Understanding the heartbreaking Yellowstone prequel makes the final scene of John Dutton III’s funeral all the more meaningful. As a small procession exits the Dutton family cemetery, Rip watches John’s family, friends, and the cowboys exit one by one until he is left alone with the preacher. When he’s alone with John Dutton and the man of God, Rip lowers John’s casket and picks up a shovel. The preacher tells Rip that the shovel is “symbolic,” but Rip remarks that he intends to bury the fifth-generation Dutton himself.

The funeral is one of the outstanding scenes of the Yellowstone finale. It was touching to bid farewell to Kevin Costner’s character after John Dutton’s divisive fate in Yellowstone season 5, part 2’s premiere. While John Dutton getting murdered in the governor’s mansion was a brutal way for the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch leader to die, John’s funeral sent him off correctly, marking the last family member to get buried in the clan’s heirloom grave plot, which is just a meadow that Elsa Dutton once picked out in 1883.

1883 Establishes How People Buried Their Deceased Loved Ones Themselves
The Characters In 1883 Had No Choice

While burying the patriarch himself might have felt out of place in the modern era, Rip’s decision to bury John Dutton is similar to how the characters handle death in 1883. Not only does Rip bury John Dutton III’s body after the funeral, but he also digs the hole for the grave before the ceremony takes place. Whether he knows it or not, Rip is enacting a Yellowstone legacy by digging John’s grave and burying his body personally by establishing the history of the Dutton family burying their loved ones themselves.

The pioneers and cowboys couldn’t hire someone to do their heavy lifting, so they had to drop everything to make a proper grave.

In nearly every episode of 1883, someone digs a grave along the Oregon Trail. As the earliest members of the Dutton clan traveled in a wagon train of emigrants from Texas to the plains, most of their party died. Someone dying in the prequel was typically followed by someone else getting to their knees and using whatever they had as a shovel to bury their dead instead of just leaving their loved ones out in the open. The pioneers and cowboys couldn’t hire someone to do their heavy lifting, so they had to drop everything to make a proper grave.

Rip Burying John Establishes Their Special Bond
Rip Is John’s Final Farewell

Rip burying John Dutton and being the final person to bid him farewell is fitting since Rip was the ranch owner’s right-hand man. Rip digging a grave and burying someone isn’t outside the ordinary of his typical job description when John III was still alive, so it makes sense that HE would do the final dirty work on the ranch before moving to Dillon with Beth. Beyond that, though, Rip is like a son to John Dutton, and the ranch hand proves they have a unique connection by staying behind to ensure that John is adequately buried.

Rip’s concern with John’s final resting situation proves the ranch hand sees the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch as a foster father. Throughout Yellowstone, Rip concerns himself with his parents’ burial arrangements. He tells Beth that a lot of his money from the ranch went into a proper casket and burial for his mother. He also tells Beth in Yellowstone season 2, episode 7, “Resurrection Day,” that he paid a grave digger in Forsyth $5,000 to dig up his father and give him the bones, subsequently throwing them out the window.

Why John’s Burial Is The Perfect Final Nod To 1883’s Grave Scenes
Yellowstone Season 5 Concluded 1883

John III’s funeral ending is the perfect nod to 1883’s grave scenes because the personal burial resembles how the Dutton ancestors buried their dead when they arrived at the land 140 years ago. Elsa Dutton was the first member of the family to get buried on the land, and she was part of a movement of people who had to process the death of their loved ones in grave and intimate ways. Rip doing the same for John III brings the family’s story full circle after seven generations, which is what the Yellowstone season 5 finale was about.

In the Yellowstone ending, Kayce brings the family’s story full circle by selling the clan’s heirloom ranch to the Broken Rock Tribe, whose ancestors helped the Dutton family settle in Paradise Valley, Montana. This decision fulfills the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch prophecy from 1883, wherein James Dutton promises the Crow people that his family will return the land. The Yellowstone finale was about bringing stories from 1883 to a satisfying conclusion, and John Dutton’s funeral, which had a personal element to it that resembled his ancestors’ struggle on the Oregon Trail, was the perfect addition.