If you’ve spent the last five years wondering what happened to that plane bomb Kayce Dutton planted in YellowstoneSeason 2 — same, to be honest. The Duttons may have delivered plenty of justice over the show’s five-season run, but what happened to the Beck Brothers’ airplane has haunted fans since 2019.

Fortunately, Tulsa King and Yellowstone alum Neal McDonough has finally weighed in… kind of.

“You know, that’s a great question. I think it’s just that Taylor [Sheridan] likes to have mental threats to the audience. And if he’s always got the audience on the edge of their seats, he can slide in something different that happens.”

According to McDonough, the bomb wasn’t meant to pay off so much as distract you — a red herring designed to keep you off-balance and focused on the wrong thing. In other words, that plane bomb wasn’t a forgotten thread — it was a feature, not a bug. So not so much Chekov’s plane, but just… a plane? 

“I mean, shooting my brother in a toilet, did anybody expect that to happen?” McDonough added, referring to Teal Beck’s brutal, porcelain-clad death scene.

“To beautifully have my death between two guys in the middle of a field trying to figure out honesty and integrity and doing the right thing… he could have just blown me away right there in the middle of the field, but he didn’t.”

In classic Yellowstone fashion, the violence comes when you least expect it — and often in ways you don’t see coming. It’s a clever bit of storytelling if you buy McDonough’s explanation. Of course, not every fan will. Some still suspect the airplane plot was quietly dropped or lost in the shuffle of a crowded season. But hey,