Major spoilers for the Season 2 finale of 1923 are ahead! If you want to avoid those, watch the episode with a Paramount+ subscription before you continue reading.
Throughout 1923’s entire run, a looming question has been: Who are the direct ancestors of Kevin Costner’s John Dutton in Yellowstone? Season 2 made that mystery even more complex as both Jack’s wife, Elizabeth, and Spencer’s wife, Alex, were pregnant. However, in the finale, one baby was born, and he was named John, which I thought meant we knew who Costner’s grandfather was. However, when I asked the cast about it, they gave me answers that shook me to my core and got me theorizing about the upcoming Yellowstone show, 1944.
The 1923 Cast Told Me That The Season 2 Finale Didn’t Confirm Anything About The Dutton Lineage
When Alex gave birth to her baby and then tragically died, I (naively) took that as family tree confirmation. Spencer, John, Cara and Jacob returned to the ranch with little John, and the epliloge implied that Brandon Sklenar’s character spent his life working the ranch and raising his child (and later children). I assumed that meant this baby John would grow up to be Dabney Coleman’s John in Yellowstone.
However, that’s not the case, because when I asked Sklenar and Julia Schlaepfer about it, they both said that door is still open. The Alex actress specifically said:
The door’s open until Taylor Sheridan shuts it…Brandon and I have talked a lot about who's the lineage, and of course, I think we would love to imagine that our John is the John, but time will tell.
Reiterating that point, the Spencer Dutton actor told me we’ll just have to wait and see if this John is the John, saying:
Time will tell if there's another John.
After they confirmed that nothing was confirmed, I joked that there were already four Johns, so they could have five of them. The Drop actor played along, kidding that there could be “six or seven” because “why not?”
And he’s right, why not? It’s possible that after Jack’s death, Elizabeth had the baby she was pregnant with and named them John. In fact, in a lot of ways – other than the fact that they'd have two Johns in basically one generation – it’d make a lot of sense. Spencer and Alex named their kid after his brother, John. However, Spencer's brother was Jack's dad, and I'd get it if Elizabeth wanted to name her kid after her late husband’s father, too.
To that point, when I asked Michelle Randolph about the baby being named John, she was quick to tell me it 100% does not confirm the Dutton family lineage. She explained:
Is the door is still open? I don't know. And so, like, you can't confirm then, like, it could go either way. I feel like everyone has their own theory, but I can confidently say that it's not confirmed.
Well, the confidence was startling. However, it’s also exciting because with the prequel 1944 presumably coming down the line, I’m thinking a lot about how this lack of confirmation could impact the story of the next generations of Duttons.
I Have A Theory About How This Lack Of Confirmation Could Impact 1944
Overall, this absence of confirmation got me thinking a lot about the line of succession and who the ranch could potentially be passed down to in 1944.
My theory is that the show will follow Spencer’s kids (John, whom he had with Alex, and the unnamed child he had with a widow later in life) in their mid-20s. Then, between 1883’s Tim McGraw saying Costner’s character is his great-great grandson (which would likely mean Jack is Costner's John’s grandfather) and Randolph’s response to my question, I’m hypothesizing that Elizabeth and Jack’s baby could be named John and also be part of 1944.
This could make for a fascinating conflict over which Dutton named John will get the ranch. Jack and Spencer’s kids are direct descendants, have a right to their family’s land, and they would be around the right age to have a child who lives to be Kevin Costner's rancher. I'd be lying if I said that didn't sound like a great idea for a TV show about family strife.
So, maybe John is Spencer and Alex’s son, and that will be that. Or maybe there are two Johns, they both want to run the Yellowstone, and the new show will focus on them figuring out who will be the next patriarch of this family.
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