The Marshals premiere didn’t go over too well with Yellowstone fans. Though the CBS spinoff series was branded as the next generation of Yellowstone storytelling, audiences tuned into the first episode of Marshals to find a rote law enforcement procedural that just so happened to include a little bit of Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes).
To be fair, there was a lot of pressure on Marshals to carry the Yellowstone torch. And if you weren’t into the Dutton family history before the Marshals pilot, then you just tuned into another cop show to watch on CBS Monday nights before Tracker as if it was any other series premiere. Episode 2 tries to unite those fandoms a bit more. Kayce mentions that Rip (Cole Hauser) is alright near the beginning of the episode. Later, he’s even asked to properly mourn his wife by spending time with his off-screen father-in-law. It’s a task I didn’t think would prove so difficult. But as awkwardly as Marshals might integrate its Dutton family past, I can appreciate that they’re certainly trying.
The drama begins in episode 2, titled “Zone of Death,” when US Marshal boss and returning Yellowstone guest Harry Gifford (Brett Cullen) remarks to team leader Pete Calvin (Logan Marshall-Green) that it’s often best not to give a Dutton too much authority around Montana. “You don’t find it odd that’s he jumping back into law enforcement when the two biggest cold cases in the state are his father’s death and his brother’s disappearance?” Harry asks. “It’s a coincidence,” Pete naively responds.
What would Kayce do if the US Marshals found Jamie’s body?
No Pete, he’s right. And until he even brought up, I actually forgot that there’s a mountain pass of dead bodies that the Dutton family used to drop off in no man’s land Wyoming. They called it “The Train Station,” which 1923 later retconned as “The Zone of Death.” It’s basically a strip of land on the border of Montana and Wyoming where a complete lack of law enforcement patrol means that you can just dump your dead enemies there like The Sopranos did with the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
The Zone of Death is where Kayce’s brother Jamie (Wes Bentley) was thrown into after Beth killed him in the Yellowstone finale. There are countless others as well. So, when the Marshals are sent in there to stop a drug deal gone wrong, Kayce’s a little jumpy that one or two of his family’s skeletons might fall out of closet.
None of them do. But there’s a little sense of dread hanging over the Dutton heir now in his new profession. Hopefully, Marshals chooses to continue following Kayce as he reckons with the sins of the father plot that episode 2 introduces. That, or Marshals will need to do a little bit more than simply mention Rip’s name to keep the Yellowstone franchise alive.