Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for the Yellowstone Season 5 midseason finale.The Yellowstone Season 5 midseason finale was a lot to unpack. We had a flashback that continued to flesh out Josh Lucas' take on John Dutton and his relationship with a younger Rip and then the modern-day timeline brought us back to Rip (Cole Hauser) and the ranchers having to head south to Texas, with only a few of our favorite crew staying back at the Yellowstone. But all this fell to the wayside when Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Jamie (Wes Bentley) started their typical nonsense with each other.
Jamie is currently at odds with his family. He has been for a while, and he continues to find ways to fight John (Kevin Costner) while being tricked by Sarah (Dawn Olivieri) — or at least that is what fans think is happening in their relationship. She's trying to take down John, and Jamie is lonely enough that he thinks her "affection" is genuinely for him and not just because of his connection to the Dutton family and the Yellowstone Ranch. All of this has led to tension between Jamie and his family, and thus it all came to a head in the midseason finale.
In Season 5, Episode 8 titled "A Knife and No Coin," we got to see a lot of growth from our characters. John went to support Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) and protest the pipeline being built, and Beth and Summer (Piper Perabo) had another one of their tiffs but still had respect for each other they didn't before. The drama ultimately played out when Jamie gave his speech saying that he was going to start the process of impeaching his father as Governor of Montana — and then we saw just how Beth and Jamie's relationship has really sunk to new lows.
Beth and Jamie Truly Are Birds of a Feather
From the start of Yellowstone, Beth seemed to love her other brothers while utterly loathing Jamie. As the show progressed, we learned why, but it still seemed like a lot of animosity for a sister to harbor for her brother. She'd fight him with her fists and her words and, for the most part, Jamie would just take it. We know it's because of what happened when they were younger, but it is still a lot to unpack in how the two interact. As Yellowstone has gone on, however, one thing has been made more and more obvious: They're the same person, whether they want to admit it or not.
Talk about two characters who would absolutely hate that they are comparable, though. Jamie and Beth are so incredibly similar that their fights often happen because the other one did something they would do. In the mid-season finale, Beth breaks into Jamie's house and hits him with a rock because he used a public platform to try and smear their family name. In turn, he reveals that he knows about the "train station" that several characters have been taken to in the past — it's a metaphor, a cliff out in the middle of nowhere that the Duttons use to off people who have wronged them over the past several seasons.
Given both that moment and then what happens at the end of the episode, and you have two characters who know each other so completely and hate it — and it will be both of their downfalls. Beth goes to John for answers about the "train station," and he's honest with her about the secrets of the Yellowstone Ranch. If it gets out, they could lose what has always belonged to the Dutton family. Instead of still hating what her father (and by extension, husband) are doing, she makes the point that Jamie knows about this, meaning that it will be their demise — and suggests they get rid of him in the same way.
Meanwhile, what does Jamie do about this situation? He tells Sarah that his sister is probably going to try and have him killed before finding a way to covertly inquire about how to bring in a hitman to off Beth — to which Sarah says she knows at least one who can make it look like an accidental death. The two are so eerily connected that they know the other's next moves probably before they even do. They are more in each other's heads than either wants to admit, and it is, by extension, a look into sibling rivalries that is honestly fascinating.
Kayce (Luke Grimes) pretty much stays out of their drama and keeps to himself. We don't know how Lee (Dave Annable) would have reacted to their fights, given what little time we had with his character, Jamie and Beth are more similar than either of them really likes to admit — not that they ever do anything about it. This latest episode of Yellowstone is the closest that either character gets to a form of admittance, with Jamie knowing exactly what Beth's next moves will be. How will both of these storylines play into the future of the series? We'll have to wait and see, but it'd be great if Jamie and Beth finally come around and admit that they're too similar and that they hate each other because of that fact. (That might be asking too much when they're too busy plotting to kill one another instead.)