Spoilers ahead for the Dutton Ranch Season 1 finale. Beth and Rip have been through a lot in Texas, but nothing quite like this. The ninth and final episode of Season 1, titled “El Padrino,” dropped on Paramount+ on Friday, July 3, and it delivers the gut punch the season has been building toward, finally pulling the cartel out of the shadows and ending with a cliffhanger that changes everything going into Season 2.
Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Rip (Cole Hauser) open the episode acting on a tip from ranch hand Austin, confirming their theory that marked cattle arriving from Mexico have been used to smuggle fentanyl across the border, with the drugs sewn inside the animals. The intercept points straight to Mariano Reyes (Raoul Max Trujillo), the cartel boss who has been pulling Beulah‘s strings for 15 years, and who finally steps out from the shadows to deal with the problem personally. He sends a team to the Dutton Ranch. Rip, Everett, Zachariah, and Azul gun down nearly every one of them, with only one survivor left for interrogation.
Mariano then plays his sharpest card. He orders Joaquin (Juan Pablo Raba) to kill his half-brother Rob-Will (Jai Courtney), who he now sees as a liability. Joaquin obliges, shooting him at home, where Oreana (Natalie Alyn Lind) finds the body. Rob-Will‘s death fractures the Jackson family beyond repair and severs Beulah‘s alliance with Mariano entirely. Meanwhile Oreana, who has just discovered she’s pregnant with Carter‘s child, was trying to convince him to run. Before the two can leave together, Mariano‘s men abduct Carter (Finn Little) to use as leverage against Beth and Rip, and that’s where Season 1 ends.
Reilly told press that Carter‘s kidnapping is the moment that puts Beth and Rip back on offence after a season spent reacting to events around them. “When he gets kidnapped, it’s game on,” Hauser said. Dutton Ranch has been renewed for Season 2, with James Cavell taking over as showrunner from Chad Feehan.