To exist in Taylor Sheridan’s multi-century Montana epic is to live in a world of endless mortal threats. Between Yellowstone and prequel 1883, we’ve seen the Dutton family face perils including, but not limited to: a poisoned arrow, a direct hit by a tornado, a mail bomb, numerous rattlesnakes, still more numerous assassins, cancer, a fatal riding accident, a mid-labor car crash, air-dropped cattle poison, a kidnapping, renegade bikers, death by snowdrift, emergency abdominal surgery by a veterinarian, and cattle thieves of every conceivable description.
The latest addition to the Sheridanverse is likewise no stranger to carnage. Through the first half of 1923’s debut season, with Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren stepping in as family heads Jacob and Cara Dutton, the average number of on-screen deaths per episode is six. Let me stress that these are not because of old age.
And yet, more improbable than even the number of violent 1923 deaths is the number of miraculous survivals. In order to rack up that death rate of six fatalities per episode, Sheridan has imagined a world with constant threats. But because it’s the Dutton family we’re interested in—in particular, divining which procreation-age Duttons (namely, Jacob and Cara’s nephews, John and Spencer, plus John’s son, Jack) beget the ones facing their own perpetual dangers a few generations later on Yellowstone—the Duttons are who mostly have to make it through. Sometimes this is plausible. Sometimes it is very, very much not.
So, with 1923 returning Sunday for the remainder of its season and with all the love of a dramatic Sheridan ba-bump, we present the definitive 1923 survivability rankings, for the Duttons and for the poor souls who find themselves in the dynastic splash zone, ranked from most to least survivable.
15. Pinned by a Dead Horse
Let the record show that this is the precise devastating injury that seals the finale of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Ernest Hemingway described the aftermath of a horse collapsing on its rider’s leg thusly: “His left leg stayed perfectly flat under the horse as he moved to the right. It was as though there was a new joint in it; not the hip joint but another one that went sideways like a hinge.” “I am mucked, see?” the character summarizes, and the bell soon tolls for the horse crushee.
The Ringer’s Streaming Guide
There’s a lot of TV out there. We want to help: Every week, we’ll tell you the best and most urgent shows to stream so you can stay on top of the ever-expanding heap of Peak TV.
But when Jack’s horse is killed and dumps him sideways, somehow he is very much not mucked. Indeed, while he needs a pair of cowboys to free him, he is completely unscathed, giving this predicament the highest survivability ranking. Winner: Dutton fairy dust.
14. Socked in the Head 15 Consecutive Times
Much of 1923 is set at a bleak boarding school, where a cadre of sociopathic nuns and priests educate-slash-imprison a group of young Native American girls. Among the girls is Teonna Rainwater (a possible ancestor of Yellowstone’s Thomas Rainwater), who takes particular issue with the methods of one Sister Mary; in return, she’s repeatedly beaten. She does, however, manage to furnish Sister Mary with a bloody nose and, one imagines, quite a headache in the premiere.
13. Tackled by a (Dead) Lion
Spencer begins 1923 in Kenya, where he is working as a mercenary big-game hunter. At one point, he’s credited with dispatching the Tsavo Man-Eaters, who were actually killed in 1898; he mutters that he was 5 years old at the time, so he was presumably not involved.
In one scene, a large male lion pounces at him just as he fires his gun. Fortunately for Spencer, it’s dead by the time it lands on him; unfortunately, it is still a lion. The average male African lion can weigh anywhere from 330 to 550 pounds and can reach speeds of 50 miles per hour. This one had momentum and pointy objects aimed in its direction.
And yet, despite being flattened by a hairy Vespa with claws, Spencer shows no signs of injury whatsoever.
12. Shot in the Chest (but You’re a Dutton)
In general, the Yellowstone universe observes old-timey action movie law no. 1, wherein a bullet to a bad guy instantly dispatches them from this life. This notably does not apply to the Duttons, who routinely survive shootings and any number of other hazards.
11. Stuck in a Runaway Wagon After Being Shot
Color me surprised that it took this many years for Sheridan to have a character leap from horseback into a runaway wagon to grab hold of the reins. That feat—or, in the case of Elizabeth Strafford, Jack’s fiancée, being stuck in the back moments after being shot in the stomach—does not seem likely to go very well in the real world.
10. The Box
Among the many tortures that Teonna is forced to endure is a spell in the school’s hot box. She survives, but by the look of things—and the fever she still has afterward—not by much.
9. Charged by a Bull Elephant
WikiHow, that indispensable fount of wisdom, suggests responding to an elephant charge by studying the elephant’s posture to see if it means business, which is usually signaled by flattened ears and a tucked-in trunk. Alas, in the sun-dappled hours after Spencer proposes to Alexandra—the British socialite who, in the space of a few days, meets Spencer and decides to run off with him (and, moreover, away from her family and her fiancé on the eve of their wedding, a detail that might give a non-Dutton pause before embarking on a life together)—the elephant in question opts to flip their car, which does point to some 7-ton ill will. In that case, flee in a zigzag. Just definitely don’t show it your backside: “The elephant will see this behavior as fearful and submissive and will be inclined to chase after you and hunt you down.” Whoops!
8. Hiding in a Tree Surrounded by a Pride of Hungry Lions
On the one hand: Spencer has a gun. On the other: Lions climb trees.
7. Helmet Versus Skull
In a flashback, we see Spencer at war; when the enemy gets too close, he gets creative with his steel helmet. This will not be the last death via face-smashing.
