Why Cole Hauser's Instagram Post Has Yellowstone Fans Worried

The upcoming fourth season of Yellowstone, which has previously been teased to shoot exclusively in Montana, is hotly anticipated thanks to the insane season 3 finale that left the fates of several characters in the balance. Three Dutton family members — John (Kevin Costner), Beth (Kelly Reilly), and Kayce (Luke Grimes) — were targeted in what appeared to be coordinated assassination attempts. But they weren't the only ones who ended the season in danger.

In the season finale, an injured Jimmy (Jefferson White) got the questionable advice to get back in the saddle and start rodeo riding again, even though he was warned not to by a doctor following a previous injury. Wanting to prove himself, he wrangled himself a horse at the Yellowstone Ranch with the intention to get back up and ride. After a few moments of exhilarating bucking, the situation quickly got out of hand, and Jimmy was thrown from the horse, hitting the ground with an audible crack. The last viewers saw of him that season, he was unconscious and possibly even dead.

Now, an otherwise innocuous Instagram snap from Cole Hauser, who plays Rip Wheeler, has fans fretting about Jimmy's fate.

Hauser took to Instagram to post a picture from the set of season 4 of Yellowstone. In the image, several of Hauser's castmates are seen on horseback, including most of the actors who portray the ranch hands at the Yellowstone Ranch, sometimes referred to as the Bunkhouse Boys. However, one Yellowstone employee was conspicuously absent: Jimmy.

Several fans noticed the lanky ranch hand's absence and seemed to have made the connection to the potentially fatal ending to his season 3 story arc. Instagram user mack_dixon_ commented, "Where's jimmy??" with two lookin' eyes emojis. Similarly, rayconda wrote in, "No jimmy?" while jasaiz exclaimed, "Noooo....where is Jimmy."

Whether he's dead, debilitated, or just wasn't on set that day, Yellowstone fans are nervous about the well-being of the lovable wannabe rodeo rider. We won't know for sure what the future holds for Jimmy until season 4 premieres, but one fan does have a theory about his fate.

Over at Reddit, Yellowstone fan MichaelJordansToupee started a thread titled "Thinking back on the season finale, something I noticed about Jimmy." That something was a possibly telling choice of headwear: "He wasn't wearing his cowboy hat anymore, he was back to his baseball hat."

Indeed, in the finale — specifically the scene where he's thrown from the horse — Jimmy can be seen wearing a plain black baseball cap instead of the cowboy hat that he used to wear with pride. User jettjett0516 chimed in to add, "You know, I noticed that too, but didn't think much of it. I wonder if it was a subtle hint his cowboy days are truly over?"

Yellowstone is a show that regularly uses loaded imagery and metaphors, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that Jimmy's baseball cap might have portended that his time as a cowboy has come to an end, whether that means he's severely injured, or even dead.

While fans on Instagram are worried about those possibilities, others would actually be fine with having less Jimmy on the show.

In a Reddit thread titled "Jimmy's character is cool but sacrificing main characters for his storyline doesn't sit right with me" user supremelyparanoid had a bone to pick with the possibly dead ranch hand. Specifically, they aren't a fan of Jimmy's storylines starting to eclipse other character's on the show, whose narratives are more crucial to the overall plot. They wrote, "I just don't care for Jimmy. They ditched Jamie ep for Jimmy and he doesn't need that much attention imo. Ultimately he's a cool character but I'm not invested in bunkhouse boys or the rodeo... I'm invested in the Duttons."

They weren't the only one harboring resentments. User MontanaJoev said, "I so agree. Jimmy is an amusing side character, but the more prominence they give him, the less interested in him I am." Meanwhile, another user agreed, adding, "This is just an extra character arc I don't need when I'm trying to figure out Rainwater, Beth, Rip, and what's up with Jamie and his child that's on the way."

However, there was some Jimmy defense. User Complementary-Badger opined that, "even the fans can't let poor Jimmy have one good thing for once." Poor Jimmy, indeed. Complementary-Badger will have to join those Instagram fans in waiting for season 4, to see whether their favorite Bunkhouse Boy survived.