The Yellowstone prequel 1883 has been wrangling viewers since it debuted in 2021, and after the dramatic ending of the show’s first 10 episode run, fans have been left understandably uncertain about the show’s future.
On February 15, 2022, before the show wrapped up its run, Paramount+ announced that it had ordered more episodes of 1883. However, a climactic season finale that saw the deaths of many of the show’s most prominent characters—including the narrator Elsa Dutton (Isabel May) and wagon train leader Shea Brennan (Sam Elliott), not to mention most of the wagon train itself—has left many scratching their heads as to what exactly those new episodes might entail.
Adding to the confusion, 1883 creator and writer Taylor Sheridan told Deadline following the finale that, “We wanted to make a 10-hour movie that ended, and that’s what we did,” adding, “For me, as a storyteller it feels close ended. I’m going to peek through the window of a different era and see what I see then.”
That “different era” eventually turned out to be 1923, the Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford-starring spin off featuring another generation of Dutton history set during the era of Prohibition and the Great Depression.
For a time, it appeared that the additional 1883 episodes would be coming in the form of its own spin off about the legendary US Marshal Bass Reeves. Sheridan’s now-filming Bass Reeves project starring David Oyelowo was, for a time, titled 1883: Bass Reeves, but the series name has since been changed to Lawmen: Bass Reeves, suggesting that whatever ties is may have had to the story of 1883 is no longer in play.
So what does that mean for those promised additional episodes of 1883? As of 2022, Town & Country understood that more episodes would be forthcoming, however the specific creative direction for them had not been determined yet. Given the current writer’s strike, and the potential for an upcoming strike of the screen actor’s guild as well, it doesn’t look likely we’ll be seeing any new information on 1883 in the near future.
“We just don’t know. We’re sort of in limbo like everyone else,” Tim McGraw, who stars in the series at Dutton family patriarch James, told Variety in 2022 when asked about the show’s future. “We’re excited about what’s to come and excited about what [Sheridan] writes and can’t wait to see however it develops.”
Whatever form the new episodes take, and whenever they appear, new additions into the 1883 universe are expected to appear exclusively on Paramount+ just as the first 10 episodes did.
What’s 1883 about?
Starring Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Sam Elliott, and Isabel May, 1883 tells the story of the ancestors of Yellowstone’s Dutton family in the late 19th century as they set out into America’s untamed west to create what will one day become their namesake Montana homestead.
The first season saw James and Margaret Dutton (McGraw and Hill) and their children, rebellious Elsa (May), and young John (Audie Rick), travel from Fort Worth, Texas into the Great Plains, enduring desperation, death, and destruction on the path to following the American dream.