Paramount Network’s hit neo-Western drama Yellowstone is nearing the end of its third season, and the battle for the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch is raging as hard as ever. Patriarch John Dutton (Kevin Costner) and his motley crew of family, acquaintances and employees have had their work cut out for them since the very beginning of the show, as they occupy what seems to be the most wanted piece of land in the entire United States. As the season finale draws close, many plot threads indicate that, if anything, things are about to get even bloodier.
In their efforts to protect their precious swath of gorgeous, rural Montana from the various groups and individuals around them, the Duttons and their cohorts have been involved in many unsavory acts, up to and including outright crimes. Some fans have noticed, however, that the characters have often performed their unlawful deeds in a way that strikes as a little bit odd. Let’s take a look at the small detail that bothers fans about the crimes on Yellowstone.
Committing crimes while riding Yellowstone-branded vehicles
Anyone who has watched Yellowstone is probably familiar with the large, Yellowstone-branded trucks many Dutton-related characters use to get around whenever romantically riding horses across the majestic Montana landscape isn’t feasible. These trucks are used as the vehicles of choice in many of their more unsavory activities, and as this Reddit thread points out, this doesn’t seem like the cleverest possible way to break law. “Everything gets done in these Yellowstone-branded trucks (kidnappings, assaults, murders etc.),” one Redditor points out. “Surely, they must get picked up on CCTV, etc.?” Another user wonders why the Duttons don’t simply use less recognizable vehicles for their more nefarious deeds: “You’d think they’d use disposable cars and vans that they stash off the ranch.”
To be fair, other users point out that rural Montana isn’t famous for its CCTV surveillance, and indeed, if anyone has cameras in those areas, it’s probably the Duttons themselves. Still, the clearly marked trucks are used even when the ranch takes its lawless acts to more urbanized areas, such as the season 1 incident in which the Dutton men abducted developer Dan Jenkins (Danny Huston) in the middle of a town.
All in all, it’s not a huge gripe, and could be shrugged away with the simple fact that the Duttons are so formidable in the area that they don’t need to care about such trivial matters. Even so, this practice of basically advertising their identity while committing crimes could potentially come back to bite them in a big way if the media gets a hold of, say, a mobile phone video of their shenanigans.
