Luke Grimes Explains ‘Marshals’ Premiere: How Tate’s Kidnapping Changes Everything

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Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) will be grappling with fear over his son, Tate’s (Brecken Merrill), safety throughout Marshals Season 2. That’s always been the case for this Yellowstone father-son duo, but what’s changed now is that Tate is approaching 18 and will soon have the independence to defend himself. As a result, Kayce feels like he’s running out of time to make sure that Tate is emotionally and physically stable, which are hard things to secure with a family legacy like the Duttons’. Here, Grimes breaks down the big events of the Marshals Season 2 premiere on CBS. Warning: Marshals spoilers ahead!

Tate was kidnapped again in the Marshals Season 1 finale, and the debacle with Tom Weaver (Chris Mulkey) in the Season 2 opener ended in tragedy. The conflict at East Camp forced Tate to kill a man in self-defense, and being kidnapped again made Tate sure of two things: 1) his dad will always come for him when he’s in danger, and 2) he wants to be able to defend himself. Tate has watched his dad resort to violence time and again to defend their family. In the Marshals Season 2 premiere on October 4, that defense almost included killing Dolly Weaver (Ellyn Jameson).

Kayce soon learned what Tom did with Tate in the beginning of the premiere. A lawyer was sent to East Camp, where Kayce and Dolly were on a bit of a date, and told him that Tate would be set free when Kayce sold over his land. Kayce took the man out and held Dolly hostage, assuming that she had been “honey-trapping” Kayce as part of her dad’s plot to get the last remaining piece of the Yellowstone Ranch land. Dolly had to prove her innocence, and she did. She tried to help Kayce in the exchange for Tate on Tom’s land in Wyoming, land he was poised to lose, which created his desire for Kayce’s acreage.

Gilles Mingasson/CBS

Kayce threatened to kill Dolly, whom he had been casually, apprehensively dating. Grimes says that had things escalated badly with Dolly in his house, he might have been able to kill her to save his son, but he’s not convinced Kayce would have gone through with it.

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“I’m not sure that Kayce had any instinct to kill her,” Grimes tells TV Insider. “The worst thing that could possibly happen to him is something happening to his son at this point. And he’s been down that road before. Tate’s been kidnapped in the past, and so I think it was the highest stakes imaginable. In the heat of the moment, anything might have been possible.”

Kayce and Dolly went to Wyoming, where Kayce would sell his land in exchange for his son. But after signing the deal, Tom revealed his true plan: he would kill Tate and make it look like an accident, and then kill Kayce and make it look like he did it in self-defense after Kayce attacked him in his grief over his son.

Kayce told Tom he knew he wasn’t a “real cowboy.” Grimes explains what Kayce meant by that.

Gilles Mingasson/CBS

“[Kayce] was completely bamboozled by the whole thing, and I don’t think he feels very good about that,” Grimes says. “He bought into who Tom was saying that he was, and thought that he was a good guy. He clearly let Tate fly off with him for a fishing trip, so he obviously trusted the guy.”

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“By saying, ‘I knew you weren’t a real cowboy,’ Kayce knows that’s going to cut deep into the core everything this guy thinks about himself,” Grimes continues. “There’s a cowboy code, like a code of honor, and it’s an unspoken rule with cowboys that they stick to their word, they’re honest and hardworking, and all of these things that Tom Weaver turned out not to be. That code is a part of who Kayce is.”

This willingness to trust, according to Grimes, is “the opposite” of a Dutton family trait and something that sets him apart from his family. “Kayce had always tried to set himself apart from the rest of his family and live by that traditional, old-school cowboy code,” Grimes says. “Deep down, he tries his best to be a good person and wants to believe that about other people as much as possible.”

That explains Kayce’s willingness to spare Dolly as well and believe in her innocence. Dolly was shocked by her dad’s villainy, but she couldn’t give up on her father. When Tom tried to flee after Kayce saved Tate and killed his henchman, Jeb (Kevin McNamara), Tom drove them into a car wreck that left him badly injured and killed Dolly. In his shame and grief, Tom asked Kayce to kill him. Kayce said that living with the weight of killing his own daughter was the punishment he deserved.

Marshals returns to its 8/7c air time next week.

Marshals, Sundays, 8/7c, CBS