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Yellowstone Chose the Most Shocking, Divisive Way to Send Off Kevin Costner’s John Dutton and Fans Are Pissed

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Full SPOILERS ahead for Yellowstone!

How popular TV shows with passionate fandoms handle their final season and the fates of their leading characters has always been a tough challenge for showrunners and writers. The endings of Game of Thrones, Lost, Dexter, Seinfeld, or, for some, even The Sopranos royally pissed off the very people who made those shows years-long hits. Now it seems we may have to add Yellowstone to that list although its series finale has yet to be set. (Yellowstone Season 6 is not officially greenlit despite rumors that it would follow Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser’s characters.)

Yellowstone fans are deeply unhappy with how creator and showrunner Taylor Sheridan handled the departure of Kevin Costner’s patriarch John Dutton in Sunday’s episode “ Desire Is All You Need,” the first of six episodes in Yellowstone Season 5, Part 2. There was no real good option, mind you, and we’ll get to why, but Sheridan’s choice shocked and angered fans who feel they’ve been robbed of a proper goodbye to one of the show’s most beloved characters.

Why Is Kevin Costner Not in Yellowstone Season 5, Part 2?

After leading the cast for five seasons, Kevin Costner didn’t return to Yellowstone due to his commitment to his Western movie trilogy Horizon: An American Saga. With Taylor Sheridan juggling multiple TV series commitments, the writing of scripts for the second half of Yellowstone’s fifth season kept being delayed (due in part to the labor strikes) to the point where Costner believed he could no longer fit it into his schedule. Costner insists “I didn’t quite the show,” telling SiriusXM over the weekend:

“Yeah, I didn’t really have to leave anything behind. There were the gaps that were there. There was contractual things that would allow for both things to be done, but because both things were contractual, you had to make room for the other thing. There was room, but it was difficult for them to keep their schedule. It seemed to be, it was just too difficult for them to do it. There was the time there, what happened, you can deal with it. But no one, I didn’t leave. I didn’t quit the show. Okay? I had made a contract to do all three. There was a contract in place to do all three. And within about an eight-month period, two more different kind of contracts were being negotiated. Not at my request, but at their request to try to do things. I accommodated them on those extra two things that changed, things change, and finally when they wanted to change it a third time, because I had my obligations to do, I had 300 people waiting for me, I couldn’t help them anymore. I just simply couldn’t help them. But I didn’t quit the show. There was no, there was just a, you know, everybody has to live up to what they say they’re going to do. And it doesn’t matter what business you’re in.”

So it seems it just wasn’t in the cards that Kevin Costner would return to give John Dutton a proper send-off this season.

What Happened to Kevin Costner’s Character John Dutton?

Yellowstone Season 5, Part 2 is only six episodes long so the season premiere wasted no time in revealing that Montana Governor John Dutton is dead. The episode opens with John’s daughter Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) and son Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) arriving at the Dutton Ranch to find it swarmed by law enforcement. They rush inside to find police examining the remains of John Dutton in his bathroom. Although we never see John’s face, we do see his legs and a gun on the floor. The news media reports that it appears John committed suicide on the eve of his impeachment hearing.

But, as viewers know and Beth rightly suspects, John Dutton was not suicidal. As the episode progresses – jumping between weeks before John’s death and the present – we learn that femme fatale attorney and fixer Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri) had arranged for John’s murder with the company handling it making it look like a suicide as the least complicated option. John’s adopted son Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley), the state’s Attorney General, is complicit in it although he claims he didn’t actually want John dead. Well, too late, bub.

As the ending of the first half of Season 5 established, Beth and Jamie were already on a collision course where the death of one or both of them seemed inevitable. John Dutton is the first victim of this endgame between them, but he won’t be the last. Someone’s gonna take a trip to the train station for this.

For his part, Costner hasn’t watched the season opener yet and is in no “rush” to either. As he told SiriusXM this weekend: “I didn’t see it. I heard it’s a suicide, so that doesn’t make me want to rush to go see it. … Well, they’re pretty smart people. Maybe it’s a red herring. Who knows? They’re very good. And they’ll figure that out.”

TV’s Most Divisive Series Finales

Fans React to the Death of John Dutton

John Dutton had survived mortal danger before, from being shot to colon cancer. While fans may have thought his demise was inevitable given that Costner wouldn’t appear in the final season, it was the manner and immediacy in which it was handled that has rankled them most.

Fan reaction to John Dutton’s death was swift and overwhelmingly negative, with some threatening to not watch the rest of the season as a result. Here’s a sampling of what Yellowstone fans on X had to say after watching Sunday’s episode, with both Sheridan and Costner each getting blamed for the disappointment:

What did you think of how Yellowstone handled John Dutton’s exit? Are you less likely to watch the rest of the season now? Let us know in the comments.

Yellowstone airs Sundays at 8pm ET/PT on Paramount Network.

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