Harrison Ford's '1923' Monologue Nails What 'Yellowstone' Is About

"I do it for the land."

Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for Episode 6 of 1923.Harrison Ford has shown us all that he's thriving on television. With both 1923 and Shrinking airing at the same time, we're getting plenty of Ford each week but in Episode 6 of 1923, titled "One Ocean Closer to Destiny," Ford as Jacob Dutton gave us a speech that really brought to the forefront everything that Yellowstone is all about. For the most part, the Taylor Sheridan universe has been building around this one issue: The land.

The Duttons own a huge plot of land in Montana and from Season 1 of Yellowstone, someone has wanted to develop on it. They wanted to take what was the Duttons and make it theirs — and this fight has been, for the most part, the only thing that John Dutton (Kevin Costner) and Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) really agree on. They want the land to stay under the Duttons' control because, since they took it over, the Dutton family has taken care of it and sacrificed their family to keep it safe.

In 1923, we're just starting to see the people who want to turn Montana into the busy cities that litter the United States, and Jacob is talking with Cara (Helen Mirren) about it when Ford delivers a speech that really just highlights what this world has always been about. It's simple, and understated, showing not only the power that Ford has as Jacob but also what Sheridan has been trying to tell audiences from the start of the series.

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"You saved my life. I know it. I did not need to be told," Jacob says to Cara after the two have a fight about Jacob's anger over what happened to their family, all in the name of greed. "It's not vengeance. It's preservation. You've been to New York. You've been to Boston. Now close your eyes and imagine those places if the cities weren't there." When Cara finally indulges him and closes her eyes, he paints a scene of a beautiful landscape that could still be there had the cities not come to replace it: "White sands stretching to a forest of hickory and elm taller than the buildings that stand there now. Meadows filled with bison and moose and bear and millions of salmon swimming up the East River to spawn so thick you could walk across them."

But then Jacob asks her to think about those cities now. "A thirteen-mile island of cement with rivers of sewage underneath it until they dump in the bay where salmon don't dare to swim. That's what they'll do to this place. Dam the rivers, flood the valleys, cut every tree that stands to build cities. This paradise becomes another concrete desert. I'm not going to kill him for what they've done to me or what they've done to John or what they're still doing to you. I'm going to kill them because the men who build cities always send men like Banner first. I do it for the child of a child I will never meet. I do it for the land."

From the start of this entire franchise, we've been told that this isn't about the Duttons and what they own, but always about protecting the land. For better or worse, we've been led to believe that it is a front that John Dutton forces out into the world — but with Jacob's speech, it's clear that this is the way that the Duttons have thought about the Yellowstone Ranch for at least a few generations.

Jacob doesn't care what happens to him, as long as his land and this "paradise" is safe. John is, for the most part, doing the same thing. It's in the Duttons' blood. And this speech really hits home given our own climate and how many treat the land this country is built on. Seeing the emotion in Jacob's eyes as he knows he has to protect what's his and the legacy it will hold for his family is moving — because this ranch is, at its core, what this show is all about. It brings together multiple groups of people; despite it being land that the Dutton family at some point stole from Natives, they are upholding the belief that the land is not theirs to turn into something destructive. That's a belief that unites Monica and Kayce, unites John and Thomas, and bleeds all the way back to Jacob and his own feelings towards Timothy Dalton's Donald Whitfield.

New episodes of 1923 premiere every Sunday on Paramount+.

Rachel Leishman is a writer who specializes in yelling about her favorite properties. A real-life Leslie Knope, she loves her fictional characters and knows probably too much about Harrison Ford's career.