Beth and Rip Head to Texas in ‘Dutton Ranch’ — And It Works

Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler are back — and everything’s bigger in Texas.

Dutton Ranch, the long-awaited Yellowstone spinoff starring Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser, premieres May 15 on Paramount+ with two back-to-back episodes, and by nearly every account, it delivers exactly what fans have been starving for since the flagship series wrapped in 2024. The show picks up where Yellowstone left off — Beth and Rip living quietly on a small Montana ranch with their adopted son Carter (Finn Little) — right before a devastating wildfire burns it all down and forces the family to start over in the fictional Texas border town of Rio Paloma.

“That’s the point, this isn’t ‘Yellowstone,’” Reilly told USA TODAY ahead of the premiere. “We had to pluck these characters off a world they knew into a new one to start again and grow them in a different direction.”

She’s not wrong. After five seasons of Montana grandeur, John Dutton’s shadow, and the suffocating weight of family legacy, Dutton Ranch strips Beth and Rip down to something rawer and, arguably, more compelling: the underdog story. In Rio Paloma, nobody knows the Dutton name. Nobody owes them anything. And the land itself — sun-scorched, snake-infested, nothing like the lush green vistas of the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch — makes sure they feel it.

Texas Is a Beast — On Screen and Off

Hauser, 51, wasn’t being dramatic when he described the production conditions to USA TODAY. “Texas is a beast,” he said, with Reilly nodding along. “We’re not on soundstages, except for interior house shots. I don’t think a lot of people understand filming in that environment. The idea of the crew and the actors being outside — it’s 118 degrees out there. And then it will start snowing. It’s like the weather can’t make up its mind.”

The heat was only part of it. Director and cinematographer Christina Alexandra Voros — who also shot The Madison — supervised a production that had snake wranglers catching 275 venomous snakes during filming. “There are snakes onscreen, but far more don’t make it on camera,” Voros said. “Texas is filled with things that will bite you, sting you and scare you.” Add 2.6 million feral hogs roaming the state, and the new setting isn’t just a backdrop — it’s an antagonist in its own right.

The Dutton Ranch itself is deliberately unglamorous. Weathered, rustic, a far cry from the palatial Yellowstone Dutton Ranch. Hauser loves it that way. “We love it the way it is, it’s all sort of 1920s Texas,” he said. “They come from the glitz and glamor of the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch, but for them personally, they want to sort of slip right under the radar, and have some peace and serenity.”

Reilly echoed that sentiment, describing Texas as its own kind of character — one the show is still getting acquainted with. “Montana was the biggest character of Yellowstone,” she said. “So now we have a new character in Texas. We’re sizing it up, and it’s sizing us up as well.”

And yet those opening Montana scenes — shot after two to three months already deep into Texas production — hit differently because of it. “Being back in Montana, we were desperate for the mountain air,” Reilly recalled. “And our horses were ready too. You should have seen the horses and how they held their heads. They just wanted to fly.” The camera crews couldn’t keep up. “They had a truck with the camera on the gimbal, and they kept telling us to slow down,” Hauser said. “But those horses really wanted to go.”

Annette Bening and Ed Harris Walk In and Own the Place

If there’s one thing every critic agrees on, it’s this: the new cast is exceptional, and Annette Bening and Ed Harris are operating on another level entirely.

Bening plays Beulah Jackson, the iron-fisted matriarch of the 10 Petal Ranch — Rio Paloma’s reigning dynasty and Beth and Rip’s primary obstacle. Described by Variety as essentially “a lady version of John Dutton, with a lot more turquoise and a distinctive Texas twang,” Beulah is the kind of villain who doesn’t raise her voice because she doesn’t need to. Her introduction — coldly informing her foreman, “I will not tolerate disappointment” — sets the tone immediately.

When she and Beth first lock horns, it’s appointment television. Reilly described their dynamic to USA TODAY as “circling each other like animals,” adding, “I wanted these women to be completely different animals.” Beth’s private assessment of Beulah as a “grizzly in Gucci” is almost a compliment — and Collider’s review put it perfectly, comparing their scenes to “watching two sharks slowly circle each other in the same tank while anxiously waiting for one of them to strike.”

Harris, meanwhile, plays Everett McKinney, a Vietnam veteran and large-animal vet who becomes one of the few people in Rio Paloma that Beth and Rip can actually trust. TV Insider called it “the role that Ed Harris was born to play at this stage in his career,” and IndieWire noted that Harris and Bening are “already stealing Dutton Ranch out from under Beth and Rip” — which, given how much those two carry, is saying something.

Reilly, who is also an executive producer on the series, gushed about the new additions at the show’s premiere. “Everyone came with such passion and care, and they loved the original show — the mothership, I call it,” she told Entertainment Tonight. “That’s why they are all here. That’s why we have Annette and that’s why we have Ed. It’s because they loved the show, and they wanted to be a part of it.”

