Rip Wheeler’s 10 Best Moments Ranked

“Yellowstone,” created by John Linson and Taylor Sheridan, is a neo-Western full of gravelly-voiced men wielding influence and violence as they fight over cattle and land. It’s full of cowboy icons doing cowboy things; it stars Kevin Costner, for goodness’ sake. Yet from all of these characters, one cowboy stands alone as the breakout.

Rip Wheeler, as played by Cole Hauser, is essentially the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch fixer. This tough, gritty, and reliable cowboy will do whatever needs to be done using whatever resources he needs to use. As such, Rip is often at the center of the show’s most intense and passionate sequences, especially when it comes to his love affair with Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly).

Rip is, in this writer’s opinion, the best character of the entire show. So, to celebrate this character among characters, let’s run down Rip Wheeler’s 10 best “Yellowstone” moments and rank them.

There’s a creed Rip Wheeler lives by — a particularly violent, but arguably protective creed. See, the cowboys and cowgirls of Yellowstone Dutton Ranch often provoke each other, leading to emotional outbursts and literal fisticuffs. But Rip can’t have his staff beating the stuffing out of each other all the time. So whenever he breaks up a fight, he tells the offenders that if they’re going to fight anyone, they’re going to fight him.

When we see these incidents, there’s at least the semblance of a fair fight between Rip and whoever ticked him off (though, let’s be real, Rip could defeat anyone on the ranch with his eyes closed). But the purest version of Rip’s philosophy occurs in one of the most imbalanced matchups possible, proving just how powerful Rip’s doctrine is.

In Season 4, Episode 6, Rip enters the bunkhouse to see Lloyd (Forrie J. Smith) throwing down with another cowboy. Rip breaks it up and delivers his mandatory ultimatum – fight me instead. But Lloyd is, to put it bluntly, quite old. Won’t Rip show mercy and respect for his elders? Well, no. He punches and hurls Lloyd like a ragdoll, showing every witness just how little one should mess with Rip and his rules.

In the Season 2 premiere, some of the Yellowstone crew head to a local bar to drink some of the day away. Jimmy (Jefferson White), the ranch’s most prolific knucklehead, gets into it with one of the bar’s regulars, resulting in a bar fight, leaving our heroes down but not out. What do they do?

They go to Rip, that’s what. With the help of Kayce (Luke Grimes) and many other Dutton Ranch cowboys, Rip corrals a bull into a pickup truck, drives that pickup truck to the offending bar, and lets the bull loose. Now, you may have heard about what happens when a bull is let loose in a china shop. Suffice it to say, it’s pretty much the same thing that happens when a bull is let loose in a bar.

After the chaos and carnage ensue, you’d think Rip and his boys had their revenge, right? Not quite. When the barfly bullies escape the bar, Rip and the others have baseball bats in hand, and they smash their foes with the force of a grand slam. Talk about massive retaliation.

One of the great relationships at the center of “Yellowstone” is that between Rip and Beth Dutton. They’re similar in many ways, particularly their fierce loyalty and volatile, violent actions. But while Rip is often the calming eye of a storm, Beth is a storm incarnate, all impulse and id and insults.

One night, in Season 3, Episode 2, these two opposites attract lovebirds have the whole ranch to themselves, a rarity. So they head to the bullpen to drink some beers, listen to some tunes, and relax. Then, Rip tells Beth there’s something he’s always wanted to do. Beth, never one for subtlety, asks Rip point-blank if they’re about to have sex in the dirt (though she uses a few different words). Are we about to watch a ribald scene?

Not so much. Instead, Rip plays a ballad and asks Beth to dance with him, right there in the bullpen. And the two have a lovely slow dance, symbolizing the romanticism at the heart of their intensity.

Through much of our time with Rip on the five seasons of “Yellowstone,” he is a man of action. If something needs to be done, he will do it in the most direct way possible, damn the consequences. But this Season 3, Episode 7 moment is especially lovely because Rip doesn’t need to do anything at all – other than say, “yes,” of course.

Rip and Beth’s romance is anything but traditional, so it makes sense that they would buck the tradition of the man getting down on one knee to ask the woman to marry him. Instead, after Rip houses a couple of beers, rapid-fire, Beth simply pulls out a ring box. She calls it, cryptically, a “juxtaposition.” And Rip responds beautifully, “I don’t know what that means, Beth.”

Beth then slips into some beautiful poetry, telling Rip the ring means she’s his, and that she doesn’t want to live a day without him. Rip responds with a badass lore drop – since “there’s no record [he exists] on this planet,” he can’t really sign a marriage license. But Beth brushes that aside and says, simply, “There is no more you and I. There is only us.” What else can Rip do but kiss her? (Which, for the record, is a “yes.”)

In Season 3, Episode 5, Rip is sitting quietly on his porch, a favorite relaxation activity of any rough-riding cowboy. The problem is, the bunkhouse is having a loud and rowdy time, partying with loud music, dancing, and ample brewskis. So Rip gets out of his chair and grumpily charges toward the bunkhouse, ready to squash things fast.

