In Yellowstone Season 4, Episode 1, “Half the Money,” Beth Dutton met Carter — a 14-year-old boy played by Finn Little — at the hospital. The pair quickly formed a bond. Carter’s neglectful father was dying, and Beth offered him comfort. In return, Carter brought out Beth’s sensitive side, which the recently canceled Paramount Network drama rarely shows. This special dynamic between Carter and Beth led to several heartwarming scenes.
Carter later told the police that Beth was responsible for him, and he was taken to the Dutton ranch. Beth gave in and accepted the responsibility, and Beth’s husband, Rip Wheeler, begrudgingly gave Carter a job at the ranch. To Rip’s annoyance, Beth pointed out that Carter reminded her of somebody. That somebody was, in fact, Rip himself, who landed at the Dutton Ranch at about the same age as Carter did. Despite this build-up towards Carter’s place in Beth and Rip’s family, he has been missing from most of Yellowstone Season 5.
Updated on June 27, 2026 by Natasha Elder: With the release date of the second part of Yellowstone’s fifth and final season finally public, we thought it appropriate to take another look at Carter’s dwindling role in the series. Despite his introduction as a potential surrogate son for Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler, he has only been a small part of the show’s newest season. We wanted to explain why that may be and how he has affected the show thus far.
How Carter Could Have Been Beth And Rip’s Surrogate Son
With Beth Dutton being unable to have children and Carter recently orphaned, Yellowstone seemed to suggest that the young man was a surrogate son for the show’s main couple. Beth even told Rip, “I think he’s our kid,” when she first brought Carter back to the ranch. Carter becoming part of Beth and Rip’s family would bring joy to both their lives — and it would be particularly meaningful to Beth, given the anger she expressed at not being able to have kids. Beth’s inability to have children of her own is a major storyline in Yellowstone, and it can be argued that is how she ended up with the rough and tough exterior she has in the present day. So when Carter came along, the void Beth had yearned for seemed to be right in front of her.
Beth is unable to have children due to an abortion that she received which made her sterile.
Rip killed his own abusive father as a teenager, becoming an orphan in the process.
But despite Beth’s comment to Rip, they have both resisted becoming Carter’s parental figures. In Yellowstone Season 4, Episode 3, “All I See Is You,” Rip tells Beth “He’s not our son. No matter who he becomes, he never will be. Nobody will.” With Rip being nearly against the idea of Carter at the ranch entirely, he makes life very hard for him. To Rip and Beth’s surprise, Carter does not break from the tough love he receives.
Throughout Season 4, he becomes more and more comfortable with them. However, when Carter tested out calling Beth “Mama” in Season 4, Episode 10, “Grass on the Streets and Weeds on the Rooftops,” she heatedly responded, “I’m nobody’s mother, ever.” Beth’s emotional baggage is unsurprising considering parental strife is a common theme in Yellowstone, yet it begs the question of why the show introduced Carter into her life if he wasn’t intended to become part of her story. Whether Beth resists the idea or not, Carter is the best chance she will ever have of having her own child, as unfortunate as the situation is.
Yellowstone Erasing Carter Is Counterintuitive
Yellowstone’s still-to-be-finished Season 5 has not only abandoned Carter’s potential bond with Beth and Rip — it has abandoned Carter entirely. He has been relegated to a background character and has not been given a single scene of emotional substance yet, let alone one with Beth or Rip. Yellowstone threw a random love interest at Carter in Season 5, Episode 6, “Cigarettes, Whiskey, a Meadow and You,” but even that has only been shown through several uneventful scenes. The series doesn’t seem to have any idea what to do with him. As a result, he has often been relegated to the background along with the rest of the ranchers at Dutton Ranch. In one episode, Carter will have a small character moment and then, in the next, he barely has any dialogue.
Considering that Yellowstone’s biggest theme is family, it is extremely counterintuitive for the show to go so far backward with his character. While Carter may not be an official member of the Dutton family, he was on his way to becoming one. In addition to his dynamic with Beth, he’d also formed a bond with John Dutton. And even if the series chooses to disregard the whole extended family idea that it set up in Season 4, it’s ignoring that he could be an asset to the Duttons.
John Dutton had previously expressed concern over his grandson Tate’s ability to run the ranch in the future. Carter becoming a larger part of the ranch — whether he’s formally or informally adopted by Beth and Rip — would give Yellowstone a character who could help Tate and solve that problem. However, now that audiences know the series is ending with Season 5, time is running out to give Carter the development that he’s been lacking after such a promising start. However, there may be more on the horizon for Carter, depending on the direction the Yellowstone franchise takes.
