Warning: The following story contains spoilers from “Yellowstone” season 5, episode 9.

When Kevin Costner declined to return for the second half of Season 5 of “Yellowstone,” a big question was left hanging in the air: What would happen to patriarch John Dutton? We got our answer during Sunday night’s midseason premiere.

“Yellowstone” has never been a subtle show, but the plot of the midseason premiere took the show’s absurdity to new heights. As a panicked Beth (Kelly Reilly) rushed to the governor’s house and the place was swarming with police, we quickly knew something bad had happened. Once Kayce (Luke Grimes) curled up, they went inside and learned that (presumably) their father had shot himself in the bathroom sometime in the middle of the night. Viewers got a quick glimpse of a gun on the ground and a prone Costner doppelgänger in a white T-shirt and pajama bottoms and, like Beth, quickly concluded that there was no way John actually took his own life. There’s just no way he’s going out like that, not only because it’s against his life and legacy, but also… pajama bottoms? Please. He would at least be wearing boots and a cowboy hat somewhere on the ranch. Whatever the case, it’s clear that “Yellowstone” had to find a way to get rid of Costner’s character quickly and, whether they have a hamstring problem or not, this is how they chose to do it.

We learn that Dutton’s impeachment trial was scheduled to begin that morning and sometime around 3:53 a.m., a state trooper at the scene heard a gunshot. Police quickly tested John’s hands for gunshot residue and looked for prints on the gun and deemed the whole case a “10-56,” which is the police code for suicide. A sad, disbelieving Jamie (Wes Bentley) was then forced to announce the death of his sort-of father to the waiting news media, which Beth and Kayce hear on the radio.

While Reilly has always been a loose cannon as Beth, Dutton’s daughter really was one in this episode. She told Kayce that she was convinced that “not only did Jamie kill their father,” but “he killed everything our father ever did,” what she had accomplished and left to them, and every memory he had helped create . It’s a bit of an exaggeration because everyone leaves a legacy no matter how they die, but there has always been a kind of “cowboy morality” that undermined “Yellowstone.” We see it here, with the suggestion that committing suicide isn’t something a man does, and we see it more crudely later in the episode with the ranch hands as they joke about insults and stereotypes. There has always been the suggestion that “Yellowstone” – and by extension its creator Taylor Sheridan – knows better than anyone else that these cowboys are the truest, most intelligent Americans, despite what may be happening outside Montana. It’s annoying if you’re not there, but considering how popular the show is, they’ve clearly accomplished something.

And speaking of plain-talking cowboys, after we catch a glimpse of Beth whining about how Jamie “killed my dad!” to go to the 6666 Ranch. They have to graze their herd there after bison left one of their pastures full of brucellosis. They’ll also sleep on the windswept land, and we get a quick glimpse of former “Yellowstone” favorite Jimmy (Jefferson White), who’s still waiting for the promised 6666 spinoff.

Later, Rip goes on a supply trip to Pampa, Texas, where we enter the shop of legendary spur maker Billy Ray Klapper, who just passed away in September. He was one of the few spur makers still using one solid piece of steel, and as “Yellowstone” reminds us of this almost constantly, and every episode, cowboying (and outfitting cowboys) is becoming a lost art. Klapper is cute and looking around his shop is great, but it feels like they’re gilding the metaphorical lily a bit with the scene, and another later when Rip tells him, “In 30 years, no one will be doing this anymore.” ”

But enough about Texas. Back in Montana, we dig into the dirty details of what happened to John Dutton. It was, as Beth suspected, Jamie – or rather Jamie’s devilish girlfriend, Sarah Atwood (Dawn Oliveri). The almost cartoonishly evil character has punched John through some vague conglomerate, and while she’s pushing for a heart attack – something the family might have bought – the mercenary tells her that doing so would leave them at the whims of a toxicologist, who might find the drugs in John’s system. Suicide, he says, is simply more marketable, especially if a lot of physical evidence remains that points to a history of mental illness. (Are cops really that gullible?)

Flash forward six weeks or so and with John dead, Jamie comes home shattered. Sarah meets him in the bedroom, almost fully clothed and with champagne in hand, but when she sees how sad he is, she is clearly horrified. (“Well, this isn’t the reaction I expected,” she jokes.) She quickly reminds Jamie that he greenlighted the act by telling her he wanted his father dead, though Jamie seems surprised because it was never talked about again after that evening. It’s a big rhetorical and narrative leap, but it never pays to really wonder why anything happens on “Yellowstone.” It just happens, and the characters rush to deal with the consequences.

That’s when we get Sarah’s big speech. She has always manipulated Jamie with compliments and sex, and it is no different here. As he worries about the legal ramifications of John’s death, Sarah tells him that he is protected, that he is about to enter a world that he rules and controls, and that he should not “mourn a 68 year old man who never loved him. “Lions don’t die of old age,” she says. “Lions die in the jaws of younger lions and you are the younger lion.” We’re not really sure how puppeteers like her handle the whole lion analogy, but we’ll let it slide.

Lions apparently don’t die on camera either, as Beth and Kayce discover that the transponder went out near the governor’s house three minutes before their father died, wiping out all surveillance in and around the house. It’s too easy for it to be a coincidence and it seems clear that they’re going to take matters into their own hands, as the police seemed all too willing to wrap things up in a neat, self-imposed package. (Do the police ever really do anything on “Yellowstone”? It seems like the only justice ever delivered on this show is vigilante justice.) Anyway, Beth, Rip, Kayce and just about everyone else who’s in Montana left behind, are about to start I’m shooting Jamie and you have to think the rest of the season is going to be pretty wild.

No one is ever truly safe on “Yellowstone” and we are all along for the ride.

“Yellowstone” airs Sundays at 8pm ET/PT on Paramount Network.