With the 2021 Summer TV season now having more or less arrived in the aftermath of the many spring finales, one of the most glaring mysteries involves the Season 4 premiere date of the hit western drama Yellowstone, which has yet to reveal exactly when it'll make its long-anticipated return. While Season 3's explosive ending was big enough to make any seasonal hiatus worth suffering through, fans are definitely wondering why we haven't heard anything concrete about Season 4's arrival. For better or worse, it looks like a legitimate reason for the announcement's delay may have finally been revealed.
Even though many Yellowstone fans have been working under the assumption that Season 4 had completely wrapped up its production back in November 2020, it appears that wasn't exactly the case. According to posts from a Facebook account that's used to hire extras for the Paramount Network drama, production had to be reignited once more to film for a couple of days on a scene that wasn't able to come together during the initial shoot. Here's the beginning of the post, which also clued fans in on what kind of scene is being filmed.
Hello Montana!! We will be back for a 2 day shoot in June!! This is a protest scene that we had to cancel last year due to snow.
A later post confirmed that the protest scene will film on Thursday, June 10, and Friday, June 11. And it sounds like it'll be a pretty hectic sequence that could bring to audience's minds many of the police-involved protests that were sparked across the U.S. across 2020 and beyond. The extras being sought out include activist-types of all ages and members of the press, as well as SWAT and FBI agents. The casting calls weren't specific about how much action could possibly be involved for that sequence, but it does interestingly note that night-filming will be involved.
It's easy to assume that the as-yet-unfilmed scene is of dire importance to Yellowstone's Season 4 storyline, or else co-creator Taylor Sheridan probably would have scrapped it at some point in the seven months since filming originally stopped. The fact that at least some of the cast and crew is reconvening to film so late in the game has to be an indicator of how vital the scene really is, right? Considering this is the time of year when fans are usually picking apart an upcoming season's new trailers, it speaks volumes that the creative team is giving this scene another shot after the snowy postponement.
So what could this protest scene be in relation to? No doubt something to do with the mass expanse of land owned by Kevin Costner's John Dutton, who has built up quite a gallery of greedy rogues over the years. I can't really imagine what anyone would be reacting to so strongly at this point, and my prediction is that it'll be sparked by some of the events peppered throughout the early episodes in Season 4. But will there be race-related issues involved here, as it went in real life, or will this be tied more to local government and land-owning policies?
If everything goes accordingly, Season 4 will officially wrap filming on June 11, so here's hoping Yellowstone's editing team can instantly splice the newly filmed scene into the rest of the season so that Paramount Network can feel comfortable about going public with a premiere date. Or else I might have to lose my damned mind worrying about Rip and Beth's future.
All three seasons of Yellowstone are available to stream in full on NBCUniversal's streaming service Peacock, so be sure to catch up if you haven't yet while waiting for not only new episodes but also two brand-new spinoffs on the way.
