Out of the Shadows (Season 1, Episode 6)
Premise: The marshals trace the missing Native girls to an outlaw biker gang, and Belle goes undercover at the club’s rally while Kayce and Tate mark a year since Monica’s death.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 6
- Case
- Trafficked girls and a biker gang
- Starring
- Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes), Pete “Cal” Calvin (Logan Marshall-Green), Belle Skinner (Arielle Kebbel), Andrea Cruz (Ash Santos), Miles Kittle (Tatanka Means), Tate Dutton (Brecken Merrill), Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham), Mo (Mo Brings Plenty)
- Yellowstone ties
- Felix Long, Monica’s grandfather from Yellowstone, appears at the Broken Rock memorial ceremony held a year after Monica’s death.
- Music
- Hozier’s “Work Song” plays as Kayce and Tate head to the memorial ceremony.
- Guest stars
- Isabel DeRoy-Olson as Hayley Charlo, Rudy Ramos as Felix Long, Adam Dunnells as Keith ‘Brimstone’ Stelton, Derrick Aguis as Squirrel, Whitney Palmer as Eve
- Director
- Guy Ferland
- Writers
- Mark H. Semos
Summary
The Case
“Out of the Shadows” finds the team two days past the deadly showdown with trafficker Kurt Bludsoe, with Hayley Charlo and nine other Native girls still missing and the FBI dragging its feet. Belle learns Bludsoe stopped briefly at a garage owned by a mechanic, Eli Craig. Cal makes Miles join him to tell Sera, a woman who works in Thomas Rainwater’s office and whom Miles has called Auntie since childhood, that her daughter Ava is dead. Miles freezes, and Cal delivers the news. Analyst Eve reports that 43 girls have vanished from Montana reservations in two years.
Camera footage from across the street shows Bludsoe meeting a member of the Iron Sentinels, an outlaw motorcycle club, at the garage, and Craig asks for a lawyer. The marshals draw the bikers out of their fortified clubhouse by going after their prized possessions, slip inside and pull data from a phone. It points to a club rally in the Milk River valley and a message saying a nomad enforcer, Keith “Brimstone” Stelton, is bringing “the entertainment.”
With no other agency willing to send officers, Belle revives “Brandi,” the cover she used in an earlier sting that took down much of the club’s leadership, and takes seized meth into the rally, offering 15 kilos. Her old contact Squirrel introduces her to Brimstone, who plans a run to Calgary that night and agrees to take her product. A biker recognizes her from a blackjack table at the Laughing Elk casino and calls her Turek; Belle overpowers him, a brawl erupts, and the marshals move in. Squirrel gives up a box truck, and after a gunfight the truck turns out to hold drugs, but the team finds the girls, Hayley among them. All ten are reunited with their families, closing the case.
The Team
Rainwater and Mo visit the ranch, where Rainwater warns Kayce not to mistake revenge for closure, yet tells him to kill the men preying on the children if he finds them. Tate, nearing the first anniversary of Monica’s death, blames himself for Hayley and asks his father to attend a memorial ceremony. After the rescue, Cal asks Belle about the casino remark, and she brushes it off.
Spoiler, the ending: Kayce surprises Tate by joining him on the reservation for the memorial, where Felix Long, Monica’s grandfather, welcomes him and the whole team turns out. Sera thanks Miles for letting her finally grieve. During the ceremony Kayce brings out Monica’s necklace, which he has kept since she died, and says it may be time to let go.
Why it stands out
- Kayce, Tate, Mo and Thomas Rainwater are characters carried over from Yellowstone, and this episode marks one year since the death of Kayce’s wife, Monica.
- The episode closes the missing-girls case begun in “Lost Girls,” and Isabel DeRoy-Olson makes her second and last appearance of the season as Hayley Charlo.