Kevin Costner is done. After all the weeks and months of posturing, just hours after Paramount finally announced
when Yellowstone would return to air its final episodes, the man at the centre of attention and discourse has confirmed that,
once and for all, John Dutton will not be returning to finish his story. Costner took to social media last night to speak directly to
fans, following a lot of interviews in which he spoke at length about Yellowstone, his disappointment at his co-stars not defending him, his love for the series, his admiration for the creative team and more.
In the message, Costner claimed that, following 18 months of working on his epic Western project, Horizon: An American Saga, he simply wouldn’t be able to continue doing the series alongside Taylor Sheridan, the show’s creator, and that he loved working on the series but that he would not be back.
Costner’s absence leaves a gaping hole in the series, which will require some highly creative restructuring. One suspects John Dutton will meet his maker off-screen. As Part One concluded, Costner’s Governor Dutton is on the verge of an impeachment trial initiated by his adopted son, Jamie (played by Wes Bentley), which is scheduled to take place in the Capitol building in Helena, Montana. While all this is going on, Jamie’s relationship with his sister, Beth (Kelly Reilly) reaches a pivotal moment.
Their shared traumatic history and intensifying conflicts have led them to a grim understanding: their feud will only end when one of them is dead. But given both of their volatile relationships with their father, it takes the sting out of things slightly. One thing is for sure — Taylor Sheridan will need to come up with something spectacular to stick the landing.
Yellowstone returns to Paramount on November 10th, with streaming on Paramount+ available the same day in Canada. For those in the U.K., the series will arrive on the network’s streamer the following day, November 11, with a Latin America, Brazil, and France release set for later in November.
