Summary
“The Mountain Teeth of Monsters” ups 1923 Season 2’s body count considerably, culling a good chunk of the cast in a penultimate episode that finally gives the impression these people (some of them, anyway) might get where they’re going.
Major character deaths in 1923 have been like buses in Season 2; you wait for ages without seeing one, and then a whole bunch come along at once. This is Episode 6, “The Mountain Teeth of Monsters”, in a nutshell. The penultimate outing unceremoniously culls a good chunk of the cast, including some pretty serious players, and it’s the episode that finally suggests that the journey might be coming close to an end. For some characters, anyway. Based on Alex’s run of luck, I wouldn’t be too sure about her.
But it also implies that Spencer’s arrival in Montana won’t be the end of the journey, and that there’s still a war to be fought on the home front, one which will likely cost many more lives. That bodes well for the finale, which is slated to be almost two hours long, perhaps to compensate for the season only having seven episodes. But it also bodes well for the show’s future, since it’s virtually impossible that everything will be wrapped up even in an extra-long closer, so we’ll likely be returning to 1923 for another chapter of the broader Yellowstone saga. Which, on balance, is a pretty good thing.
Spencer’s Almost Home
Since Mamie got Spencer on a train in the previous episode, we know he’s on his way back to Montana. Pretty soon, so does everyone else, which creates a nice ticking-clock around “The Mountain Teeth of Monsters”. When a panicked Sheriff McDowell turns up at the ranch to give Jacob the news that he’s inbound, he immediately realizes he needs to get to the train station to make sure he gets off the locomotive safely. For this purpose, he takes a few cowboys, leaving Jack behind to guard Cara and Elizabeth. But he quickly decides he can’t stay behind and follows along, separated from the main group, which proves to be his undoing.
This is because Banner has also heard of Spencer’s imminent arrival and dispatched his own goons to take him out the second he leaves the train. They run into Jack on the way there, and, because Jack has no survival instinct whatsoever, he reveals himself to gloat a bit and gets shot dead. Banner is under instruction to dump Spencer and the rest of the Dutton clan at the “train station”, and he’s happy to get a head start in that regard, but I’m pretty sure this is going to come back to bite him in a big way.
For one thing, Banner is becoming increasingly appalled by Whitfield — when he arrives to let him know about Spencer, he finds him and his sex gremlin Lindy breaking in another new plaything — and isn’t going to be keen on the idea of dying for him, but that’s precisely what’s going to happen when the Duttons find out what happened to Jack. I hope he has the chance to get one over on Whitfield before he bites the bullet.
Alex’s Bad Luck Continues
Sebastian Roché and Jamie McShane in 1923 Season 2 | Image via Paramount+
With her new friends Hillary and Paul, Alex plots a road trip all the way to Montana. I, like most people, knew this was going to go wrong way ahead of time, but wasn’t sure in precisely what way. I expected Paul and Hillary to suddenly reveal much more unsavory intentions, but fair play to them, because they both seem to have been genuinely invested in Alex’s transcontinental odyssey of love. Neither realized it’d get them killed.
But it does get them killed. Things so swimmingly out of the gate, and they’re able to pass through multiple states while teaching Alex how to drive the car herself, but they quickly run into a “spot of weather”. Failing to heed advice from a gas station attendant who cautions them that a car won’t make the trip, they crack on and find themselves in the midst of a blizzard, dangerously low on fuel. Alex manages to sneak in a nap on the floor above the engine, which keeps her defrosted, but the other two aren’t so lucky. She wakes up to find Hillary dead in the front seat and Paul face down outside, having presumably tried to summon help.
This leaves Alex in the middle of frozen nowhere with no help in sight and no idea of where she’s supposed to go to find it. The car is half-buried under the snow, and she has no means of moving it, calling for help, eating, or keeping herself warm. How many traumas can one woman be subjected to? I hope she finds her way back to Spencer soon.
The Hunt For Teonna Is Over
1923 Season 2, Episode 6 does supply some good news — the hunt for Teonna is over. But this, too, claims some casualties, and not all of them are desirable. “The Mountain Teeth of Monsters” opens by confirming that Marshal Kent did indeed kill Pete, but in an interesting turn, Father Renaud isn’t satisfied with his explanation that his running away was grounds enough for murder. Renaud has always found Kent’s methods visibly distasteful, but the implication was that he is too much of a coward to do anything about it. This turns out not to be the case.
Renaud rightly calls Kent out for being a madman and then, rather unexpectedly, shoots him dead. But he doesn’t give up the pursuit of Teonna, whom he is still convinced is an evil murderer deserving of death. So, he hides and waits for Teonna and Runs His Horse to find Pete, lets them fall asleep, and then rounds on them in the middle of the night, shooting Runs His Horse dead and trying to do the same to Teonna. However, he spends much too long trying to save her soul — or so he claims, anyway — and ends up getting burned, stabbed, and shot for his trouble.
So, Teonna is finally free of her pursuers, but she’s also now totally and utterly alone, in a landscape that considers her life to be worth $250 at a maximum (which is how much it took Anders to spill the beans.) Our only hope is that in the finale, she runs into Mamie.
