“Every. Body. Pays” From the Dutton’s would-be assassins to Garrett Randall, here’s how Yellowstone Season 4’s villain hierarchy breaks down.
As Season 4’s byline promised, whoever put out the hit on the Dutton family would pay. It took the entire season for this to come to fruition, but the wait was worth it. Be warned of major spoilers for Yellowstone ahead.
Bottom Feeders: The Militia
Ah, the pawns. As Season 4 began, we dropped right back into the fold as further assassins came for Kayce Dutton. Through this, an entire militia of thugs was discovered. We wouldn’t see their faces until the second episode of Season 4, but Kayce’s hunt began immediately for those responsible for attempting to end the Dutton family.
With a gripping montage, Yellowstone Season 4, Episode 2 saw Kayce, Rip, and Lloyd take out the remainder of the thugs in brutal fashion. But these bottom feeders were the lowest on the totem pole; scum hired by someone with big money who wanted the Duttons dead. And money talks.
Outside Man: Checkers
Money talks so loud, in fact, that Mo and fellow Broken Rock enforcers would overhear it blabbering at the casino. There sat the next rung on the latter, Chester ‘Checker’s Spears (Brad Carter). “I put it all together,” Checkers bragged in public.
Mo and his men captured the weasel, and Mo would pry further information out of him before he and Thomas Rainwater delivered him to John Dutton personally. And it was here that we learned who “outside man” Checkers received his orders to organize a militia from.
John then took Checkers to the train station; instigating an old-fashioned Western shootout with the outlaw. Checkers had no more information to give, after all, and John needed him disposed of – but wasn’t willing to do so in cold blood as Checkers had.
Inside Man: Terrell Riggins
An inside man can only get so far from behind bars. As we learn through several pivotal Yellowstone Season 4 exchanges, Checkers was doing the bidding of someone inside Montana’s incarceration system.
As Mo revealed in Ep. 3, that someone was a convict “in state prison, in Deer Lodge,” a city in Montana. He then presents his mugshot, and we see Terrell Riggins’ (Bruno Amato) face for the first time.
“I don’t know this man,” John replies to the face of Riggins.
“He knows you,” Mo offers.
As it would turn out, however, Riggins was acting on behalf of another convict; one that now walked the streets a free man.
‘Yellowstone’ Kingpin: Garrett Randall
In mid Season 4, John asks Kayce to deliver a message to Jamie. He wants his Attorney General son to look into this Terrell Riggins character and see why he would want them dead. Jamie does so and discovers a horrible truth: Riggins and Jamie’s biological father, Garrett Randall (Will Patton), were longtime cellmates in prison.
With this, we finally learned where the personal connection and motivation for the Dutton assassinations came from: Randall. As Randall tells Jamie near the end of the season, it was him who tried to have the Duttons all killed. “And I’ll keep trying until I get it right,” he tells his biological son under the roof they then shared.
But as soon as Beth discovers the truth, she gives Jamie an ultimatum: kill Garrett Randall, or the Dutton family kills you.
And in the Yellowstone Season 4 finale, Jamie delivers – killing Garrett Randall by the creek on their ranch. With him, the season’s biggest threat to the Duttons is gone.
