A new episode of Yellowstone aired on Sunday night (November 27) titled Horses in Heaven. The episode featured an emotional interaction between John Dutton (Kevin Costner) and Monica Dutton (Kelsey Asbille), in which John reveals a sad Dutton family secret.
This article discusses that conversation, so DO NOT keep reading if you don’t want to have anything spoiled for you. We’ll also touch on a key plot point that occurred earlier in Season 5. So if you haven’t started the season yet, DO NOT keep reading if you don’t want that spoiled for you either.
With that being said, let’s dive in to this heart-wrenching scene…
At the start of Season 5, Monica was involved in an accident while she was driving herself to the hospital. She was in labor with her and Kayce’s (Luke Grimes) second child. Unfortunately, their baby boy passed away.
Kayce and Monica named their son John in honor of Kayce’s father. They decided to bury him on the Yellowstone ranch.
View this post on Instagram
That brings us to the new episode, Horses in Heaven. We see folks from the Broken Rock reservation digging a grave for baby John. Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) and the other cowboys offer to help.
At the same time, they dig a grave for the elder John’s horse who passed away. As Chief Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) told Kayce and Monica in a prior episode, “your son’s spirit needs a horse spirit to carry him to the other side.” When Kayce asked if that meant he had to kill a horse to be buried next to his son, Rainwater said, “Won’t have to. God will have his horse ready when your son’s ready.”
Once the burial ceremony ends, John meets up with Monica next to her son’s grave. That’s when he tells a heartbreaking story about his past. He says:
“I’ll tell you something I never told anybody. I had a brother for about eighteen hours. His name was Peter. He was born early. His little heart wasn’t strong enough. Not much they could do back in those days; not a lot they can do now. So they just gave him back to my mother. Doctors hoped, we prayed, and neither worked. It changed my mother. It hardened her. She never tried to have children again.”
John then speaks about the birth of his eldest son, Lee. Lee also passed away, though much later in life than baby John:
“Years later, I was grown and Lee had just been born,” the elder John recalls. “Both my parents are looking at him, taking turns holding him. And my father got white as a ghost, looked at my mother and said ‘Peter lived a perfect life. All he saw of this planet was you, and all he knew was that you loved him.’ That boy lived a perfect life, Monica. We’re the only ones who know it was brief. All he knew was you. And that you loved him.“
Talk about a tearjerker…
Head below to watch some of the other standout moments from Yellowstone‘s fifth season.