9 Forgotten ‘Yellowstone’ Subplots That Were Just Abandoned

Yellowstone is more than just a television show. It’s become a television juggernaut over the course of five seasons, turning creator Taylor Sheridan into TV’s Billion-Dollar Writer in the process.

But even the show’s most passionate fans will admit that there have been several subplots over the years that were introduced with a lot of drama — only to kind of fizzle out and never get resolved.

Yellowstone Season 1: What Happened to Tate’s Dinosaur Bones?

It began all the way back in Season 1, when Tate (Brecken Merrill) found some dinosaur bones on the land that developers want to exploit. That plotline seemed like it was going to lead somewhere, but then … well, it just sort of disappeared.

Tate was excited about his discovery, but not long after, Kayce (Luke Grimes) spotted a drone hovering over the site, and right after that, someone ransacked their house and stole the bones, bringing that subplot to a sudden end.

As ScreenRant reports, some fans believe that the dinosaur bones plot could still be resolved, if the bones are recovered and it turns out that their discovery makes the Dutton ranch some sort of historical landmark. But since there’s only one episode left in Season 5, it doesn’t look like that’s going to be the case.

Yellowstone Season 2: Why Didn’t the Bomb on the Plane Ever Explode?

Another really glaring Yellowstone plot hole happened toward the end of Season 2, when Kayce and Dan Jenkins’ (Danny Huston) security man sneak into a hangar and plant a bomb in the Beck Brothers’ plane.

Once again, the plot was introduced in a very dramatic fashion, only to be instantly discarded and never brought up again. You have to wonder if some unlucky soul later bought that plane and blew themselves up inadvertently, but we’ll never know.

The Duttons ended up dispatching the Beck Brothers in a much more personal way, with Kayce killing Teal Beck (Terry Serpico) by shooting him while he’s sitting on the toilet, while John Dutton (Kevin Costner) kills Malcolm Beck (Neal McDonough) by shooting him — or, does he? That brings us to our next dropped plotline:

Yellowstone Season 2: Is Malcolm Beck Really Dead?

We never actually saw Malcolm Beck die on screen, which led to rampant fan speculation that he was still alive and would return to the show at some point. Neal McDonough fed into that speculation in an interview in which he hinted that his character might still return, and fan theories reached a fever pitch after the first episode in Season 4, when the Duttons came under concerted attack from unknown assailants.

Fans speculated that Malcolm Beck was behind those attacks, but that ended up being completely wrong. With just one more episode to go, it appears that we’re never really going to know if Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan intended to use the character again before changing his mind, or if it’s just a loose end that never got tied up.

Yellowstone Season 4: What Happened to the White Hat Floating Down the River?

One of the main reasons fans speculated about Malcolm Beck being alive was due to a teaser video that emerged in advance of Season 4 in 2021.

The trailer showed a quiet river, and then we heard a gunshot off camera before a white hat was seen floating down the river, followed by a trail of blood in the water.

The white hat looked like the one Malcolm Beck wore, but in an especially bizarre twist, that scene never aired on Yellowstone, even though the trailer for the season literally centered around it entirely.

We can probably thank the pandemic for that, since it interrupted all kinds of shooting schedules and made people have to reconfigure shows, but it’s a dangling plotline that seems unlikely to get resolved.

Yellowstone Season 5: The New Sheriff Just Kinda Vanished

One of the most shocking deaths in Yellowstone history happened in Season 4, when Sheriff Donnie Haskell was killed in a gunfight in a diner.

That made way for a new sheriff, and in Season 5, the show made much ado about the fact that he made an example out of Beth Dutton by putting her in jail after an epic bar fight, after warning John that he would not look the other way about the Duttons’ misdeeds the way the previous sheriff had.

However, in another unexplained move, we never really heard from the sheriff again, and the expected fireworks between him and John Dutton never materialized.

Yellowstone Season 5: What Happened to the Wolves Who Got Shot?

One of the most ominous plotlines of the first half of Yellowstone’s Season 5 involved a pack of wolves that they Bunkhouse Boys inadvertently shot, not realizing they were tagged and protected by law until they had already killed them.

The investigation into those shootings led right to the Yellowstone, and it looked like it could threaten the ranch and the Duttons. However, when Yellowstone returned for the second half of Season 5, the wolves were never brought up again, in yet another vanished plotline.

Yellowstone Season 5: What Is Sarah Atwood’s True Identity?

One particularly interesting tidbit in the first half of Season 5 involved Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri), who evidently was not who she claimed to be. At least, that’s what Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) said after researching her past to try to get some leverage on the corporate attorney.

As with the previously mentioned plotlines, that, too, seemingly vanished when Season 5 returned for its second half. The mystery of Atwood’s true identity was never cleared up, and since the character subsequently got shot to death in the middle of the street, it doesn’t look like we’re ever going to know what her true story was.

Yellowstone Season 5: Whatever Happened to Angelas Blue Thunder?

Yellowstone Season 5 is particularly long on unresolved subplots, partly due to the pandemic and the various strikes in Hollywood, and partly due to the scheduling conflicts with Kevin Costner, who ended up leaving the show.

Another one of those unresolved plots involved Broken Rock Reservation attorney Angela Blue Thunder (Q’orianka Kilcher), who challenged Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) and his leadership, warning that she was going to force him out of his position as chairman. A significant part of Episode 3 was devoted to that story, but we never heard about it again, and the character of Angela Blue Thunder vanished from the show after that.

Yellowstone Season 5: What Happened to Carter’s Girlfriend?

One final unresolved plot from Season 5 involves Carter’s (Finn Little) girlfriend, Halie (Orli Gottesman). She joined the show to give the Carter character more depth and a separate storyline in the first half of the season, but since the second half of Season 5 had to be truncated in order to wrap the show within the number of episodes remaining, that storyline — and that character — simply vanished, with the only trace being a passing reference Lloyd (Forrie J. Smith) made about Carter seeming unusually happy.

So, will any of these dropped plotlines get resolved in the final episode of Yellowstone Season 5? It doesn’t seem likely, but with Taylor Sheridan, you never know — we’ll all just have to watch and see what happens on Sunday night (Dec. 15).

Yellowstone airs on Sundays at 8PM ET on Paramount Network.

Sterling Whitaker is a Senior Writer and Senior Editor for Taste of Country. He focuses on celebrity real estate, as well as coverage of Yellowstone and related shows like 1883 and 1923. He’s interviewed cast members including Cole Hauser, Kelly Reilly, Sam Elliott and Harrison Ford, and Whitaker is also known for his in-depth interviews with country legends including Don Henley, Rodney Crowell, Trace Adkins, Ronnie Milsap, Ricky Skaggs and more.