WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Yellowstone Season 4, Episode 2, "Phantom Pain," which aired Sunday on Paramount Network.
The second episode of Yellowstone Season 4 Episode 2 starts out much calmer than the premiere. John Dutton, convalescing from multiple gunshot wounds, gets back on a horse for the first time to head up to a hot spring for a healing soak. Kayce, worried that his father's pushing himself too hard, takes off after his father and joins him. The pair discuss Jamie's possible involvement in the attack, suggesting that while he might have been willing to give the order to take the Dutton family down, the militia that carried it out likely acted on their own accord in retribution for the Dutton's previous attack on them. John tells Kayce to kill the remaining militia members, suggesting that sometimes good men have to do such terrible things.
Meanwhile, unaware that his original family is questioning whether he'd be willing to murder them, Jamie is buying his own ranch with the help of his biological father Garrett Randall. To Jamie, this is a big step in asserting his independence from the Dutton's and establishing his own roots in the area. It also shows that Jamie has grown closer to Garrett and that he's willing to take advice from his new-found father.
In a reference to the flash-back from the season premiere, construction workers breaking ground on Market Equities' work in the Yellowstone area find human remains and ritual artifacts while digging. This brings their work -- and Market Equities' progress -- to a halt while Chief Rainwater and the local indigenous populations are brought in for identification. The incident also highlights the power vacuum left after Beth brought Market Equities' CEO Willa Hays down and Rip took care of Roarke, the only other representative in the area.
Enter Caroline Warner, a ruthless and powerful woman working as chair of Market Equities' board of directors who expects people to shift schedules around her needs. Caroline heads out to the construction site to meet with Chief Rainwater, who is holding up construction to process the newly discovered ritual remains. Caroline promises to lift the cease and desist order that Market Equities has filed against Rainwater's construction of his new casino and offers to fund their build, so long as they shift their plans to build a casino catering to a different, richer crowd. In return, she only asks that Rainwater stop holding up their construction.
Back at the Yellowstone ranch, John has started to truly think about his legacy since his recent brush with death, especially outside of the Yellowstone valley. He brings in horse trainer Travis Wheatly to work for the Yellowstone, showing and studding horses and building the ranch's name. This is a new direction for the Yellowstone, and a costly one. While John is spending the family money, Beth finds herself out of a job. Despite literally burning for the company and making them a fortune, Schwartz & Meyer fires Beth. She reveals that the company only co-owns the land she's purchased for them around Yellowstone, and threatens to take down the company and her ex-boss Bob along with it.
When she returns to the ranch, Beth is approached by police officers with a kid in their custody who tried to rob a liquor store with a screwdriver. The kid claims that Beth is his guardian and is revealed to be the young boy who Beth met at the hospital. Presented with few options for his future, Beth grapples with whether to take the boy in and try to give him one. Rip comes home to find Beth has cooked a make-shift, homemade dinner for both him and the new kid. Rip is immediately uninterested in taking care of a child and the boys butt heads as they try to figure out if there's a place for the kid on the ranch.
The next morning, Rip tries to take the kid back into town and almost ends up abandoning him in the fields along the way before making the boy ask him for a job. The pair return to the Yellowstone and Rip presents the kid to John as the new stall cleaner. For the first time the boy says his own name, introducing himself as Carter, known as Chubby since he was a baby.
After gaining some movement back and being released from the hospital, Jimmy returns to the ranch and has a heart-to-heart with John. He admits to phantom pain in the toes he can no longer feel and apologizes to John for breaking his promise that he wouldn't ride rodeo again. John's angry but refuses to break his promise that he would make something out of Jimmy. Instead, he reveals that he's sending Jimmy off with Travis and the horse training team for the even harder life on a Texan ranch. It's unclear whether the still-recovering Jimmy can deal with this intense work or with leaving the home he's made for himself on the Yellowstone and with his girlfriend, Mia.
Rip tells Carter that the trick to making something of himself on the Yellowstone is to realize that no one deserves this opportunity or this life. He brings the kid back to his house for a meal with Beth, and the three sitting around the dining room table appear for the briefest moment like a happy found-family. The next morning, Carter heads to the barn to clean out the stalls long before sun-up, only to find that John beat him there. John confirms that no one deserves this life, but that they all try to anyway before riding off into the sunrise as the credits start to roll.
New episodes of Yellowstone air Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on Paramount Network.