6. Tackled by a (Very Much Alive) Man-Eating Leopard
Spencer is hired to dispatch a vicious leopard that is hunting visitors at a chichi safari camp. The vicious leopard turns out to be two vicious leopards who are very good at their hobby of eating the rich: We see one tackle a woman and drag her up a tree, while the other takes out one of Spencer’s seasoned guides. But when it’s Spencer’s turn to be pounced on, the leopard for some reason diverges from its highly successful strategy of immediate neck-chomping; he alone walks away from certain death, albeit with a couple of scratches. This, in case you did not notice, is a running theme.
5. Extramarital Relations With a Dutton
In 1923, both Jack and Spencer are in thrall to blonds. (This, apparently, is a congenital Dutton trait.) With Jack’s marriage to Elizabeth imminent, the two share what seems to be their first night together. The next day, Elizabeth is shot in the stomach, Jack is shot in the shoulder, and both of their fathers are killed. In Spencer’s case, hours after asking Alexandra to marry him and in the wake of extensive premarital canoodling (again, it’s a distressingly condensed timeline here, but I imagine time seems of the essence if everything is constantly trying to kill you and everyone you know), the pair are charged by an elephant and left to fight off lions and hyenas in a tree overnight.
Don’t believe me that there’s a Dutton hookup curse? In 1883, Elsa Dutton falls for the cowboy Ennis, who is killed by bandits immediately after they get engaged. She then falls for Sam, a Comanche warrior. He survives, but Elsa is killed shortly thereafter.
In Yellowstone, Jamie Dutton’s campaign aide and lover, Christina, ends up out of a job, is left to raise their child alone, and is then entangled in an assassination plot; his present fling, Sarah Atwood, is the leading Season 5 villain, a position that does not generally offer much in the way of health or longevity. Beth Dutton falls for Rip Wheeler as a teenager, she gets pregnant, and doctors perform a hysterectomy on her without her knowledge or consent; when she sleeps with another Yellowstone Dutton Ranch hand, Rip inadvertently kills him and is forced to take the Yellowstone brand that ties him to the ranch for life. John III’s relationships after being widowed are a mixed bag: Former Montana Governor Lynelle Perry is elected to the Senate (opening up the gig to John, who plainly hates it), but environmental activist Summer Higgins is tricked by Beth and arrested, given a lengthy prison sentence, and then freed on a legally dubious house arrest that sees her confined to the Yellowstone, where she is closer and closer to being forced to eat meat.
Do! Not! Sleep! With! A! Dutton! Out! Of! Wedlock!
4. Machine Gun (but You’re a Dutton)
1923 heel Banner Creighton, who loves his sheep to a degree that should probably be investigated, takes a swing at the king when he caps off an ambush of the Dutton family by pulling up with a machine gun and letting loose. Poor John, who survived a number of calamities on the Oregon Trail, detailed in 1883 (including, but not limited to, the aforementioned tornado, near drownings, rattlesnakes, bandit raids, and an attack by the Lakota; the Sheridan night is dark and full of terrors), had no such luck with a bullet to the head.
Jacob, however, implausibly fares better. We see that he takes a bullet to his left thigh, upper-left chest, lower-right abdomen (the same location that on its own caused this), and seemingly his left arm, which is also bandaged in the aftermath. Notably, he has blood coming out of his nostrils and mouth immediately after the attack, which suggests major internal damage. And yet he persisted! Never mind that he was stitched up on his kitchen table by the local alcoholic doctor five years before the discovery of penicillin. With the last name Dutton, machine guns offer only a 50-50 chance of doom. (Even less if you include Spencer’s time in World War I.)
3. Vigilante Justice
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Dutton in possession of a murder plot must not face any legal consequences whatsoever. So it is when the Yellowstone’s cowboys round up Banner and four other meddling sheepherders with the audacity to feed their fuzzy ruminants on Yellowstone grass. In return, Jacob puts them on horses with their hands tied and nooses around their necks. Four of the horses swiftly decide that they’d rather not be involved and wander off as their riders hang. Banner manages to keep his mount in place long enough to get his hands free, which is a testament to either Banner’s husbandry prowess (again, investigate this man!) or the horse’s particular fondness for sheep. In a completely baffling display of unexplained bodybuilder strength, Banner then climbs his own noose and hangs from it with one hand as he cuts through the rope with the other.
Upon learning of Jacob’s quadruple homicide, the Bozeman sheriff briefly grumbles. It is never brought up again.
2. Shot in the Chest (but You’re Not a Dutton)
The single-greatest risk to any person living in Taylor Sheridan’s Montana in any decade is being near a Dutton or Dutton employee with a gun. (They all have guns.) It is not just that the Duttons seem to have been dipped in the river Styx: In the interest of expediency—so many battles for land, so little time—their targets essentially respond like NPCs.
1. Beaten With a Sack of Bibles, Then Suffocated, Then, Uh, Rulered
And so we come to the very least survivable encounter shown in 1923 so far. In the midseason finale, Teonna at last exacts her vengeance upon Sister Mary. She sneaks into the nun’s room in the dead of night with a sack of her beloved Bibles, with which Teonna hits her in the head over and over, leaving her bloodied and dazed. Next comes suffocation, which seems to do the trick; nonetheless, Teonna then holds one of the rulers so often used in her punishments over a flame until it glows with heat before pressing it to Sister Mary’s cheek.
Do not mess with Teonna.
