When it comes to anti-heroes, made men, and vigilantes like Rip, audiences can accept otherwise unacceptable levels of violence (including murder) since they're tethered to the narrative and its in-world construct of justice. These acts would be appalling to our sense of right and wrong in the real world, but, within the fictitious universe, they're completely justifiable. It's only when that violence spills outside the bounds of that justification — either because we've gained too much sympathy for the individual on the receiving end, or, because it's doesn't come off as a legitimately necessary action — that our willful suspension of real-world morality begins to break down.
In the case of Rip's attack on Lloyd, both of these bubble-bursting elements are at play."I don't understand why rip is being so hard on (Lloyd) this season," wrote u/thenaturalwitch on the show's subreddit, while u/SmoothBlueberry7 said Rip was "being an a*****e," and said they were "starting not to like his character for how he is treating Lloyd."
Viewers not only have enormous amounts of sympathy for Lloyd, (a sympathy the character has built up over three-and-a-half seasons) but, it's also difficult to understand the thinking that went into throwing two ranch hands and integral employees into a Gladiator-style fight to the finish, only to then punish one of those individuals for doing exactly what he was told. It's so difficult to understand, in fact, that several viewers on one Reddit thread theorized that the scene only really existed, as u/MajorMJO put it, because "the show is setting up a situation for Rip to take Lloyd for granted, and then realize he was wrong." Considering the irrational line of reasoning behind the melodramatic subplot, it's a theory that's not, one hopes, without merit.
