Yellowstone Season 3 Episode 2 Recap With Spoilers “Freight Trains and Monsters”

Season 3 of Yellowstone on CBS kicked off with a brand new threat for the Duttons and the Yellowstone in the form of Ellis Steele and Market Equities while the Dutton family dealt with the aftermath of Tate’s kidnapping and recovery. This episode, more of Market Equities plans start to unfold — and with it, the threat to the Yellowstone. Here’s what happened in “Freight Trains and Monsters”.

Fair warning: Spoilers for Yellowstone beyond this point. Read only if you want to know.

What Happened in “Freight Trains and Monsters”?

Morning comes to camp and Tate had a peaceful night of sleep, his first since his kidnapping ordeal. Elsewhere, Beth wakes up at Rip’s house and he’s in the kitchen making her breakfast. At the main house, Monica gets ready for the day and asks if she can go with Rip and Jake to the camp to see Tate. At the camp, John’s phone just won’t stop ringing, but they end up moving camp and where they go, John doesn’t have cell reception.

Elsewhere, Jamie is at work as the new livestock commissioner and gets a call from Sweetgrass County Attorney Randy Harper. There were two female barrel racers who were jumped and had their things stolen, including horses. Randy thinks Jamie needs to be involved in the investigation because of the horses.

Monica arrives and camp and is directed to where Kayce is in the woods dealing with wolves. Monica goes to find him and they have some intimate time together while a wolf watches. Later at camp, they see Tate sound asleep and are happy about it, but Kayce is awakened by restless cows. There’s a wolf, but Kayce ends up staring it down and it goes away after Kayce talked to it. John witnesses this and assures him the wolf was listening.

Beth conferences with Bob to talk about Market Equities’ purchases, with Bob saying he wished they’d bought Dan’s property. Beth is surprised that Market Equities even knew it was for sale and they talk about who Market Equities main competition generally is and come to realize that Market Equities isn’t necessarily competing with them because places like MGM and Marriott have ski resorts, but the Jenkins property is too remote and there’s no nearby airport. All of this leads Beth to realize that they’re going to build an airport, then a ski resort, and then a city around both. Bob tells Beth to buy everything around what Market Equities has purchased. They also end up realizing that Roarke Morris, aka Roarke Carter.

Beth goes to his family’s Cross Creek Ranch and confronts him and he admits that plan is to build an airport, a big one with two terminals and 52 gates. He also claims he has no control over things and only knows about it because he’s on the board. He also admits that the plan is to build cities and thinks that the ranchers will become so rich they won’t have to ranch anymore.

At the ranch, Rip is working on assessing potential wranglers and one, Teeter, impresses Rip and Lloyd, though she has a really thick Texan accent. Elsewhere, livestock agent Steve Hendon goes to the Sweetgrass County Rodeo to check out suspects with one of the victim’s pointing out who actually jumped them. The sheriff confirms there are witnesses. Hendon and deputy plan to punish them and make an example of them, putting them in the trailer they stole and then takes the trailer and races down the road, slamming on the brakes and driving erratically, causing the men to be thrown against the trailer walls. When he returns to the rodeo, however, Hendon and the deputies open the trailer to discover that the men have died from the experience.

At the ranch, Rip and Beth spend time together outside his house, dancing under the stars. At camp, everyone has dinner and John talks about biscuits that Kayce’s mother used to make, with the conversation leading John to be sad about her death which in turn leads to a touching moment between the two of them where Kayce tells him that they’re standing on the plan. At the house, Jamie is getting ready for bed when he gets a call from the Sweetgrass County Jail. Herndon has been arrested for the death of the suspects.