Dutton Ranch: Full Episode Schedule and What to Expect

Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler are back — and this time, they’ve traded the Big Sky for South Texas. Dutton Ranch, the long-awaited Yellowstone spinoff, dropped its first two episodes on May 15, and if you thought the Duttons could ever actually settle into a peaceful life, well — you haven’t been paying attention.

The series picks up after the events of Yellowstone’s December 2024 series finale, with Kelly Reilly’s Beth and Cole Hauser’s Rip having retreated to a quiet ranch near Dillon, Montana. That peace lasts about five minutes. A wildfire tears through their property, leaving them with no choice but to start completely over. Six months later, they’re in Rio Paloma, Texas — a fictional South Texas town — on a 7,000-acre spread that comes with beautiful land, a slower pace, and, naturally, a whole new set of enemies.

Created by Chad Feehan with Yellowstone’s Taylor Sheridan serving as executive producer, the show is built squarely around the two characters fans most wanted to follow after the flagship ended. And based on those first two episodes, it’s already delivering the drama, the slow-burn tension, and the Beth Dutton one-liners that made Yellowstone appointment viewing in the first place.

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What Happens in the First Two Episodes

Episode 1, “The Untold Want,” wastes no time establishing the show’s central conflict. While Beth navigates the social dynamics of a new town — including a tense first meeting with Beulah Jackson (Annette Bening), the iron-willed matriarch of the rival 10 Petal Ranch — Rip is already stumbling into trouble. He discovers the body of a murdered ranch hand on his land and, in true Rip Wheeler fashion, decides to hide it rather than involve anyone else. Beth doesn’t know. Yet.

The murder belongs to Rob-Will Jackson (Jai Courtney), Beulah’s younger son and the ranch’s foreman. He killed the hand after suspecting the man knew about his involvement in something shady. His older brother Joaquin (Juan Pablo Raba) — polished, calculated, the businessman of the family — is left to manage the aftermath and deal with the dead man’s grieving wife. The contrast between the two brothers is already one of the more compelling dynamics the show is setting up.

Bening’s Beulah is the kind of character you immediately understand: firm, no-nonsense, used to getting what she wants. When Beth comes looking for a butcher to slaughter her steer, Beulah offers to help — but only in exchange for a cut of the profits. Beth, predictably, is not having it.

The Beth-Rip dynamic gets its own tender moments too, including a steamy shower scene that reminded fans exactly why this couple became such a phenomenon. And in a notable twist on one of the show’s familiar patterns, Beth’s sharp tongue finds a different target in Texas. Rather than tearing someone apart at a bar — a Yellowstone calling card — she meets Ed Harris’ veterinarian Everett McKinney under completely different circumstances: a roadside car accident involving an injured horse. She persuades him to save the animal on the spot, and the two strike up what looks like a genuine friendship. It’s a warmer side of Beth than Yellowstone often showed.

Episode 2, “Earn Another Day,” deepens the Jackson family drama as Joaquin and Rob-Will realize the body has been moved, and Carter begins forming a connection with Oreana (Natalie Alyn Lind), Beulah’s granddaughter and Rob-Will’s daughter — the heir apparent to the 10 Petal Ranch, whether she wants the job or not.

Finn Little Found Out He Was Cast a Week Before Filming

Finn Little is back as Carter, now 19 years old after first joining Yellowstone at 14. He told PEOPLE the character “has been my life” — and that he almost missed the call entirely. “I didn’t hear anything about it until like a week before I flew out,” he revealed. “Yeah, it was just like, ‘Hey, it’s happening, hope you’re ready.’ I was like, ‘Oh, all right. Let’s go.’”

He was excited to return, he says, because he genuinely wanted to see where Carter was headed. “A lot has changed since we last saw him,” Little said at the New York City premiere on May 12. “He’s growing into himself — but trouble’s brewing.” Specifically, that trouble involves Oreana. “I think Carter sees a lot of Beth in Oreana, that fierceness and that strong personality. I think that’s what attracts Carter.”

His pitch to Yellowstone fans sitting on the fence? “Beth and Rip are a staple of Yellowstone. They’re some of people’s favorite characters. So if you love Beth and Rip, you’ll love Dutton Ranch, and you’ll love all the new problems that come along with it.”

Behind the scenes, one of those new problems was surprisingly technical. In Episode 2, Carter and Oreana bond over shooting beer cans — a classic Texas meet-cute, essentially. But Little told /Film the scene gave the crew fits: “We kept having problems with the squibs, the bottles that kept going off. You’d shoot two, and then I’d shoot two, but you kept shooting … They were blank rounds, but you’d shoot two, and then three would go off.” Lind, who had prior experience with firearms on set, noted that blank rounds come with their own challenges: “It’s the recoil that’s a little bit more intense with a real bullet than it is with a blank. That was the hardest part about it.”

The Full Season 1 Release Schedule

Dutton Ranch runs nine episodes in its first season, dropping every Friday on Paramount+ and airing at 7 p.m. on Paramount Network. Here’s the full schedule:

• Episode 1 — May 15: “The Untold Want”
• Episode 2 — May 15: “Earn Another Day”
• Episode 3 — May 22: “Act of God Business”
• Episode 4 — May 29: “Start with a Bullet”
• Episode 5 — June 5: TBD
• Episode 6 — June 12: TBD
• Episode 7 — June 19: TBD
• Episode 8 — June 26: TBD
• Episode 9 — July 3: “El Padrino”

The season finale was directed by executive producer Christina Alexandra Voros, who also helmed the premiere episodes. Voros has already made her feelings about a potential second season clear. “I would stay on this ride forever,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “And I would go anywhere with Kelly and Cole. I think there’s an infinite number of possibilities for characters like Rip and Beth. They are like a modern day Bonnie and Clyde.”

The Yellowstone franchise — which a Bloomberg analysis estimated has generated nearly $3 billion in sales and $700 million in profit — isn’t slowing down anytime soon. And with Beth and Rip finally off the Dutton Ranch and onto their own, the show has room to go wherever it wants. New episodes drop every Friday. Don’t miss them.