Jai Courtney rounds out the Jackson family as Rob-Will, Beulah’s volatile, reckless son whose bad decisions set much of the drama in motion. Juan Pablo Raba (Narcos) plays Joaquin, the more measured attorney brother left to clean up Rob-Will’s messes. Marc Menchaca (Ozark) plays Zachariah, an ex-con who found faith in prison and is now looking for honest ranch work — his job interview line, “God loves cowboys,” lands with the kind of earnest weight only this universe could pull off. And Natalie Alyn Lind plays Oreana, a free-spirited young woman who pulls Carter into his first real romance, much to Beth’s complicated feelings about it.

What the Critics Are Saying

The consensus from critics who received four episodes in advance is largely positive, with some caveats about the premiere’s pacing.

Collider called it “the best Yellowstone spin-off yet” and praised the writers’ room — led by showrunner Chad Feehan (Lawmen: Bass Reeves) rather than Sheridan — for revitalizing Beth and Rip in fresh ways. “The overexaggerated characterization that previously defined them in so many of Yellowstone’s final episodes… is nowhere to be found in this iteration,” the review noted, pointing specifically to the toxic Beth-Jamie dynamic that dragged Season 5 down.

TV Insider was enthusiastic, calling it “gut-wrenching” and praising the show for revealing Beth’s softer side — her bond with Everett, her maternal watchfulness over Carter — without defanging her. Movieweb gave it 4 out of 5, noting that “the fourth episode is particularly heart-wrenching, proving that Dutton Ranch can pull at our emotions in slightly different ways than we saw in Yellowstone.”

Page Six’s review called it “a winner” despite some clunky writing, while Tom’s Guide — written by someone who’d never watched a full episode of Yellowstone — declared it the best Taylor Sheridan-adjacent project in recent memory, ahead of Landman Season 2 and The Madison.

The criticisms that do surface are consistent: the series premiere is a bit scattered, some of the dialogue skews toward the faux-profound (there’s apparently a speech about how the Texas sky stretches on forever), and Finn Little’s Carter is flagged as a weak link by more than one reviewer. Variety also noted the conspicuous absence of Native characters, whose storylines provided some of Yellowstone‘s most nuanced material, with the show substituting Tejano characters like foreman Azul (J.R. Villarreal) in a similar narrative role.

IndieWire offered perhaps the most memorable critique — lamenting a scene where Everett is called to the stage to sing at a bar, only for the show to cut away before a single note is heard. “Why introduce Everett as a singer if not to hear him sing?” the review asked. It’s a small moment, but one that captures the show’s occasional tendency to set up something unexpected and then flinch.

The behind-the-scenes story adds its own layer of intrigue: Feehan was let go three weeks before premiere, long after production wrapped, with Sheridan remaining as executive producer. The AV Club noted that one of the stars insisted “Taylor’s got his hands all over this show” — and whether or not that’s literally true, the DNA is unmistakable. String-heavy score, sweeping slow-motion landscapes, animals mourned more visibly than humans, and shameless camp delivered with complete conviction.

Beth on Horseback — and Who She Wants to See Again

One of the more quietly meaningful changes in Dutton Ranch is Beth on horseback. During Yellowstone, she rarely rode — a traumatic childhood incident involving a horse led to her mother’s death, and the show honored that. But that chapter is behind her now, and Reilly’s riding skills are front and center in the new series.

“Kelly is a great rider, she slipped right in,” Hauser said — before adding, with characteristic dry humor, that his own riding double “gets a lot of money for doing nothing” since Hauser insists on doing his own riding. Reilly, for her part, is happy to use her double when needed but clearly capable without one. “I’ve been riding all my life,” she said. “My horse, Cowboy, is 25 years old. He’s been there, done that. He looks after me.”

As for the old Yellowstone faces she’d love to see pop up in the spinoff, Reilly didn’t hesitate when asked at the premiere. Three names: Jennifer Landon’s Teeter (“She’s a Texan. I think she should pop up”), Luke Grimes’ Kayce (“that would be fun — everyone has asked if we would meet”), and Wes Bentley, whose character Jamie didn’t survive Yellowstone but whose actor Reilly called “one of my favorite actors and humans on planet Earth.” A Dutton Ranch-Marshals crossover has been widely speculated, and a Beth-Kayce reunion does feel inevitable at some point.

For now, Hauser is confident that Yellowstone‘s devoted fanbase — which drew over 16 million viewers at its peak — will find their footing in this new landscape. “At times it’s been very difficult,” he said of the Texas shoot. “But the backdrop, in my opinion — our ranch, the topography, the sunsets — they are just to die for. The old audience that is used to Montana beauty will hopefully find beauty in Texas as well.”

Dutton Ranch premieres May 15 on Paramount+ and the Paramount Network with its first two episodes. The season runs nine episodes total.