Yellowstone Season 5, Part 2
Credit: Paramount
Updated 11.11.2024 — See update below.
It’s been nearly two years since the wildly popular modern Western drama Yellowstone last aired an episode. Season 5, Part 1 ended with its 7th episode in December of 2022. Episode 8 drops today.
That’s a long goshdarn wait, y’all. I’m allowed to write sentences like that because I’m from the very place this show takes place: Bozeman, Montana, born and raised. It’s where I rode my first horse, though I didn’t do any bronco riding and I can’t lasso to save my life. I can hit the side of a barn with a rifle, but I’m no John Dutton.
In fact, “no John Dutton” is apropos, because Kevin Costner will not make an appearance in this half-season of the series. The movie star and filmmaker of the show had a much-ballyhooed dispute with mega-producer Taylor Sheridan about the amount of time he was required to be on set. Costner was—and remains—in the process of making his epic four-part Western movie series Horizon: An American Saga, and his attention was too divided to remain a part of the Yellowstone melodrama.
(I rather liked Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1, and I’m excited to see Chapter 2 later this year).
Forbes‘Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1’ Review — Kevin Costner’s Sprawling Western Is Flawed But Still GreatBy
In any case, the story of the Dutton family continues on Paramount Network tonight at 8pm ET and at 10pm ET on CBS (a special airing).
The big “catch” in the title of this post is that this is the only way to watch unless you wait for the streaming release on Peacock months later. That’s not entirely true. You can also purchase the season on Prime Video and watch episodes sooner online. But the only way to keep up with Beth (Kelly Reilly), Rip (Cole Hauser), Kayce (Luke Grimes), Monica (Kelsey Asbille), Jamie (Wes Bentley), Jimmy (Jefferson White) and all the rest of the sprawling cast of cowboys and their antagonists, is to have traditional cable TV.
Are you watching Yellowstone still? I know a lot of fans have been unhappy with the trajectory of the show over the past couple of seasons, but it remains a wildly popular soap opera (I call it a soap opera just like I considered Sons of Anarchy to be a soap opera, but you may disagree). Let me know your thoughts on TwitterInstagram or Facebook. Also be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me here on this blog. Sign up for my newsletter for more reviews and commentary on entertainment and culture.
For more shows and movies out this weekend, check out my weekend streaming guide. Netflix also just dropped the final season of one of its best shows, though it’s about as different from Yellowstone as you can get.
Update 11.11.24
Spoilers for Season 5, Part 2 ahead.
I thought I’d take a look at reviews for the fifth season of Yellowstone, and it’s interesting that 84% of critics give it a “Fresh” rating, while just 41% of viewers do, making it Rotten on the Popcornmeter. On reddit and social media, people are deeply unhappy with one thing in particular: The death of John Dutton.
As noted above, Costner wanted out and so Sheridan wrote him out of the show in perhaps the most absurd way imaginable: By having him shoot and kill himself. As many commenters note, there’s no way Dutton commits suicide. It’s so far out of character it’s beyond all plausibility.
“John Dutton was a fantastic character, and despite the Kevin Costner drama, he deserved a better goodbye than Yellowstone gave him,” one fan wrote on Twitter. “Yellowstone has its first episode without Kevin Costner and they already ruined it in the first 5 minutes,” another said.
It’s possible that the shooting was not suicide, and that we’ll discover Dutton was murdered, but it definitely feels like Sheridan could have given Dutton a more peaceful ending—a heart attack, for instance.
Many fans blame Sheridan for the mess. “I didn’t realize how completely the John Dutton character WAS the show until this episode,” a fan wrote on reddit. “So much like every family that seems to collapse when it’s matriarch or patriarch dies. Sometimes a strong child or grandchild lifts everyone up out of the ashes, and sometimes the family never recovers. But either Taylor or Kevin screwed us all over with 5B. My guess is that arrogant megalomaniac Taylor destroyed his own series with this sh*tshow. Will never get invested in another Sheridan series again.”
I’ll be honest, this makes me even less interested in finishing Season 5. I’m only a couple episodes behind, but learning that John Dutton possibly killed himself has drained whatever enthusiasm I had to get back into the show. What a shame.
Have you watched the latest episode? What are your thoughts? Let me know on TwitterInstagram or Facebook. Also be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me here on this blog. Sign up for my newsletter for more reviews and commentary on entertainment and culture.
