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Is Kevin Costner Starring in the Final Yellowstone Episodes? John Dutton's Fate Explained
Find out how patriarch John Dutton III fits into the remainder of the fifth and final season.
The much-anticipated final six episodes of the hit drama Yellowstone start to unfold on Sunday, November 10, 2024, which means audiences will finally get to see the ultimate fate of the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch and what's next for the family that runs it.
Set in the wilds of Montana, Yellowstone follows the rugged, everyday adventures of contemporary rancher John Dutton III (Kevin Costner) as he struggles to keep his family's legacy alive.
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Since the series first premiered in 2018, audiences have been obsessed with the drama surrounding widower John and his kids as they fight off land-grabbing enemies and tackle political careers. But the behind-the-scenes drama has proven just as absorbing ahead of the finale. Costner's involvement in the final episodes was up in the air for months; the show's success set the stage for a Costner career renaissance, resulting in his exit from the series.
NBC Insider breaks down what we know about how Costner's exit will impact series creator Taylor Sheridan's endgame for John Dutton III's character and the series' closure.
Is Kevin Costner starring in Yellowstone Season 5?
Yes and no. Everything featuring Costner's performance as John Dutton III in the flesh for Season 5 has already been seen in the first eight episodes, which aired from late 2022 through early 2023. While Costner and Sheridan had some very public negotiations about the actor returning to production — with some sources even claiming that Costner only wanted to spend a week shooting the back half of the season — in June, Costner confirmed in a public Instagram video that he would not be back for the final six episodes.
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In the Season 5 mid-season finale episode "A Knife and No Coin," John's estranged son Jamie (Wes Bentley) revealed a dark family secret to his sister Beth (Kelly Reilly): the "Train Station," a location in rural Wyoming where their family has been dumping the bodies of their enemies for decades. The revelation set up a potent standoff to come with Jamie squaring off against Beth and John (and therefore the entirety of the Dutton Ranch) in the final episodes. And that's not even accounting for Jamie's call for his father, who won the Montana gubernatorial race at the top of the season, to be impeached.
But with Costner's absence, where the storyline goes is anyone's guess. Read on to learn more about John's storyline ...
Why did Kevin Costner leave Yellowstone in Season 5?
With the longer-than-expected Yellowstone hiatus, there's been plenty of media and viewer chatter about what led to Costner and Sheridan's impasse about closing out the series together. Many attributed it to salary issues, as well as Costner's focus on his own cinematic passion project, the series of Western films Horizon: An American Saga, but it's really come down to the unforeseen time commitment and those pesky creative differences.
In June of this year, Costner shared with People that he had initially agreed to commit to "one season and [like] a long movie," but the success of the show then morphed into five seasons. Costner said he happily agreed to three seasons, which then expanded to five. Costner said Sheridan's 14-month hiatus in writing the series, and the writer's strike, is what ultimately pushed him to do other projects.
Will Kevin Costner ever return to Yellowstone?
While fans had plenty of questions about how Sheridan would handle John's character in the final six episodes, series director Christina Voros told The Hollywood Reporter that "his presence is integral" in the final set of episodes.
As for Costner, he exclusively shared with People that his love for Yellowstone has not diminished even if he won't be physically present for the final episodes.
"I liked the people on the show. I liked what it was about. I love that world," he said.
He also didn't shut the door on revisiting John Dutton again in the future.
"It might be an interesting moment to come back and finish the mythology of this modern-day family," he said. "And if that happens, I would step into it if I agreed with how it was being done."
Did John Dutton die in Yellowstone?
Despite Costner's seeming willingness to return under the right circumstances, the Yellowstone Season 5B opener revealed that John Dutton died offscreen, with only a limp, faceless body being shown next to a gun — no Costner in sight. The implication is that he took his own life.
However, in a six-week flashback, we learn that Jamie's fixer girlfriend Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri) put a hit out on John, with explicit instructions to the hit man to make it look like a suicide.
Armed with this knowledge and now more determined than ever, Beth — with her husband Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) having returned to her side after the news of John's passing — vows to end her estranged brother's life.
“It’s so weird to talk about it all, because it has been so clandestine for so long,” executive producer Christina Voros told The Hollywood Reporter. “We didn’t talk about it as a death. Any time there is a death or some sort of event, we called it an ‘arrival.’ And we gave John’s character a pseudonym. We called him ‘Crosby.’ We were calling the opening scene, ‘Beth discovers that Crosby has arrived.’ It was on call sheets and the crew were like, ‘Who is Crosby? And, where’s he coming from?’ I did some random research: [John Schuyler] Crosby was the last governor of Montana before Montana was turned into a state, in the 1880s. It was a very random, obscure, esoteric reference [by Taylor Sheridan].”
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She continued: “I think Taylor’s decision to begin this way was incredibly brave. I think it is testament to his faith in the characters and the actors who embody them to go, ‘Let’s not make this about the incident. Let’s make this about how these human beings exist in the aftermath.’ That was more interesting to [Taylor] than the incident itself.”
The first half of Yellowstone Season 5 (Episodes 1-8) premiered in November 2022, with the second half (Episodes 9-14) premiering on Sunday, November 10, 2024.
Catch up on Yellowstone Seasons 1-5 on Peacock.
Originally published Nov 7, 2024.
