Set in Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone universe, Paramount’s Marshals takes place a few years after the season 5 finale. Here, we see Kayce Dutton and his teenage son, Tate, living in the East Camp after selling their family’s Yellowstone Ranch to Broken Rock president Thomas Rainwater. Kayce and Beth, John Dutton’s only surviving children, didn’t want their family’s legacy to fall into the wrong hands, and therefore decided to return the land to whom it originally belonged: the Natives. It’s likely that after selling the land, Beth and her husband, Rip, left Montana, while Kayce; his wife, Monica; and their child, Tate, started living a quiet life in the East Camp, working as ranchers. Okay, I heard you. You want to know what happened to Monica. Well, let me give you a spoiler warning so I can dive deeper into the first episode.
Monica Died of Cancer
The first episode revealed that Monica died of cancer a few years ago, but we haven’t yet been given the exact date of her demise. A brief conversation between Kayce and Riverwater hinted that Monica had picked a spot in the East Camp where she wanted to be buried. I tried to look for the date of her demise on her gravestone, but nope, there was nothing. So, after her death, Kayce cut all ties with the outside world and started spending his days looking after the ranch and his kid. The episode also suggested that Monica’s death likely affected Kayce and Tate’s relationship. After losing Monica, Kayce didn’t want to lose the ranch, as he wanted to leave something behind for his son. Or maybe he started seeing the ranch as an escape from his pain. However, things got worse when Kayce started forcing Tate to live like his family had lived for a hundred years. He made the ranch the center of their universe, but Tate didn’t want to be a part of that life. He wanted to forge his own path and see the world, which Kayce failed to understand, therefore letting a crack form in their relationship.
Kayce Becomes A Marshal
I guess you all remember that Kayce was a former Navy SEAL. Well, the first episode gave us a glimpse of his nightmares to establish that backstory. At the beginning of the episode, Pete Calvin, Kayce’s former comrade in the SEALs, paid him a visit and brought him some explosives he had asked for. The important detail here is that Calvin and his team, Andrea Cruz, Belle Skinner, and Miles Kittle, moved to Montana three months ago to start the Marshals team, who report directly to Presidential appointee Harry Gifford. Calvin wanted Kayce to join the team, but he didn’t want to get his hands dirty again. He was at peace on the ranch. Still, Calvin asked for Kayce’s help to catch two federal fugitives, John King and Tyler White, who had been hiding in the area. Kayce knew the area better than anyone, so he could be a useful asset. At first, Kayce refused, but as soon as he found out that these two outsiders were preying on rez women, Kayce decided to join the team for one last rodeo. And as you’ll know, Kayce’s great at his game. He may have given up the badge, but he is still the best marksman out there. So obviously Kayce and Calvin’s team caught the fugitives; however, as soon as Kayce found out about their next job, he asked Calvin if he could stick around for one more day. Also, Andrea is definitely attracted to Kayce, and with Monica gone, I think he’s going to give in to her flirting.
A Bomb Blast at the Rez
So from the looks of it, Marshals is going to be a procedural drama where the titular team will be investigating a new case every week. The first episode was about a vicious mining company dumping their toxic waste in the rez’s river, which was severely affecting the people of Broken Rock. In the past few years, there had been a spike in the cancer rate, and Rainwater believed it was due to the poisoned water. He raised the concern to the government, which was why the Secretary of the Interior was going to visit the protest site to deliver her remarks about the mining locations. Harry Gifford had asked his team to keep an eye on the protestors and protect the secretary if things go south. Kayce knew Tate was going to be a part of the protest, as he had lost his mom to cancer, which was why Kayce requested Calvin to take him with them so he could look after Tate. Also, it’s possible that Monica’s death could be related to the mining operations, but we still don’t know a lot. At the protest site, Kayce spotted a suspicious individual at a distance, but before he could raise the alarm, someone triggered a homemade bomb that gravely injured Rainwater. Don’t worry, he survived.
