Yahoo Lifestyle Kevin Costner Had the Best Reaction to Hearing About John Dutton's Fate
The much-anticipated Season 5B premiere of Yellowstone graced our screens on Sunday, November 10, and with it came a heap of drama that not even Kevin Costner could have imagined.
As you may recall, Kevin (John Dutton) announced earlier this year that he wouldn’t be appearing in Yellowstone Season 5B. Fans, however, were skeptical of this given just how many promo videos prominently featured the patriarch. Sunday night rolled around, though, and it didn’t take but five minutes to put a damper on everyone’s Dutton-loving parade.
SPOILERS AHEAD
In a shocking twist of fate, John died by suicide inside the governor’s mansion—or at least, that’s how the hitman that Market Equities lawyer Sarah Atwood hired made it look. To say that the blood-splattered scene came as a shock is an understatement.
“I want to be perfectly honest: I didn't know it was airing last night,” Kevin admitted during a Horizon Part 2 interview. “That’s a ‘Swear to God’ moment. I swear to God. I mean, I’ve been seeing ads with my face all over the place and I’m thinking ‘Gee, I’m not in that one—I’m not in this season’... but I didn’t realize yesterday was the thing.”
When asked if he knew that he was going to be written off via suicide, Kevin said, ‘No, that’s their business. You know, I gave it five seasons—I didn’t know I was even going to do it that long; there were a couple times I talked about possible endings for myself.”
Of those imagined endings, though, self-harm was never one of them. And yet, Kevin was careful not to say anything negative about Taylor Sheridan or the direction of the show. “They’re smart people—whatever they’re doing, they’ll figure it out,” he said.
Kevin isn’t alone in his surprise over the sudden ending of John Dutton’s storyline—fans across social media are flocking to Yellowstone pages to express their distaste for the plot twist. The primary reason? Anyone that’s watched John’s character evolve over the past five seasons knows that he’d never take his own life, so this ending hits an especially sore spot.
“Out of all the ways they could’ve written him off of the show, this was the best they could do?!? Personally, I think the fans deserved better than this. I started watching the show because I love Kevin Costner. I knew he wasn’t gonna be on this season, but it’s still very disappointing the way they wrote him off,” one fan weighed in. “John Dutton and the storyline deserved better,” someone else wrote. “No one in the state of Montana will believe he killed himself,” another fan pointed out. “Makes me never want to watch another thing by Taylor… he’s so busy with a million new shows he can’t even be bothered to write out the main character—the reason the show exists—in a creative way. We all deserved better,” someone else admitted.
Meanwhile, some fans can’t help but condemn the showrunner and Kevin himself. “So upsetting that Costner and Sheridan couldn’t just be adults and work it out for the sake of the show,” one fan remarked.
As many disgruntled fans as there are, there are just as many who can’t help but applaud Kelly Reilly (Beth Dutton) in the aftermath of the premiere.
“Beth at the end… That feral scream! I was sobbing… As a girl [whose] dad is her everything I felt that in my soul,” one fan commented. “Give Kelly Reilly the Emmy already,” one fan exclaimed. “The acting was amazing. Beth destroyed me,” another fan commented.
Love it or hate it, this is where we are with the return of Yellowstone. One fan said it best, “People are so mad about this, and this was the absolute best storyline for an INSANE revenge-filled plot. They made lemonade out of lemons, this season is about to go CRAZY.”
Here’s the kicker, though: According to Luke Grimes (Kayce Dutton), this—not necessarily the death, but life in the wake of John Dutton—was always the plan. “It’s hard to imagine the show without him but that’s always where the show was headed—it was ‘Can these kids do it without him?’” Luke revealed in a red-carpet interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “So we all knew it was going to get there, we just didn't know how or when, and clearly it was different than we thought. But what it did do was ramp the show up to a 10 and now everything starts to unravel.”
Nevertheless, loyal Yellowstone fans can’t wait to see what happens next.
“I’m looking forward to seeing Beth and Kayce take them all down—especially Jamie,” one fan commented on Instagram. “Devastating, but ready for Kayce, Beth, and Rip to become unhinged—and become the menace from hell they are,” someone exclaimed.
New episodes of Yellowstone air on Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on Paramount Network.
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