When he gets there and witnesses just how hard everyone is partying, he’s mad, barking at everyone to keep it down. But there’s one thing he sees that reverses his entire outlook. As everyone else settles down, scared of Rip, one woman keeps dancing: Beth, Rip’s love. And Rip instantly wears a grin, tells Beth he should’ve suspected it was her, and joins her in the dance.

It’s a deeply revealing and funny moment, showing just how willing Rip is to bend his otherwise rigid outlook for love. Though the rest of the cowboys in the bunkhouse were probably a little annoyed  “What, do we have to date Rip to have a beer, too?”

Every character in “Yellowstone” (and, as the show argues, everyone in America) just wants a slice of the pie. Land, territory, power — these are the things that prove one’s status, and these are the things worth protecting no matter the cost. Therefore, the cowboys at Dutton Ranch often run into other posses looking for power, even if the cowboys at Dutton Ranch are standing in the way of their pursuit.

This brings us to Season 3, Episode 4. Enter a biker gang — big, burly folks in leather, with loud motorcycles. Objectively intimidating, no? Well, this particular biker gang leans on that image as they get into Rip’s face while trespassing, and they quickly learn that looks can be deceiving.

To be clear, this conflict is weighed in favor of the biker gang, with at least 10 of them and only one Rip. But as you might suspect, Rip is pretty darn good at fighting and beats them down with force and speed. It’s beyond impressive, and unlike the piddly biker gang, actually intimidating. Also, who can forget when he ran down those bikes?

Big spoiler alert: John Dutton (Kevin Costner), the powerful patriarch at the center of Yellowstone Dutton Ranch, does not make it to the end of “Yellowstone,” for reasons tied to Costner’s commitments to his “Horizon” films. Creatively, this gives the second half of the show’s fifth and final season a big power vacuum to reckon with. Your mileage may vary as to how successful Taylor Sheridan was in this venture, but there’s at least one scene possessing ample power.

After John’s funeral, Rip tells the presiding pastor he’ll be using the traditionally ceremonial shovel practically, as he owes John a proper, respectful, and thorough burial. Day turns to night, and Rip kneels down to tell John, not just his employer but his father figure, that he will always take care of Beth.

In his final moment, Rip doesn’t break down and cry or say a prolonged “goodbye.” Instead, he tosses the shovel into the dirt pile and says, simply, “I’ll see you around.” Well, if Rip isn’t going to cry, we’ll just have to cry double for him.

In one of the show’s most harrowing plots, Luke’s son and John’s grandson, Tate (Brecken Merrill), is kidnapped by the horrible Beck brothers (Neal McDonough and Terry Serpico) and stashed in a white supremacist militia’s hideout, all in the service of their ongoing 4D chess game of power and blood. And what do you do when your young family member is stolen by a bunch of unstable racists? You get a bunch of cowboys, give them a bunch of automatic weapons, and go rescue him, that’s what.

As John, Luke, Rip, and many other stern-faced cowboys prepare themselves for the nighttime assault in the Season 2 finale, Mo (Mo Brings Plenty) suggests that one person make the first move to draw fire from the enemies, giving the rest of the crew the opportunity to counterattack. It’s a strategically sound but risky strategy. Will Tate’s father or grandfather offer themselves?

They don’t even have the choice, as Rip, of course, steps forward. And with a surprising amount of stillness, he trots forward on his horse, drawing the fire of a bunch of irate neo-Nazis, giving his team the moment they need to successfully extract Tate. What a mensch, Rip Wheeler!

There’s a secluded house in the corner of Yellowstone Dutton Ranch. John has three biological children, any of whom could be viable candidates to move in. But that’s not who gets the house.

In Season 2, Episode 9, one of John’s biological children, Beth, approaches Rip with a handwritten note from John. As she reads it to him, John’s intent becomes clear: He’s leaving the house to Rip, John’s fourth child, blood or not.

At first, Rip is stunned into silence, tears forming in the corner of his eyes. His eternal loyalty to John and his ranch, which started when John basically adopted a young Rip after he escaped a traumatic family situation, is being rewarded with a place he can stay forever. And the messenger of this beautiful news is Rip’s love. It’s enough to make any cowboy’s heart melt, and it’s deeply cathartic to see Rip rightfully rewarded for his unwavering loyalty.

The duality of Rip hinges right on the precipice of “love” and “violence.” He’s fiercely loyal to his family and colleagues, expressing a deep valley of love for people like Beth and John (and, this writer would argue, Jimmy). But he’s also more than willing to indicate this loyalty by use of force, sometimes lethally (well, this writer would argue, often lethally). Thus, Rip’s best moment in all of “Yellowstone,” in Season 2, Episode 7, must be a combination of brutal and beautiful.

As part of their terrible conquest against the Dutton dynasty, the Beck brothers send some horrible men after Beth to assault, violate, and eventually kill her. Beth fights back as best as she can, but is in severe danger of being overpowered. But Rip, in time to stop the absolute worst from happening, runs in and saves the day, violently stopping Beth’s assailers with abject force. And when those guys are taken care of, he attends to Beth, who is understandably shaken, traumatized, and incoherent.

How does Rip help her? By saying, for the first time, “I love you.” And suddenly, one of the most horrifying scenes in all of “Yellowstone” has somehow become one of its most romantic. This is the power of Rip Wheeler.