1923 Series Premiere Recap With Spoilers

WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for the series premiere of the Yellowstone prequel 1923… 1923 begins with a man limp-running through the woods but he’s shot — by Cara Dutton (Helen Mirren). He pleads with her, telling her she’ll not get into Heaven if she does this. She goes to shoot him to kill but needs to reload. There’s a brief race between her and the man but she ultimately prevails, killing him and then screaming before she walks away. A voice over from Elsa Dutton (Isabel May) talks about how violence has always haunted the Dutton family and has followed them wherever they go and where it doesn’t follow, the family seeks it.

Definitely not Montana — Kenya. A man, Spencer Dutton (Brandon Sklenar), approaches the brush with his gun drawn when a lion charges out. The man shoots and kills the lion as it leaps onto him. The man and his associates have been tracking this lion. Elsa notes that only one of the sons in the family would survive to have their own family and carry the family through the Depression.

Back in Montana, Jacob Dutton (Harrison Ford) looks over the dead bodies of several cows in their herd. Elsa says that when her father died, her mother wrote to his brother, Jacob, and begged him to bring his family to the land and he arrived to find her frozen in a snowdrift and her two boys in a dire situation. He raised them and built her father’s dream into an empire but then the empire crumbled.

Jacob, a member of the Montana Livestock Association, rides through Bozeman as protests for Prohibition are ongoing, one of them harassing Jacob and his men for going into the “soda shop”. Jacob talks with Sheriff William McDowell (Robert Patrick) about the local sheepherders who aren’t thrilled with things — their flocks can only graze on land they lease. Jacob and the Sheriff go to the town hall to deal with the complaints, a fight breaking out when Banner Creighton (Jerome Flynn) accuses another rancher of being responsible for the sheep deaths. Banner demands answers and admits that his sheep were on someone else’s land, but he doesn’t care, claiming sheep just wander. Jacob tells him if he has too many sheep he should sell them — but the market for all livestock is bad right now. Banner is mad that Jacob — and presumably other ranchers — own all the land. The Sheriff breaks up a fight before things can get too heated. Meeting with the rest of the livestock association, Jacob suggests that they push all the cattle up to where there’s some grass as a plan to save their herds.

At the ranch, Cara asks Jack Dutton (Darren Mann) and some others to go find John Sr. Jack is set to be married soon and Cara warns him to be careful so not as to get hurt doing things.

At a residential school for indigenous girls, Sister Mary (Jennifer Ehle) is instructing girls in her classroom and she’s brutal, brutally beating a young woman, Teonna (Aminah Nieves), for not answering to her specifications. Teonna snaps and attacks Sister Mary and is then dragged before the priest, Father Renaud (Sebastian Roche). Sister Mary claims that Teonna is just a wild animal, but the priest wants to know what the girl did wrong. Teonna tells him and the priest makes Sister Mary recite a Bible verse while he hits the nun’s hands violently until Teonna begs him to stop. However, the priest also beats Teonna for her outburst in the classroom and is even more brutal about it. Later, the nuns oversee the girls bathing and Teonna struggles due to her beating, which has left her bleeding. Sister Mary makes her clean up the blood later.

Teonna tells another girl about her injuries, and she tells her that she should put honey and cedar sap on it because she doesn’t want it to scar as no man would want to see it. Teonna suggests they won’t live to get husbands and while they only have a year left, they’ve heard nothing from those left behind. Teonna thinks they’re dead and says they must escape the school.

Cara waits for the men to come home, counting their number to ensure they’ve all returned safely. Jacob and his men make plans to move the cattle, but Jack’s wedding interferes with things as it’s on a Wednesday. They have to postpone the wedding and Jack thinks he can just tell her easily, but the guys think he has another thing coming.  Jacob tells Cara that they have to run the herd up the mountain, and it interferes with the wedding. Predictably, it doesn’t go especially well when Jack tells Elizabeth (Michelle Randolph) they have to postpone the wedding. Cara arrives to sort things out and explains the challenges of the ranch life for women. The wedding is successfully rescheduled.

That night, the sheep men are out grazing heir animals and encounter a fence put up to keep them off other people’s land. Banner has his men cut the fence, running his sheep on someone else’s property. In Kenya, Spencer arrives in Nairobi. Asleep on the train, he has nightmares about World War I and wakes up freaked out. He has major PTSD. He’s in Nairobi to hunt down a leopard that is menacing some tourists. Spencer plans to use himself and his associates as bait for the leopard. At dinner, he meets a wealthy couple, the wife clearly interested in him.

In Montana, the ranchers head out to move their cattle as planned, but Jack discovers the land full of sheep and as he does, someone fires a shot at him. Back at the ranch, Emma Dutton (Marley Shelton), John Sr’s wife and Jack’s mother and Cara talk before leaving Cara alone to write Spencer a letter about what’s going on. Back in Kenya, that night, the wife is attacked by the leopard, but it turns out that there’s actually two leopards. Spencer kills one leopard, but the woman is dead. The episode ends with the second leopard leaping to attack Spencer.

What did you think about the 1923 premiere? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!