Warning: This article contains spoilers for the new season of Yellowstone.
Yellowstone kicked off its fifth season with a two-hour television event, and the new season’s first episode ended with a heartbreaking accident. When fans learned of Kayce and Monica’s pregnancy at the end of season four, they were excited but also cautious; life is often unfair to them.
When we saw a nervous Kacey and Monica realize that she was experiencing bad cramps and needed to get to the hospital quickly, our heart rates skyrocketed. A heaviness was palpable in the air, and as Kayce agreed to send an ambulance to meet Monica on the road, we knew something awful would happen. Within moments, Monica and her son Tate were in a devastating accident, and we were unsure if anyone would make it out alive.
Episode two opened with fans learning that someone died in the accident, the new baby the couple was expecting, and Tate told John in a heartbreaking turn of events that he had a brother, at least for an hour. The baby was named after the family patriarch, and as John walked in to see his son and daughter-in-law, pain was all anyone felt.
Kelsey Asbille spoke with the Hollywood Reporter about that ache we all experienced and how magnified it was for Monica. She says that it was devastating in its most basic form for Kayce and Monica to lose their unborn son.
“It’s such a tragic loss and you really see Monica at her rock bottom. Throughout the show, she just wants to be a good mother, a good wife. A good person to her community, as well. And this really shakes her beliefs with all of that.”
Monica has always put her family first, which is part of why Kayce feels such a divide between being a Dutton and Monica’s husband. As a character, she represents the very heart of the other side of the equation: she’s Native American and the fight for the ranch isn’t to Monica what it is to the Duttons. She sees things from a different perspective.
So as she continues to deal with the loss of her baby and the change in her family unit, she knows she has to make an important decision.
“But, she says, there’s a very definitive moment where she does choose life and she chooses to heal.”
Asbille’s on-screen husband is played by none other than the talented Luke Grimes, and he says that they’re going to work through their pain in a way that will unite them, unlike before, “They’ve chosen to lean on each other; they’re dealing with a common pain together.”
The pain they’re dealing with is something no one deserves to experience, but they’re going to go through the motions of finding a way to the other side of grief within the arms of one another. The Dutton family seems to be against an unfortunate number of painful situations, but they always find a way to work through it, and the love between Kayce and Monica gives them the strength they need.
Yellowstone‘s exhilarating fifth season will continue Sunday nights on Paramount.