[This story contains spoilers from the two-episode season five premiere of Yellowstone.]

Rip Wheeler and Beth Dutton have come a long way since their teenage years together at the Yellowstone ranch.

“They’re the ultimate power couple,” Cole Hauser tells The Hollywood Reporter. “When you think of her mind, education and business savviness, and then you have this cowboy who knows the land and is one with animals and horses and cows, and understands how to run a ranch… When you smash them together, they are that perfect couple.”

That cowboy, played by Hauser, and the daughter to Kevin Costner’s patriarch, played by Kelly Reilly, have emerged as TV’s couple to watch. The fervor around the initially star-crossed lovers has grown so intense now five seasons into the hit Paramount Network neo-Western, that fans nearly revolted when they thought the show’s social media account was hinting at trouble in paradise.

Don’t worry, says Hauser. Things are good with Rip and Beth, who got married in an impromptu ceremony in the season four finale and who open season five playing their version of house. As part of last season’s sweeping attack on the Dutton family, Rip’s Yellowstone cabin was burned down. Now, he and Beth, and the boy who is living with them Carter (Finn Little) — “Don’t call me mama,” Beth has made clear — are settling into married life under patriarch John’s roof on the family’s cattle ranch.

“I think it’s a little uncomfortable for him,” says Hauser of the living arrangement, with a laugh. “But I kind of dig that Taylor [Sheridan, creator] didn’t all of a sudden spin Rip and Beth’s relationship on its heels and make it more stressful now that they’re married. Taylor doesn’t write in a way for us ever to be totally settled in, and that’s part of the reason I like his style of writing, and I know Kelly does, too. Everything we do, there is emotion, there is love, there’s tension. There are all these colors within the scenes. But I don’t know if he has the ability to write them at peace totally, it’s just not in the cards.”

Their version of peace instead comes during an intimate conversation between the pair after viewers watch a flashback of how Beth would mistreat Rip during their younger years. When she approaches him with guilt over how much time they lost together because of her actions, he begs her to find herself a new target, so she stops beating herself up over the past.

“He’s a really calming influence on her; he understands her more than anyone on the planet,” Hauser explains of the scene. “She has this really tough shell and armor, but ultimately, he remembers that really innocent, beautiful being at 13 or 14 years old, and I don’t think he’s ever forgotten that. He’s consistently like, ‘I know who you are; I know who your heart is, and I’m just going to continue to feed that part of our love.’”

Beth does heed her husband’s advice, as she sharpens her daggers for her brother, Jamie (Wes Bentley), and continues to blackmail him so he will fall in line with her and John’s goals. With Jamie as Attorney General and now totally under their thumb, Montana Governor John Dutton and his new chief of staff, Beth, can harness their power towards the only thing that matters: Keeping their cattle ranch in the Dutton family name.

“There is one moment this season that I won’t give away, that Rip definitely is turned off by with Beth — but, not totally,” says Hauser, hinting at what’s to come from his formidable partner in crime. But, as he points out in the premiere while Beth enjoys the inauguration party thrown for John at Yellowstone, Rip is worried about the larger changes ahead. He predicts that John will lose the ranch, and that will weigh on Rip as the season goes.

“It’s the idea that there are all these people in his backyard, which has been this private place his whole life,” explains Hauser. “When I talked to Taylor about it, it was really that idea that the public has infiltrated this hollow ground where people were never allowed. So it’s that sense of having the public in that place that he just doesn’t like, and will never like.”

With his personal life now galloping ahead at a steady pace, the biggest change viewers will see from Rip this year will be his evolving role with the ranch.

“John’s sons aren’t really stepping up with the way John would want them to when it comes to running the ranch, so if somebody is going to run it at some point down the road, potentially it could be Rip,” he says about Dutton sons Jamie and Kayce (Luke Grimes). “I think Rip is trying to listen but at the same time tell John, ‘There are some things you’ve taught me that you are going slightly against now.’ It’s not that Rip doesn’t want to listen, it’s that he might not totally agree.”

And with his newfound responsibilities as foreman come new opportunities to really lean into the Yellowstone way of life.

“There’s some amazing cowboy stuff that we got to do this year. Taylor really took off the shackles and let us really go to work as actors. You get to see us wrestling steers and doing stuff that I don’t think anybody has ever done on camera,” he says. “I know there’s a huge portion of the audience that loves the cowboy lifestyle, and they’re going to be in for a treat this season.”

Yellowstone airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on Paramount Network, with episodes or the full season available for purchase on select services. (The series is not available on Paramount+; previous seasons stream on Peacock.)