Within the first five minutes of the series premiere of Yellowstone, fans are immediately met with a few significant themes. One, there are many layers to the quickly unfolding story. Two, life can be painfully unfair, leaving us hoping for only a moment of peace — and three, John Dutton isn’t just a familiar face but a widely respected and influential man.
Kevin Costner breathes life into John Dutton, and he does so with grit and power that makes him an irreplaceable part of the family, the town, the state, and the story. Yellowstone wouldn’t exist as we know it if not for Costner, so fans were shocked when news of his Yellowstone exit hit news cycles earlier this year. That stomach-in-your-throat feeling only continued when it was announced within 48 hours that Yellowstone would be ending with its fifth season.
Talk about that feeling of hoping for a moment of peace. Those closest to the series have been quiet about all of the rumors spinning, but Taylor Sheridan candidly spoke about everything in a feature with The Hollywood Reporter, and among his topics of conversation was Costner’s impending exit from the series.
“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 script for the final half of season five isn’t complete yet, with Sheridan laying his pen down in support of the WGA Writers’ Strike, and there’s no inkling in anything that he says regarding what the future and final scene for Costner might look like.
One thing is for sure: we won’t be seeing the Shonda Rhimes-type exit of a beloved character that fans of Grey’s Anatomy have grown used to. You know the ones, the Derek Shepherd car crash, O’Malley being hit by a bus, Denny dying of a stroke — they’re seemingly screw-you deaths.
Sheridan isn’t in the business of following suit.
“I don’t do f***-you car crashes. Whether [Dutton’s fate] inflates [Costner’s] ego or insults is collateral damage that I don’t factor in with regard to storytelling.”
This specific phrase leads into another topic of discussion in the Yellowstone realm, egos and complexes; who is to blame for the all-but-openly-acknowledged stand-off between the Yellowverse powerhouses? We’ll remain mum about specific feelings in that vein, but we also agree with another thing Sheridan said about Costner having to deal with a lot of public blame: Costner has seemed to shoulder it, and we’re not sure that’s all that fair.
Without holding anything back, Sheridan speaks frankly about his feelings on Costner’s exit:
“I’m disappointed. It truncates the closure of his character. It doesn’t alter it, but it truncates it.”
Disappointed is the theme for fans of Yellowstone as of late, a feeling we never wanted to equate with the series, but we were given no other choice. The reasons for that, where to place the blame, and who to direct upset at differ depending on who you speak to, but there are a few obvious things that went wrong in the otherwise dramatically perfect realm of Yellowstone, and they all center around the idea of timing and how wrong everything can go when it’s not all right.
Sheridan also didn’t hold any feelings back when discussing Costner’s decision to put his passion project above everything else.
“My opinion of Kevin as an actor hasn’t altered. His creation of John Dutton is symbolic and powerful … and I’ve never had an issue with Kevin that he and I couldn’t work out on the phone. But once lawyers get involved, then people don’t get to talk to each other and start saying things that aren’t true and attempt to shift blame based on how the press or public seem to be reacting. He took a lot of this on the chin and I don’t know that anyone deserves it. His movie seems to be a great priority to him and he wants to shift focus. I sure hope [the movie is] worth it — and that it’s a good one.”
So maybe Sheridan’s opinion of Costner’s acting hasn’t changed, but he’s also not mincing words regarding how things have unfolded. It’s an assumption at best, but it’s easy to look at his statement and see that this isn’t really the path he anticipated taking. If we had to guess, we’d say the same is true for Costner as Sheridan said, “I’m one of those people that’s incapable of doing something that’s not tethered to 100 percent of my passion. I cannot do ‘OK’ at a job.”
Perhaps Costner felt like Horizon was his 100 percent passion project, which meant that even though he loves Yellowstone, it couldn’t be right now. Maybe there could have been conversations on a personal level with care and compassion; maybe there was space for everyone to give more than they were willing to take. As fans, we won’t ever know exactly what happened to lead to where we’re at now, but one thing is for sure: the Yellowverse is forever changed because of Costner’s greatness and determination, and that universe only exists because of Taylor Sheridan. There’s such a beauty and tragedy in that.