The Trail Keepers
As it turned out, Owen Kilborn, a high-ranking captain in the US military, was running a survivalist group with his old buddies from the army. He was paid 250,000 dollars from an offshore account to assassinate Thomas Rainwater, because he had been vocal about everything wrong with American society. He was running a campaign to recover the Native American land and give it back to their rightful owners, and it could be possible that some powerful person didn’t want him to succeed. Also, I won’t deny the possibility that it could be the mining company that paid Owen Kilborn to kill Rainwater, as he had been making a lot of noise in the area. So how did Owen pull off this job? It seemed like Owen and his mates took their sweet time to plan this operation, as they didn’t want to leave behind any loose ends. A year ago, Owen sent one of his men, John Decker, an army vet, to work on a state-run oil rig on the rez to befriend a local. There, he came across Jim Kane, a member of Broken Rock, who lived with his wife and daughter. Owen’s men kidnapped Kane’s wife and daughter so they could blackmail Kane into blowing up Rainwater. They believed an angry Native killing one of his own wouldn’t raise suspicion, but unfortunately, their plan didn’t work out in the end. Rainwater survived the attack, and Kayce caught Decker while he was trying to kill Kane to cover their tracks. On Decker’s phone, he found a gaming app on which he saw a video in which Kane’s family was being held hostage. If you remember, in the fifth season of Yellowstone, one of Kayce’s former teammates used a similar app to find information about his father’s killer. Anyway, Kayce and his team connected the dots and concluded the Trail Keepers had used Kane as a patsy, while the real culprit was hiding in plain sight all along. Andrea pointed out that Decker had kidnapped Kane’s family even before the secretary’s visit was made public, which meant someone on the inside had leaked the information. Well, it led them straight to Owen Kilborn.
Owen Is Dead
During the investigation, Miles Kittle found out that Kane’s daughter, Tiva, had a tracker, which gave away their location in Glacier Park. Calvin, Kayce, and the rest of the team quickly loaded their guns to go rescue the family; however, as it turned out, Owen was already aware of their impending arrival and had set a trap. Unfortunately, he didn’t know that there was a Dutton on their team. Moments before Gifford tried to abort the mission, Kayce opened fire on the armed perpetrators inside the building. This shooting sequence reminded me of the 1923 climax scene where Spencer shot down Donald Whitfield’s men in cold blood. Anyway, Kayce and Calvin’s team killed the men and saved Kane’s wife, Lucy, but his daughter was still missing. Owen had taken the girl to Cracker Lake so he could use her as a human shield and escape, but Kayce and Calvin tracked him down, and Kayce shot him dead. Well, Mo was right, I guess. Violence has a way of finding the Duttons. Also, the episode revealed that Calvin’s boss, Gifford, has some past grudges with the Duttons too, which I think will further be explored in the upcoming episodes.
Kayce’s Piya Wiconi
I think it’s true that every single one of us has our own way of dealing with loss and violence. Kayce left the SEALs because he didn’t want to go around killing people without any clear motive. But the tragedy here is the people he has killed are going to haunt him forever. He had found some solace in Monica, but with her gone, those nightmares have returned. He didn’t have a clear motive in life, which was why he slowly sank into his obsession with keeping the ranch running, making things worse, not only for him but for his son as well. Coincidentally, Calvin went through the same confusion and dilemma after he left the Navy SEALs. He found his escape in pills and throwing hands, which was why he asked himself, is that the kind of person he wanted to be for his daughter? He told Kayce that the Marshals became his salvation, and Kayce realizes that he might be hurting his son the same way by not having a clear path in life. Becoming a Marshal for a day and saving innocent lives helped Kayce decide what he wanted to do. It was further underlined by Mo and Rainwater, who told Kayce that he wasn’t a killer, but a protector, but sometimes to protect one’s own, one has to take up the gun. There were a lot of bad wolves roaming the land, and the rez needed a sheepdog more than ever. So yes, Kayce isn’t a rancher anymore, nor is he going to force Tate to become one. He decided to change the course and would let Tate forge his own. It’s a new beginning, aka, piya wiconi, for both of them.
We know that Kayce’s new job is going to be overwhelming for him because of the violence involved. We already saw Calvin popping pills after the operation and crying in the locker room looking at his daughter’s picture. It’s a tough job for everyone on the team, but with Kayce around, I think they will be able to look out for each other.
Kayce Shot the Wolf
So if you remember, throughout Yellowstone, Kayce perceived the sighting of the wolf as a bad omen, which evidently affected his decision. He feared that if he didn’t give away the ranch, he might lose his wife and son, but Monica died anyway, right? Even at the beginning of the episode, when Kayce spotted the wolf, he assumed that something bad was going to happen to his son, which I believe was the reason why he wanted to be at the protest, to protect Tate from any unforeseen tragedy. However, when Mo told him that the rez needed a sheepdog to protect them from the wolves, Kayce understood the meaning behind his words. In Yellowstone, it was Mo who had told Kayce that omens like these could mean whatever he wanted them to. If he believed something bad was going to happen, then it was going to happen, because that was what he wanted. But Kayce didn’t want fear to dictate his life. It was the fear of losing his loved ones that had taken away everything he held dear. He had lost his wife and now was pushing his son away from him. But no more. Kayce wasn’t afraid of the creature anymore. He wanted to be the sheepdog his people wanted, the savior they needed, which was why he picked up the gun and shot the gray wolf in front of him. So, a piya wiconi for Kayce, right? Well, these are my thoughts on the first episode, but if you have anything else to add, please drop a comment below.
