How ‘Yellowstone’ writes off Kevin Costner’s towering patriarch

(Be warned: This review discusses details of Sunday’s Yellowstone episode, Season 5, Ep. 9, “Desire Is All You Need.”)

It took about five minutes for viewers who showed up for the new episode of Paramount Network’s hit series Yellowstone on Sunday night to learn how they would write off Kevin Costner’s towering patriarch John Dutton.

Early on, police filled the mansion where Dutton was living, as governor of Montana. Viewers couldn’t see Costner, but there was a body shown next to a handgun in a pool of blood. The verdict was obvious: Suicide by gunshot.

But since fans had seen Dutton’s son Jamie (Wes Bentley) conspiring with his girlfriend in a previous episode to have professionals kill his father, another cause seemed imminently possible. (To be fair, Jamie suspected the elder Dutton might come after him, first.)

Kelly Reilly, as Dutton’s flame-haired, volatile daughter Beth, makes that connection right away, later unleashing a wave of anger-fueled grief likely to earn an Emmy nomination.

The biggest question left: Will Beth and sibling Kayce (Luke Grimes) take vengeance on Jamie?

Still, heady as this western-flavored soap opera seems, it pales in comparison to the real-life drama which required this plot twist in the first place.

Clashes between star and showrunner

Sunday night’s Yellowstone episode marked the return of Season 5, which has aired in two parts. The first half premiered way back in November 2022; the writers’ and actors’ strikes of last year created some production delays for Part 2.

But Costner, committed to his self-financed Old West film trilogy Horizon, also reportedly clashed with Yellowstone co-creator and showrunner Taylor Sheridan and network producers. This was like Godzilla versus Kong – an Oscar-winning star of one of the biggest shows on TV pitted against the guy who seems to be creating every original show on Paramount+ that isn’t a Star Trek spinoff or Frasier. (Sheridan talks about the controversy to The Hollywood Reporter here.)

Eventually, Costner confirmed he wouldn’t return for the fifth season’s second half. So it’s small wonder the star’s taciturn family leader was written off in dramatic fashion for this episode, setting the stage for a war within the family over control of the sprawling Yellowstone Dutton Ranch.

Yellowstone has succeeded as a lushly-produced family soap opera centered on the ranch, its cowboys (and cowgirl) and Dutton’s fight to preserve both the homestead and the way of life which maintains it.

On Sunday, that meant uncorking an episode hinting at the future of the show without the patriarch who once was the series’ focal point. A mid-episode time jump six weeks into the past, before Dutton’s death, ensured there wouldn’t be a funeral scene Sunday – exposing another time worn element of the soap opera, stretching out the drama.

‘Yellowstone’ soars depicting the cowboy life

Instead, we got a heavy dose of the cowboy lifestyle, watching Cole Hauser’s Rip Wheeler lead a crew from the Yellowstone Ranch down to Texas with a load of livestock. Yellowstone is often at its best when it’s showing us a modern version of the cowboy’s life we rarely see on big TV shows – illuminating the lives of working class men and women living lives filled with hard work, endless open skies and a very demanding culture.

Of course, Sheridan can’t resist poking at the people who aren’t a part of that culture – like a moment in Sunday’s episode where Rip lets a well-scrubbed little boy pet the horses he’s shepherding, before telling a young couple with wild hair and scruffy looks to buzz off.

When the couple asks why they can’t pet the horses, too, Rip unloads on them like they cut him off in traffic. “You do it once, and you’re being nice…you do it a second time, and you’re being a petting zoo,” he says angrily. “This ain’t no f***ing petting zoo.”

It’s tough to know what they did to earn his anger besides looking like a couple of Gen Z kids on their way back from Coachella.

It’s tempting to call Yellowstone prestige TV for red states — featuring a high-quality elevation of traditionalism and rural lifestyles, while positioning characters from urban centers and each American coast as interlopers and villains. The show’s focus on whiteness deepens that feeling, with almost no Black or Latino characters and Native American storylines often at the edges of the series.

But, like many of Sheridan’s shows, a significant theme involves resisting modernity and upholding old ways — especially the tradition of Dutton’s family holding onto all the land they’ve controlled for generations — without a lot of sentiment spared for the Native Americans they likely had to push aside to take it over in the first place.

“You know, in 30 years from now, nobody’s going to be doing this,” Rip says, drinking with his cowboys in Texas, railing against a future he imagines will include wind farms across the land and beef imported from Brazil.

(The show even found time for a touching cameo by legendary spurs and horse bit maker Billy Klapper, who died in September at age 87. Sunday’s episode was dedicated to him.)

Ultimately, the core drama at the heart of Sunday’s episode felt more than a bit like a ramped-up, modernized version of Dallas – featuring a wealthy, powerful family at war with itself, as control of the ranch and the state of Montana hang in the balance.

It’s too early to tell if Yellowstone can maintain its momentum without the movie star who helped build its success. But Sunday’s episode revealed bold moves; if Costner’s departure does make the show falter, it’s going to go down – like its characters – fighting hard.