The duo of Kevin Coster and Taylor Sheridan turned the TV landscape upside-down in 2018 with the debut of Yellowstone. The modern Western drama was a quick hit for the Paramount Network, eventually becoming one of the biggest shows on all of television. In a world of streaming, Yellowstone has singlehandedly proven that traditional cable TV can work, even without a next-day streaming option. Now, it appears Costner may be ready to walk away from the series.
There have been numerous reports over the last several months about a rift between Sheridan and Costner. The star doesn’t want the intense filming schedule the series demands, choosing instead to focus on filming his own movies. This has left the second half of Yellowstone Season 5 in limbo. A report from ET on Wednesday echoed the sentiments that insiders have been sharing for a while now: Kevin Costner isn’t coming back to Yellowstone once Season 5 is over. Can the series actually work without him?
The short answer to that question is yes, Yellowstone can absolutely exist without Kevin Costner. Things may change, and Costner may choose to continue playing John Dutton. These are just reports, after all. If he truly is done, however, Yellowstone will be just fine going forward.
Yellowstone needed Costner to become such a hit. When it first started, it was Costner’s appeal as a bonafide screen icon coming to television that caused a lot of people to give the show a try. His presence elevated the Yellowstone brand and helped turn it into a powerhouse. Now, five seasons in, the massive Yellowstone fandom has plenty of other reasons to tune in. People are too invested in the show to stop watching just because one character dies — even if that character is played by Kevin Costner.
The first half of Yellowstone’s fifth season started moving away from John Dutton as the show’s focal point. The character is now the governor, taking him away from his family’s ranch more often than not, leaving most of the major storylines to his children. Besides, his kids are the most beloved characters on the show anyway. Most Yellowstone fans are much more interested in the stories of Beth, Rip, Kayce, and Jamie than they are John’s.
If Yellowstone wants to move forward without Costner, it simply needs to look to HBO’s hit family drama for the answers. Succession and Yellowstone follow pretty similar stories — evil fathers with massive empires trying to establish a legacy for their screwup children — and the former is putting on a clinic on how to remove your main character. Just three episodes into its final season, Succession killed off Logan Roy, the family patriarch, and pivoted the entire series to focus on how his kids deal with the fallout of his death. The drama created by Logan’s demise has arguably been as exciting as anything the show did while he was alive.
Unless there is actually a plan to start a new series with Matthew McConaughey and most of the original cast, Yellowstone needs to follow Succession’s model. Think about how John’s death would impact Jamie or Kayce. Think about Beth trying to plan a funeral and take over a ranch. At this point, a story without John Dutton would probably be even more intriguing than one where he’s the star.
There’s also the actual ranch to consider. John is the one who knows how to keep that land in the family. He’s the one with the big government connections and a deep history with those mountains. And we know all of his kids have proposed different ideas for the ranch’s future. With John out of the picture, the battle for the Yellowstone’s legacy would spiral into chaos, Sweet, highly entertaining chaos.
Kevin Costner is a legend of the screen, there’s no doubt about that. But now’s the time for Yellowstone to forge its own path without him.