In the season premiere of Dutton Ranch, we see Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) and Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) forced to relocate after the Montana ranch of their Yellowstone days burns down. In this latest spinoff from the Taylor Sheridan universe, Montana falls away to the far away lands of Rio Paloma, Texas—trouble nevertheless follows. Sheridan has a gift for creating a seemingly infinite universe of dogged American dramas and in this series, Beth and Rip are both quick to make friends, and just as quick to make enemies—namely Beulah Jackson (Annette Bening), matriarch and owner of rival 10 Petal Ranch.
As the series moves across the country, the landscape of the show transforms along with it. Dutton Ranch’s production designer Yvonne Boudreaux describes herself as “very Southern” having been born in Louisiana and spent the last 22 years in Texas and married to a seventh generation Texan. “Authenticity is everything,” she says of the locations selected for the show. Prior to working on this series, she was working on Yellowstone, and she’s been determined to transition the aesthetic over from the other show while giving it a bit of a Texas makeover. “Beth and Rip’s color palette is a sunrise,” she explains, “We took from the earth, the colors, the vegetation, the agaves, those greens and the dust and the dirt. It’s grittier.”
Like any good Sheridan show, gratuitous violence and clichéd wisdom are doled out with abandon, the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine—in this case ranching gone awry—go down. And there’s something almost Shakespearian about the innocent, young love between Carter (Finn Little) and Oreana (Natalie Alyn Lind) from warring families. The season finale, which wraps just in time for America’s 250th anniversary, feels like it might have something to say about the political moment we’re in. Marching into her office, Mariano (Raoul Max Trujillo) tells Beulah, “You’ve built a kingdom in a country that hates kings.” This of course begs the question: does it?
The finale may leave viewers feeling unsettled, but the show has already been renewed for a second season. We can expect to be seeing more of the extensive acres of high grass and cattle, limestone walls, and the occasional Dallas skyline, come the next season. To learn more about the real-life locations used in the series, Boudreaux walks us through the Lone Star locales used to tell this South Texan story.
