Marshals Season 2 Addresses Kayce's Controversial Reaction To John Dutton's Death

Spoilers to follow for the “Marshals” Season 2 premiere.

“Marshals” is continuing the trend of calling back to various “Yellowstone” moments. In the Season 2 premiere, “All Hat No Cattle,” Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) sets out to retrieve his son from Tom Weaver (Chris Mulkey). In the process, he’s willing to trade his family for vengeance in an echo of a controversial “Yellowstone” Season 5 plot point that seems to bother Kayce as much as it does fans.

John Dutton’s death in “Yellowstone” Season 5 was controversial, to say the least. Fans simply weren’t ready for Kevin Costner’s towering neo-Western figurehead to be killed off-screen in a death that bore all the trademarks of a hasty re-write following creator Taylor Sheridan and Costner’s well-publicized behind-the-scenes clashes. Amazingly, Sheridan then proceeded to follow up this contentious death with another divisive development — namely, having Kayce track down the gunman responsible for his father’s demise, only to let the guy go.

Indeed, “Yellowstone” Season 5, Episode 12, “Counting Coup,” sees Kayce jump into Grant Horton’s (Matt Gerald) car as he’s leaving a soccer game with his daughter. He then holds the pair at gunpoint and tells Horton to drive, before turning to his daughter and saying, “You should be scared.” Cut to the present, and we get an echo of that exact line in the “Marshals” Season 2 premiere, in which Kayce seems to be battling with his decision to ultimately let Horton live.

In “Counting Coup,” Kayce Dutton tells Grant Horton that he has his Department of Defense record, which means he knows everything about him and can kill Horton or his family whenever he likes. But rather than doing so, Kayce lets him go. “Where I come from, we call that counting coup,” he tells Horton. “It means I took a piece of your soul, and I’m going to keep it.” Mind you, “Yellowstone” fans do like to get upset about things and have often debated the show’s lowest point, so Kayce’s decision to let John Dutton’s killer live proved unsurprisingly controversial. In “All Hat No Cattle,” it seems the character himself knows as much.

After Tom Weaver sends his lawyer and two henchmen to Kayce’s East Camp property, Kayce takes them all out before turning the gun on the woman who appeared to be his latest love interest, Dolly Weaver (Ellyn Jameson). When she tells him he’s scaring her, he repeats what he told Grant Horton’s daughter: “Yeah, you should be scared.” Clearly, then, showrunner Spencer Hudnut, who wrote this episode, had “Counting Coup” in mind.

Soon after, Kayce calls Weaver and says that he’ll trade his East Camp property for Tate Dutton’s safety. “If you try anything,” he tells Weaver, “I will paint the walls with your daughter.” This is yet another echo of his threats to Horton in “Counting Coup,” in which Kayce tells him, “If you try to hedge your bets by getting distance with my family I will paint yours on the f***ing wall.” In other words, the entire “Marshals” Season 2 premiere is an homage to “Counting Coup,” with Kayce using his enemy’s daughter as leverage to ensure the safety of his own loved ones.

“Marshals” Season 1 showed how John Dutton’s death still haunts Kayce, which isn’t all that surprising given the fact he was shot dead in his own home. But in the “Marshals” Season 2 premiere, he seems haunted not by the death so much as his own decision to let Grant Horton go.

After speaking to Tom Weaver and agreeing to trade Dolly Weaver for Tate Dutton, Kayce says, “Well, it won’t be the first time I traded vengeance for my family’s safety.” Later, Dolly asks him what he meant and Kayce says he was referring to his father. “You walked away?” She asks. “Didn’t look back?” to which Kayce replies, “Walking away was the easy part.” Not only does that suggest Kayce has struggled with his decision to let Horton live, it also once again echoes his own threats to Horton. Before Kayce leaves his father’s murderer, he adds, “When I get out, you take off. You look back, I kill you both.”

With “All Hat No Cattle,” Spencer Hudnut seems at least somewhat interested in probing Kayce’s internal struggles post-“Yellowstone.” Unfortunately, there’s little more to this aspect of the episode that dialogue references. By the end, we’re no clearer on how Kayce feels about his decision to count coup back in “Yellowstone,” beyond suspecting that he feels conflicted. Perhaps the show’s writers will interrogate this more as the season goes on, but given that “Marshals” struggled to figure out what it was about throughout Season 1, I wouldn’t count on it.