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Episode five of Marshals, titled “Lost Girls,” finally injects some much-needed energy into the series, particularly for Kayce Dutton and his team of marshals known as Team Jock Up. This episode is part of a two-part storyline, promising to maintain this newfound vigor. Unlike previous episodes that seemed to unsuccessfully mimic Yellowstone, this one finds its own voice, drawing on past television influences through the character of Monica, whose presence seems to offer guidance to the Dutton men.
Throughout the series, Monica’s mustang has been a recurring symbol. The strong and untamed horse has been breaking free from the corral fences at East Camp since the series’ inception. Kayce, despite his attempts to manage the horse calmly, finds its wild nature a poignant reminder of what was lost with Monica’s passing. The mustang, once only ridden by Monica, embodies the grief and unresolved emotions Kayce struggles with. When Tate Dutton injures himself trying to bond with the horse, Kayce suggests it’s time for the animal to start anew. Tate accuses his father of trying to erase the past rather than confront the pain, highlighting the emotional turmoil within the family.
However, if Kayce hadn’t set out with the horse trailer to find a buyer in Wyoming, the family wouldn’t have encountered Haley, a girl from Tate’s school on the Black Rock Reservation. Haley appears unexpectedly at a truck stop, seeming distracted and out of sorts. Upon returning to headquarters, Kayce discovers that Haley had been missing from the reservation for four months. Her disappearance is part of a troubling pattern that former tribal police officer Miles had been investigating. Due to limited resources and a lack of interest from higher authorities, many of these cases remain unsolved.
Despite the pressing need for unity, the Jock Up team is once again divided. Kayce and Miles head to the reservation, while Calvin, Belle, and Cruz are tasked with guarding a problematic federal witness. They find themselves babysitting a witness enjoying room service, all while questioning why they’re stuck in this role when they could be addressing the critical issue of missing girls.
On the reservation, Kayce learns Monica was a passionate advocate for the missing girls, and he vows to the mothers that he will help find their daughters. His familiarity with the area proves invaluable, as he recognizes the fishing spot where the girls were last seen. Kayce puts aside his federal duties, symbolically tossing his marshal badge into the glove compartment. “I’m not a marshal—I’m a dad looking for his son’s friend,” he declares, prepared to tackle anyone obstructing his mission.
That guy gives up the name of his trafficker boss, and with the team full again, they search arrest records and license plate readers to locate the ringleader, who’s been moving the kidnapped Indian girls through truck stops using a broken-down old RV. Kayce also extends his little badge-less extrajudicial sojourn. Instead of arresting the tackle box goon, he delivers him to an ally. “You preyed on the rez,” Mo says as they stuff the guy in a trunk. “Now the rez is gonna prey on you.”
Once they had a target, Miles was gung-ho to get after the traffickers and locate the missing Broken Rock girls. But when Kayce actually saw Haley during an ensuing truck stop search, he had to let her go. She told him her captors would kill the other girls if she fled. Which makes sense in that moment, but Miles is still hugely pissed at Kayce. They had a chance to deliver on the hope they brought to the parents on the rez. But the girls remain just as missing as they ever were.
Maybe not for long. Another traffic camera search, and this time, the RV is located, hauling ass down a highway not far from marshals HQ. The team gears up, heads out, and soon has a visual. And though Calvin orders him to stay back, Miles, keyed-up, accelerates the marshals’ SUV til they’re alongside the traffickers. Firing AR-15s from truck windows at 55 miles-per-hour, while the innocents you’re trying to rescue could be inside, seems ill-advised.
Nevertheless, the momentum of this episode of Marshals has finally brought Team Jock Up together. After they deploy spike strips to stop the RV its doors fly open and the kidnappers come out firing. And while Calvin smokes the driver, Kayce, Miles, and Cruz advance on the passenger side door. With all the bad guys down, they enter the vehicle. “Kayce! Sit-rep!” But the camper is otherwise empty. The lost girls will stay lost for now. “We missed ‘em,” a frustrated Kayce says into his radio, and the look his teammate gives him is the coldest one on the planet. Miles might be more mad at Kayce than Monica’s mustang will ever be.
To Be Continued.
Kayce Taykes for Marshals Episode 5 (“Lost Girls”):
- Sheridan-O-Verse easter egg! “I’m gonna call Travis, see if he can find a home for this bronc.” The “Travis” Kayce is talking about is of course Travis Wheatley, horseman extraordinaire and a character played in Yellowstone by Sheridan himself. Remember Bella Hadid rocking a cowboy hat as Travis’s girlfriend?
- Cruz mentions that she rents her place in Bozeman “for a quarter of what I paid in Washington, DC.” Notably, in real life, the Montana mountain town saw rental rates skyrocket during and after the pandemic, as digital nomads and people moving from the coasts – like Deputy US Marshal Andrea Cruz – took all the available real estate.
- Ash Santos also keeps injecting life into her character with cool Cruz line reads. So the trafficker they’re after is a “fully formed POS,” and the nickname she first put on Kayce has immediately stuck. Cruz, deadpan, ‘cause it isn’t: “Treading lightly is Cowboy’s specialty.”
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.