial connections, Jamie asked Randall: "You had any brothers?" Randall then told him that his family is scattered and tells him a tale from his childhood. He recollected a memory where Jamie was screaming as he had been starving for hours. He remembered how he caught Jamie sucking on a crack pipe’s tip thinking it was a nipple. Meanwhile, his mother was busy hooking up with a stranger. At that moment, he killed her in a fit of rage. “I took her life and gave up mine for you,” he said. “Looking at you now I would say that’s probably the best choice I could have made.”
Garrett then hit the nail on the coffin when he asked him if he felt at home with the Dutton family. "John Dutton may have raised you, but does he love you? Does he love you, son?" When Jamie is at a loss for words, Garrett said, "He loves his ranch," and continued, "And here you stand in my yard." If that wasn't enough to shift Jamie's loyalty, he adds that he is the only family Jamie really has. Jamie then opens up about his fears and said, "Everything that I want, everything that I thought I will have I will lose it." Not just that, Jamie says he was raised to run the ranch and credits himself for building it into what it is today. Sympathizing with him, Garrett said the only way to get hold of it is to take over the empire. "Kill the King," Jamie's father told him. Shocked at that suggestion, Jamie said he is not a killer but there is a hesitance in his tone. Garrett then looked him in the eye and told him: "You never killed? Yeah, you killed. Of course, you killed. You're a Randall. Killing is in our blood."
With that scene, speculations are rife that Jamie and his father planned the deadly attack on the Duttons. How true could that be? Well, fans will have to wait until 2021 to find out as the next season of ‘Yellowstone’ comes out.