Why Did Kevin Costner Leave Yellowstone?

Yellowstone will make its grand return this weekend, after the first part of season 5 left us on a huge cliffhanger way back in November 2022. Two years later, we’re chomping at the bit for season 5 part 2, which will air weekly on Sundays from 10 November right up until 15 December – but we already can’t bear for it to end. So will there be a Yellowstone season 6 to look forward to once season 5 is over? Here are the details…

Wes Bentley as Jamie Dutton & Wendy Moniz as Governor Perry in season 5 part 2 of Yellowstone. (Paramount)

Will There Be Yellowstone Season 6?

No, there will not be a sixth season of Yellowstone. In May 2023, it was announced that Yellowstone season 5 would be the final instalment of the popular neo-western series. However, all is not lost: at the same time, producers revealed work was beginning on a sequel series called 2024, with Matthew McConaughey slated to star. Intriguing…

Flash forward to 2024, and 2024 had a new title and star: Madison, with Michelle Pfeiffer set to lead the series instead of McConaughey. Details are still scant, but Madison will reportedly centre on a wealthy woman who moves across the country to the Madison River valley in central Montana after the death of her husband. You can read more about what to expect from that here.

Yellowstone may be ending, but it seems creator Taylor Sheridan is far from finished with the universe he has created. Yellowstone has already benefited from two prequel series: 1883 and 1923. As well as Madison, another sequel series entitled 6666 is in the rumour mill, while a 1923 sequel, entitled 1944, is also said to be in development.

Kevin Costner in Yellowstone season 5 part 1. (Paramount)

Why Did Kevin Costner Leave Yellowstone?

Yellowstone centres on the Dutton family, especially patriarch John Dutton III, who is played by Hollywood heavyweight Kevin Costner – so his absence in season 5 part 2 will be palpable. We will soon see how his absence is explained in the TV series, but why did the actor leave in the first place? Costner has offered a number of reasons, but it all really comes back to scheduling conflicts and frustrations amid the 2023 SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes, as well as creative differences.

Movies are Costner’s bread and butter, but when Sheridan approached him with the Yellowstone TV series initially, Costner was intrigued. ‘When it was first pitched to me by Taylor [Sheridan] it was one season and [like] a long movie, which [is] speaking my language,’ Costner told People earlier this year. ‘I liked the writing and really, really liked what Taylor was doing. He understood the world of modern-day ranching and was able to create all this other type of drama inside it, but in an effective way.

‘But ultimately, I think what happened was the studio didn’t want that [just one season],’ Costner continues. As Yellowstone attracted huge success, Sheridan rose to the challenge: ‘Because he’s such a prolific writer, he said, “I can do that. I can make a series that goes on”,’ Costner recalls, adding he too gladly ‘stepped up’ and said he’d commit for three seasons – and he ended up doing five.

Eventually, when the strikes came into play, the delays were too much for Costner. ‘There was a moment where that show for me stopped for 14 months… That’s the fact,’ he says. ‘I could have done a lot of things in that time, but I wasn’t aware that that [hold-up] was going to happen.’ In the end, he decided to pursue his own project instead: a trilogy of western films, Horizon: An American Saga.

Gil Birmingham as Thomas Rainwater & Mo Brings Plenty as Mo in season 5 part 2 of Yellowstone. (Paramount)

WATCH

All episodes of Yellowstone, 1883 and 1923 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+.