Paramount Network
- The "Yellowstone" season 5B premiere has revealed the fate of Kevin Costner's character.
- Costner left the series after a rumored fallout with the show's creator, Taylor Sheridan.
- The show's future is uncertain, but negotiations are reportedly underway for a sixth season.
Warning: spoilers ahead for "Yellowstone" season five, episode nine.
The creators of "Yellowstone" have solved their Kevin Costner problem by killing off the actor's character in the latest episode.
Last year, after the "Yellowstone" midseason finale, rumors spread of a fallout between Costner, the show's biggest star, and Taylor Sheridan, its creator. This left fans wondering whether Costner would return to finish the series.
When Paramount Network announced in May 2023 that the second half of "Yellowstone" season five would go ahead and also be the show's last, fans viewed it as an indication that Costner's character, John Dutton, would be killed off.
However, as recently as June, Costner said he had not filmed the final episodes of season five and would not appear in the episodes, which began airing on Sunday.
The teaser for the second half of season five had Costner appearing front and center, rambling on — as his character is wont to do — about legacies, which seemed to indicate that the actor would make an appearance.
Instead, John is killed off in the opening scene of episode nine and seems to be gone for good.
Here's what we know so far.
A hitman murdered John Dutton
Paramount Network
Early in episode nine, Beth (Kelly Reilly), John's daughter, drives to her father's house to find police swarming the building.
Eventually, Beth and her brother Kayce (Luke Grimes) make it inside the house. They find his body on the bloody bathroom floor next to a gun. His face is not shown, so it's unclear if it was Costner or a body double.
The scene implies John died by suicide, but Beth is convinced that Jamie (Wes Bentley), her other brother who spent most of season five trying to get his father impeached from his role as governor of Montana, was behind it.
Later in the episode, there is a flashback that reveals that Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri), a lawyer in a sexual relationship with Jamie, hired a hitman to kill John and make it look like a suicide.
In one of the final scenes of the episode, Jamie comes home to cry about his father's apparent suicide. He is interrupted by Sarah, who tells him that she ordered the hit as they discussed.
Jamie is confused because he only mentioned it once and thought they would discuss it further before going ahead. But Sarah encourages him to focus on his future without John.
Kevin Costner's character was originally meant to die earlier in the show
Fans may recall that a major plot point in the show's first season was the fact that John was dying of cancer, putting pressure on his decision about who to leave the ranch to in his will. This storyline was retconned when the show was renewed by the network, and there has been no mention of John dying in the last few seasons.
Paramount Network
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter last year, Sheridan hinted that the ending of "Yellowstone" could see John finally getting killed off.
Sheridan said that the "Field of Dreams" star's decision to leave the show "truncates the closure of his character" but hinted that he'd had the character's fate mapped out since the early days of "Yellowstone."
Given that Sheridan's original plan was to have John die at the end of season one, it seems like a good guess that the show would end with that happening and the succession plan finally being put into action.
Why did Kevin Costner leave "Yellowstone"?
Back in 2023, a month after the season five midseason finale aired, it was revealed that the future of the series was in jeopardy following an alleged falling out between Sheridan and the Oscar winner.
Deadline, which broke the news, reported that the two couldn't agree on the shooting schedule for the next batch of episodes amid Costner's commitments to his movie series "Horizon," in which he serves as director, producer, writer, and actor.
Things got a little ugly in the press — it was alleged that Costner offered to spend only a week on set, while Sheridan is said to have dragged his feet with the scripts — and Costner said at one point that he would "probably go to court" over a pay dispute for the second half of season five.
Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images
The news that "Yellowstone" would be coming to a premature end was a big blow to the show, which has become one of the most-watched TV series in recent years.
But since then, things have moved forward, and it's been reported that the series might continue after all.
"Yellowstone" may be renewed for another season.
Sheridan has already showcased his talent for spinning a long yarn out of the "Yellowstone" franchise, having already created two prequel series.
The latest word is that fan favorites Reilly and Hauser are in talks to headline a sixth season of the show. The possibility was first reported by Puck earlier this year. Deadline reported in August that negotiations were underway.
Representatives for Costner and the production companies behind the series, MTV Entertainment Studios and 101 Studios, did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.