Dutton Ranch star casts doubt on surprising season one finale demise: ‘I wouldn’t be so certain’

Dutton Ranch’s Juan Pablo Raba isn’t convinced his character Joaquin is responsible for the shocking death of a major character in the season one finale.

The Yellowstone spinoff, which sees Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser reprise their roles of volatile power couple Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler, concluded its first season on a tragic cliffhanger.

*Warning: major spoilers for Dutton Ranch season one finale to follow*

In the ninth episode titled “El Padrino,” Jai Courtney’s Rob-Will is shot dead execution-style. The character’s murder is not depicted on-screen. Instead, a shot rings out, prompting Rob-Will’s daughter Oreana (Natalie Alyn Lind) to run downstairs to find her father lying dead in the foyer. A vehicle is then seen speeding away.

So far, all the clues point to Joaquin pulling the trigger on his adopted brother. For one, his drug lord father, Mariano (Raoul Max Trujillo), instructed him to kill Rob-Will earlier in the episode out of fury that the brothers’ mother, Beulah (Annette Bening), had named Rob-Will, rather than Joaquin, as her successor to take over the ranch.

Secondly, just before the fatal shooting, Joaquin is seen parked outside his family home with a gun visible on his passenger seat.

While Raba, 49, claims not to know who is guilty of the crime, he still has faith in Joaquin’s innocence.

“I don’t think he did it,” the Colombian actor told Entertainment Weekly. “Because he’s not a killer. He’s not even a cowboy, for Christ’s sake. He has never shot anyone in his life.”

He added cryptically: “Until we have a scene where we see him do it, I wouldn’t be so sure.”

To back up his claims, Raba recalled the timeline of events leading up to the shooting.

“Rob-Will says bye to Oreana, and then we stay on her, and then not even 30 seconds later, we hear a gunshot,” he explained. “So that means that whoever did it literally went ding dong, Rob-Will opened the door, and shot him. It takes a lot of cold blood to do that. You have to be a professional killer to do that.”

Raba maintains that Joaquin is “not a professional killer,” adding that “Mariano being Mariano, do we really think that he thinks his son is going to go through that? Or would he have a backup plan? Who knows.”

Dutton Ranch debuted on Paramount+ in May, with its first two episodes breaking records for the streaming service. It has been renewed for a second season, which is expected to begin production later this year for a 2027 release date.

The series is the fourth installment in Taylor Sheridan’s popular Yellowstone universe.