Kevin Costner has been done with Yellowstone in the spiritual sense for a while now, but whether he was done with the show in the literal sense has remained a question mark for months. Fans hoped he might at least come back for a few more episodes to complete his storyline—because how could he not? The first half of the show’s fifth and final season ended with Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley) calling for his father’s impeachment, and John Dutton (Costner) seemingly gearing up to have his son killed. That’s quite the cliffhanger to lose your leading man on.
But any hope of Costner’s return (at least in the form of yet-to-be-shot footage) has now been crushed. Us Weekly reports that in court documents related to his child support case with estranged wife Christine Baumgartner, Costner said he “concluded his work” on Yellowstone last year. Furthermore, his legal team stated, he “is not involved in any future episodes” of the show.
The possibility of Costner’s return wasn’t just based in wishful thinking. In a June profile of showrunner Taylor Sheridan, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that there were “ongoing discussions to try to convince Costner to film a few scenes to wrap his character,” but the scripts weren’t finished.
Script delays were apparently a common rub behind the scenes. In his child support hearing on Friday, Sept. 1, Costner reportedly said that he was ready to shoot Season 5B last fall and delayed production on his multi-part movie saga Horizon for the effort, but that Yellowstone never went into production for Season 5B because the scripts weren’t done.
For his part, Sheridan told THR in June, “My last conversation with Kevin was that he had this passion project he wanted to direct. He and the network were arguing about when he could be done with Yellowstone. I said, ‘We can certainly work a schedule toward [his preferred exit date],’ which we did.”
The series, which was originally meant to return this summer and then bumped to November, is now held up by the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes and unlikely to air as planned. As for how it will end, Sheridan said that Costner’s exit “truncates the closure of his character” but “doesn’t alter it.”