Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Marshals Season 2, Episode 5.
As a Yellowstone spin-off, it never exactly comes as a surprise whenever Marshals nods to the events of the original Taylor Sheridan-made series. After all, Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) has a long Montana history that goes beyond his time with federal law enforcement. But sometimes, the CBS procedural goes a step further by using Kayce’s past as a springboard for a larger idea. It may not always be in the form of an overarching plot, but in the case of this week’s “Secret Weapon,” he name-dropped a character who we thought the show forgot about after the first few episodes of last season: Wes Bentley‘s Jamie Dutton.
Kayce Just Used His Brother Jamie As Both Inspiration and a Cautionary Tale
When trying to pull information about a bomb’s location out of a runaway, Will McCoy (Keean Johnson, who previously appeared on Joe Pickett), Kayce compares him to his brother Jamie, noting that both were considered the “black sheep” of the family. In fact, Kayce takes the comparison a step further by adding that his brother was tormented by their older sister, Beth (Kelly Reilly), in a similar vein to how Will’s older brother does him. Of course, all this is to figure out where Will’s kin took serial bomber Rudy Carptener’s (Braxton Hale) explosive device, which Derrek McCoy planned to use to take down the bankers who “stole” their family land. What’s especially interesting about Kayce’s callback to his brother is that he uses Jamie’s tragedy to encourage Will to do the right thing, deceptively noting that his own brother went and made his own life.
The show that claimed the most of your answers is the world you were built for. If two tied, both are shown — you’re complicated enough to straddle two Sheridan universes.
You are a Dutton — or you might as well be. You understand that some things are worth protecting at any cost, and that the modern world’s indifference to history, to land, to legacy, is not something you’re willing to accept quietly. You lead from the front, you carry your family’s weight without complaint, and when someone threatens what’s yours, you don’t escalate — you finish it. You’re not cruel. But you are absolute. In Yellowstone’s world, that combination of ferocity and loyalty doesn’t make you a villain. It makes you the only thing standing between everything that matters and everyone who wants to take it.
You thrive in the chaos of high-stakes negotiation, where the money is enormous, the margins are thin, and the wrong word in the wrong room can cost everyone everything. You’re a fixer — the person called when a situation is already on fire and needs someone with the nerve to walk into it. West Texas oil country rewards exactly what you are: sharp, adaptable, unsentimental, and absolutely clear-eyed about what people want and what they’ll do to get it. You’re not naive enough to think this world is fair. You’re smart enough to be the one deciding who it’s fair to.
You are a Dwight Manfredi — someone who has served their time, paid their dues, and arrived somewhere unexpected with nothing but their reputation and their wits. You adapt without losing yourself. You build loyalty through respect rather than fear, though you’re not above reminding people that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Tulsa King is for people who are still standing when everyone assumed they’d be finished — who find, in an unfamiliar place, that they’re more capable than the world gave them credit for. You don’t need a throne. You build one, wherever you happen to land.
You carry the weight of a system that is broken by design, and you do it anyway — because someone has to, and because you’re the only one positioned to do it without the whole thing collapsing. Mike McLusky’s world is for people who are comfortable operating where there are no good options, only less catastrophic ones. You speak every language: law enforcement, criminal, political, human. That fluency makes you invaluable and it makes you a target. You’ve made your peace with both. Mayor of Kingstown belongs to people who understand that keeping the peace is not the same as being at peace — and who do the job regardless.
The whole thing was a clever but odd instance where Jamie, notoriously one of the worst on Yellowstone, actually did some good after death. Kayce seems to lament the fact that his brother died apart from the family, which is a new development, since we never got to see him grieve Jamie like he has others. Marshals killed off Monica (Kelsey Asbille) just before the events of the series, with Kayce’s first season arc predominantly about dealing with her death. Likewise, the fifth and final season of Yellowstone spent time with Kayce (and Monica) as he grieved both his father, John Dutton (Kevin Costner), and his unborn son. But just as was the case with the premature demise of Kayce and Jamie’s other brother, Lee (Dave Annable), all those years ago, Jamie’s death has largely been swept under the rug by post-Yellowstone installments like Marshals and Dutton Ranch — except for one notable scene in the latter. While Kayce seems to know what happened to Jamie (as we can tell by the way he turns the tables on the young McCoy runaway later on), Marshals doesn’t press his feelings on the matter. Instead, he just buries it and presses forward.
Will ‘Marshals’ Ever Address the Missing Montana Attorney General?
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Image via Paramount NetworkConsidering that Kayce now works in Montana-based law enforcement, and Harry Gifford (Brett Cullen) has previously expressed a professional (if not also personal) interest in the death of not just John Dutton, but also the disappearance of the state’s attorney general, it’s a bit odd that Marshals hasn’t leaned more into Jamie’s death. It seems like this would be a great way to have Kayce struggle to balance the sins of his family’s past with the new path he’s forging in the present, and it feels like too big a loose thread for someone in law enforcement not to be unraveling. Kayce and Jamie didn’t end things between them on the best of terms, but throughout Yellowstone, it was always clear that Kayce cared for his older adopted brother. One has to wonder how Kayce really feels about Beth’s homicide.
Between the death of the state’s governor and the absence of its A.G., Montana — as explored in the Yellowstone Universe — has had a pretty tough break. It also didn’t help that the government contracts with operators like Market Equities, which Jamie put together, fell through when Kayce and Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) struck a deal to preserve the Dutton land in Paradise Valley through the Broken Rock Reservation. With all of this in mind, Marshals could do something interesting here by leaning into what Jamie’s disappearance (and John’s death) has really meant for the state, and perhaps even pursue avenues of discovering what happened to him. Perhaps this ought to be the plot of a Dutton Ranch crossover! We can only hope…
Marshals airs Sundays on CBS and is available for streaming the next day on Paramount+.
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