’Yellowstone’ Season 3: Dutton Family Bombshell Revealed About Jamie

Kevin Costner has talked about the unknown being one of the more intriguing aspects of Yellowstone building up to Season 3. Sunday’s latest episode, the seventh of the season, had to take some time to swallow for the Oscar-winner due to its revelations. It also raises the bar for what’s to come in the coming weeks’ conclusion.

Spoilers will continue below for the latest episode, “The Beating,” so proceed with caution. It is also addressing a fan theory that has existed since the series began, meaning another reason to heed the warning.

If you missed the episode, it was revealed that Kevin Costner‘s John Dutton is not Jamie’s birth father. He’s adopted and his true father is a convicted murderer. Worse yet, Jamie finds out after obtaining his birth certificate for his assistant, learning some troubling background information that leads to some anger bubbling to the top.

It’s an identity crisis for the Dutton son. According to the documents, his father was imprisoned for murdering his mother, leading to Costner’s Dutton swooping in with his wife to pick up the pieces. When Jamie looks on the wall at his Harvard diploma, he sees someone else standing there and questions what his place truly is within the family. He also has a lot of questions, both for his birth father and his adoptive father.

He informs his assistant that he wants to know if Garrett Randall is paroled. “If he has, I want his address, his phone number, his place of employment, everything,” he says before heading off to get answers from the other half of his situation.

Confronting John Dutton, a tense moment unfolds with Jamie defiantly telling his adoptive father he can’t tell him what to do, and John snarling back to regain control. “You can sit in my living room or you can leave it. Those are your options,” Costner’s John tells his adoptive son.

Once cooler heads prevail, Costner starts to share details about Jamie’s past and tells him that his real mother never “got the chance to love you” before his real father killed her. The people who cared for Jamie were John Dutton and his wife.

“I protected you, I guided you, I loved you, you can call me whatever you want, Jamie, but I will call you son, because I have earned the right, it is the hardest thing I have ever done,” Dutton tells his son. He also informs him that he has the “opportunity to choose” when he moves forward.

“You are a resourceful man so I am sure you can find him and you can look at his black f—ing heart, his rotten soul. You can look into his eyes, Jamie and you get to choose. You can choose who you call father,” John Dutton tells him before going to sleep and closing out the episode.

It’s a tense and wild way to end a mid-season episode, with some recaps claiming it carries the weight of a finale. But there are three episodes left. Will we get to meet Garrett Randall? Will Jamie choose to remain a Dutton? Yellowstone airs on Paramount Network Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.