After five years on the air, “Yellowstone,” the rugged linchpin of the Paramount Network, is finally in its home stretch. Part 1 of Season 5 concluded on January 1, 2023, with Part 2 set to focus on the bitter, perhaps deadly war between rancher patriarch John Dutton (Kevin Costner), his daughter Beth (Kelly Reilly), and Jamie (Wes Bentley), the black sheep of the family.
Well, it’s nearly in its home stretch, as Season 5 Part 2 remains in limbo. Originally scheduled for a Summer 2023 release, the final “Yellowstone” installment has been pushed back indefinitely. Around the time that rumblings of the show’s end were surfacing, reports spread that Kevin Costner had decided to leave the show, a decision that was allegedly related to behind-the-scenes tensions.
Creator Taylor Sheridan never intended for John Dutton to be around for the end of the series — per The Hollywood Reporter, he pitched it as “‘The Godfather’ in Montana,” and Vito Corleone doesn’t exactly have a happy ending. However, Costner’s dissatisfaction certainly colors the end of “Yellowstone.” “I’m disappointed,” Sheridan told The Hollywood Reporter. “It truncates the closure of his character. It doesn’t alter it, but it truncates it.”
Sheridan remains tight-lipped over the much-anticipated conclusion, but he knows better than to get a dig in at Costner himself by killing off the senior Dutton in a watered-down fashion, such as a random car accident. “I don’t do f***-you car crashes,” Sheridan continued. “Whether [Dutton’s fate] inflates [Costner’s] ego or insults is collateral damage that I don’t factor in with regard to storytelling.”
Taylor Sheridan has been on the other end of a TV car crash death
For Taylor Sheridan, the idea of a “f***-you car crash” isn’t just lazy writing — it’s personal. “I was killed in a f***-you car crash!” the “Yellowstone” creator exclaimed in the same Hollywood Reporter profile. Indeed, before Sheridan switched to writing and producing full-time, he had a lengthy career as an actor, securing his best-known role on FX’s “Sons of Anarchy.” As noted in THR, when Sheridan quit the series citing inadequate compensation, his character, Deputy Chief David Hale, was unceremoniously run over by a van.
There’s a history of off-screen television beef being settled in a fiery on-screen crash. When Patrick Dempsey left “Grey’s Anatomy” in 2015, his character too died in a car accident. Years later, an excerpt from “How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey’s Anatomy” by Lynette Rice revealed that Dempsey had been ousted due to on-set tensions with some of his co-stars and showrunner Shonda Rhimes. Cue, apparently, the f***-you car crash.
So how will John Dutton make his fated “Yellowstone” exit? This is a man, after all, who has already survived a ruptured ulcer and bullet wounds, so Sheridan will have to get creative. Fans won’t find out until at least 2024, when “Yellowstone” is presumed to return. But with the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, that date could be pushed back even further.