John Dutton played by Kevin Costner owns the largest contiguous ranch in the US, partially bordered by Yellowstone National Park. Developers salivate at the idea of grabbing some of his land and making billions. The new chief of the local Indian tribe is a well educated former Wall Street broker with a strong dislike of Dutton and other white men who own former Indian lands. He is planning a hostile takeover of the Yellowstone Ranch, and also has plans for a casino on bordering Indian land. All the major power players in this drama are rich and powerful, and think nothing of taking lives to attain their goals, including John Dutton. Though Dutton is the more sympathetic of the rich and powerful, his hands are not clean.

In this bizarre story, the ranch hands at Yellowstone can only leave employment at the ranch one way, by dying. Some of them only find this out in the last seconds of their lives. Some of the cowboys living at the ranch have been permanently marked with the brand of the ranch. These are cowboys who have been given a second chance in life by Dutton. By taking the red hot iron brand to their chests these cowboys are showing that they're committed to the ranch, that they can be trusted. They may not realize at the time that ranch hands at the Yellowstone are expected to break the law when ordered to do so. The lead ranch hand, who wears the brand, is Rip Wheeler, who was taken in by Dutton as a young homeless teenager. John Dutton is portrayed as a hard and tough man fighting to protect his ranch to pass it on to his children. Despite his extra-judicial tactics the viewer tends to pull for Dutton. Many of his illegal tactics are viewed as necessary, and certainly not any worse than the tactics used by the vultures seeking to take the land which has been in his family for at least 150 years. A billionaire developer admitted to trying to kill Dutton to get him out of the way, and some of the Indian tribe think nothing of stealing cattle and murdering cowboys. Also John Dutton is fighting cancer. He is feeling pressured to defeat the attacks upon the ranch before he dies so his children can have keep their heritage. Given these harsh realities, Dutton's tactics seem, at least, no worse than par for the course. Frontier justice is sometimes meted out, and though it isn't legal to kill a man who tried to murder you, it is at least understandable. Other murders however are not so easy to justify. John Dutton is not an innocent man.

The Dutton children are not terribly well adjusted, with one exception, son Lee Dutton. However Lee was murdered by an Indian and is no longer around to add stability and balance to the family.
Son Kayce disobeyed his father when he married a beautiful Indian girl played by Kelsey Asbille (whom I first saw in this series). She is a beautiful lady and her character is beautiful inside and out. Kayce is mostly estranged from his father, is a decorated veteran, and he and his wife Monica have a son, Tate. Son Jamie Dutton is a lawyer and the ranch's attorney. He and sister Beth are at odds with each other constantly. Jamie has political ambitions and seems somewhat emotionally labile. Beth is a hard drinking, tough, foul mouthed, fixer of sorts who prides herself on her ability to ruin other people's careers and lives. She is a loose cannon however and is haunted by the memory of her failure to bring help to her dying mother when she was a child.

John Dutton is besieged by enemies who are after his ranch and out to destroy him. One is a billionaire developer from California named Dan Jenkins who is intent upon building a self sufficient community on land bordering the ranch. He tried to kill Dutton with a staged highway accident but only managed to kill his horse. Beth Dutton set out to antagonize and destroy Jenkins. She does antagonize him quite a bit. John Dutton deprived Jenkins development of its water supply when he rerouted a branch of a river running through his ranch, which is legal in Montana.

Chief Thomas Rainwater hates Dutton and wants to take his ranch. In the series pilot he stole a lot of Dutton's cattle, cutting a barbed wire fence and coaxing them onto Indian land. Dutton tried to scare the cattle back onto the ranch one evening with help from his cowboys and the cattleman's association. His son Lee was murdered during the attempt. John later used his political contacts to have him arrested and jailed until he returned the cattle.

Rainwater and Jenkins teamed up to try to destroy Dutton. At the same time Jamie launched a campaign for Attorney General. But Beth Dutton antagonized the Governor, who sometimes sleeps with John Dutton. With so many enemies lining up against John Dutton, his political friends have begun looking toward a successor to John as head of the Cattleman's Association. Beth's atagonization of the governor hasn't helped John's situation.

In the season finale Dutton told Rip Wheeler he is dying and he needs his problems to go away permanently before he is gone, so the kids will have a ranch to inherit. Rip and the cowboys, including Kayce, kidnap Dan Jenkins and force him to admit the truth about his tactics. When Kayce hears that Jenkins tried to kill his Dad he hangs him, though Rip had ordered Jenkins cut down.

Did Jenkins die at the end of that rope? Did Rip finally cut him down in time to prevent that? What of John's instruction to make the problems go away permanently?

We await season 2 to find out.