Beth might be headed to war with her brother, but at home, things aren’t nearly as dramatic.
When Yellowstone left off, Rip (Cole Hauser) was preparing to lead the cowboys to Texas and leave Beth (Kelly Reilly) behind, but viewers won’t be surprised to find out that their separation doesn’t last long. “We start the show where Rip’s gone to Texas and Beth is miserable without him,” Kelly Reilly previously told EW about the second half of season 5. “Within 24 hours, she’s like, ‘When are you coming back?’ She doesn’t have much patience or understanding that he has to go and do cowboying, so she might take a trip down to Texas to see him.”
Beth and Rip are a bright spot for fans who are unsure how Kevin Costner’s John Dutton will exit the series and what will happen when Beth and Jamie (Wes Bentley) go head-to-head. As the series prepares to air its final episodes, at least we know that our favorite couple is doing okay. “They’re great,” Reilly says. “He’s her main source of joy and happiness. She loves him with all her soul and it is such a beautiful place for me to explore other sides of Beth. We all know the fighter, we all know that side of her, but she is vulnerable with her man and loves him from a very different place, I’d say, from the healthiest part of her she loves him, the purest part of her.”
Beth and Rip’s love story is a long one, starting when they were teenagers and Rip found his way to the ranch. “He’s been the only man she’s ever loved,” Reilly says. “There’s something incredibly romantic and soulful about it, which I really enjoy playing and I think people love the romance of it and the fact that he just laughs at her when she’s crazy. He accepts her fully for who she is, which I think is a really underrated factor in marriage.”
Rip being such a source of happiness for Beth has Reilly thinking about what a happy ending would look like for her character. “If she didn’t have the burden of the ranch and fighting for it, what would she want?” Reilly wonders. “What she wants is a very simple, quiet life on a piece of land that nobody wants and just to be with him. It’s unlike anything you would’ve imagined this woman wanted, but actually, that’s who she is. ”
Whether fans will get to see that in Yellowstone or even a potential next chapter of Rip and Beth’s story — which is not official but has been talked about — it’s something Reilly would like to explore. “There’s some tidbits for a potential future,” she says. “You’re picking up nuggets of information of what makes her heart happy. As the actor, I want to follow that.”
