So, Where Is Kevin Costner in This Season of Yellowstone?

Picture this: You’re watching the show Yellowstone — specifically part two of season five — and are wondering if, when, and how much Kevin Costner will grumble and growl across your screen. If you want a guaranteed glimpse of our boy Kevy Costmeister, you must pivot to Max and turn on Horizon Part 1, because that’s what he was filming when they were making this particular volume of Yellowstone episodes. It’s a good movie, though he wears an entirely different kind of hat than the one you’re used to seeing on John Dutton.

For those of you just getting caught up on all the Yellowstone v. Costner drama, here’s a rundown of the full story, or at least everything we know about where things stand with the Dutton family’s patriarch.

How did we get here?

Yellowstone is famously written by one lone man named Taylor Sheridan who will not accept help. The problem, of course, is that Sheridan is now the lone writer of multiple series, and writing five bajillion episodes of television a year takes time no matter how good you are at horseback riding. According to Costner, when he was available to film, Sheridan didn’t have the final Yellowstone scripts ready, so they missed their precious Costner window.

Couldn’t Costner have rescheduled things to make filming work?

According to Costner, he did. During a child-support hearing in September 2023, reported on by People, he told the court that he had already changed his schedule to film the first half of season five, noting “That’s a big deal in this world.” Costner’s Horizon is a self-funded passion project to the tune of $35 million, and Yellowstone has already been delayed — the first half of season five premiered in November 2022! Both projects employed lots of people who also have lives to lead and schedules to keep. And honestly, by the time this all came to light, relations between Team Costner and Team Sheridan had already soured, making any further concessions unlikely.

Wait, there’s beef?

Oh honey, it’s what’s for dinner. In February 2023, when reports first emerged that Yellowstone as we know it would end after season five, sources told Deadline that Costner was only willing to spend one single week filming the final episodes. Costner’s team took umbrage at this, as his litigator Marty Singer told Puck: “The idea that Kevin was only willing to work one week on the second half of season five of Yellowstone is an absolute lie.” In that same issue of Puck, it was noted that Costner’s longtime assistant and associate Glenn Kleczkowski had a few months prior posted (and then deleted) some heavy criticism of another Sheridan show, Tulsa King, on Instagram: “Stick to westerns, bro. You don’t know SHIT about THIS life. Stay in your lane, country boy. I’m actually embarrassed for you as a writer and creator.” Hoo boy!

Details continued to spill out that clearly sought to paint Costner as a divo whose unreasonableness was stifling production. He wanted “veto” power over Yellowstone scripts, he had a “moral death” clause in his contract that wouldn’t let them kill off John Dutton in a way Costner found personally embarrassing, and then he got COVID-19 during production, shrinking his availability yet again.

Yet some hope remained, with Sheridan addressing the drama in a Hollywood Reporter profile in June 2023. “My opinion of Kevin as an actor hasn’t altered,” he said, adding, “Once lawyers get involved, then people don’t get to talk to each other and start saying things that aren’t true and attempt to shift blame based on how the press or public seem to be reacting.” He even gave Costner credit for how he dealt with the bad press: “He took a lot of this on the chin and I don’t know that anyone deserves it.”

Did Costner ever publicly comment?

Did he! The press tour for Horizon was one for the ages, with each Costner appearance offering us a new nugget of wisdom from the Academy Award–winning movie star. It started on a positive note, with the actor telling Entertainment Tonight in April 2024 that he’d seemingly be willing to return to the show. “I thought I was going to make seven seasons, but right now we’re at five,” he said. “So how it works out — I hope it does — but they’ve got a lot of different shows going on. Maybe it will. Maybe this will circle back to me. If it does and I feel really comfortable with it, I’d love to do it.”

Later, in May, he gave Deadline a bit more detail in an expletive-laden interview full of shady gems like “Writing is really hard, I get it.” When asked if it was Horizon that made him unavailable to finish more of Yellowstone, he was clear: “That’s not true. There were blocks of time that we didn’t get 10 episodes done. Basically, we were starting in April and May, and we’d usually go through August. We’d do 10. We didn’t even get 10 done during that time. I only worked 43 days. So that’s bullsh*t. That’s a lie. That’s not correct.”

He also clarified the rumor that he was only willing to work for one week: “There were no scripts. I said, ‘Look, if you want to end this elegantly, the best I can do is give you a week. And if you can figure out a storyline …’ I’m usually working six or seven days per each, whatever they are. And they took that and a source on their side spun that into, well, he only wants to work a week for a whole season. Do you think that’s who I am? I’ve never missed a day of work. I’ve never left before fulfilling my contractual obligations. A lot of times, I stay as much as I can. In fact, I worked the nine-day stretch just to try to help them in July, when I was starting [Horizon] August 1. I worked a Saturday and Sunday for them, and they still needed four more days.”

How will Yellowstone season five (part two) handle the end of John Dutton?

We won’t know until the show premieres on Sunday night. While Costner appears in the trailer for upcoming episodes, it’s unclear if this is reused footage or new scenes or just moments on set when he happened to be turning around and muttering things. Will he be a force ghost? A CGI monstrosity? A guy we just never see again after an off-screen death? We simply have to tune in to find out.

So is this the end of Yellowstone?

As we know it, yes. While a revamped season six is in negotiations, Kelly Reilly told the New York Times this week that, as far as her character Beth Dutton is concerned, she’s willing to continue and she’s also “very happy to let her disappear.” But don’t fret. The Taylor Sheridan universe is always expanding, so you’ll have plenty of grizzled dudes on horses offering cultural commentary in your future.