With its murder-laced series finale, Yellowstone closed out not only its own five-season arc, but also wrapped up a story beat first introduced in the prequel 1883’s final episode, which addressed the Paradise Valley land being returned to the native tribes who first settled on it. It was the core story of Taylor Sheridan’s western drama, with the Dutton lineage serving as window dressing. And co-star Gil Birmingham confirmed that endgame approach was in the cards since the very beginning.
The San Antonio native portrayed Tribal Chairman Thomas Rainwater across all five seasons of Yellowstone, and quite possibly remains the most respectable and least corrupt character on the entire show. And it sounds like that sentiment was in place at the project’s conception, as Birmingham told TVLine the key notion of returning the land was something Taylor Sheridan talked out very early on. As he put it:
On Episode 1 of the first season. What I didn’t know was how it was going to happen. I don’t know what season that [Taylor Sheridan] revealed that it was going to happen the way it did, and of course, it was quite different from the way I would’ve imagined. But I think he was following, and he prefaced this in 1883 with the prophecy of Spotted Eagle [Graham Greene], that “in seven generations, my people will rise up and come back for the land.” So it’s almost like there was an agreement, a handshake agreement with John Dutton’s ancestors and the native people back then. So somewhere along midseason [in Season 5], I knew that there was going to be a transfer of land, but I didn’t know how it was going to happen. And I think up until the point that John Dutton left the series, we didn’t. There was probably some adjustments made in that regard as well.
So it sounds like Taylor Sheridan did indeed have the basic throughline for one of Yellowstone’s biggest plotlines already mapped out in the earliest days, even if the myriad details involved hadn’t all been meticulously crafted. Had it been, fans might not have witnessed unanswered plot threads like the introduction and then subsequent disappearance of former cast member Q'orianka Kilcher’s cutthroat lawyer Angela Blue Thunder, who was supposed to return in Season 5 and never did.
And as Gil Birmingham alluded to, Sheridan likely had other ideas in mind for how the show would close out John Dutton’s story when he was initially outlining, without the possibility of foreknowledge that Kevin Costner would eventually exit the series in the middle of its fifth season. Granted, the cast and crew’s interview chatter does make it seem like John was always fated to die before the end, with his children having to pick up the pices, but I can’t imagine the contracted killing made to look like suicide was the first draft of John’s ending.
Though he can’t speak for his fellow cast members, Birmingham says he was one of relatively few trusted with the storyline outcome from the earliest days, saying:
I’m not sure who knew, and of course, I was sworn to secrecy, so I couldn’t tell anybody or any cast members.
Understandably, filming Season 5’s final six episodes involved more secrecy than ever before for Yellowstone’s stars and staff, with scripts even being redacted so that certain cast members were only aware of their own scenes and little else, which was seemingly the case for the Four Sixes’ vet tech portrayer Kathryn Kelly. But in the end, no matter who knew what was happening, Taylor Sheridan stayed true to his initial vision.
Will fans see more land-based battles in more upcoming Yellowstone shows such as Beth and Rip’s spinoff or the transported-family drama The Madison? Considering Sheridan has a whole other series simply called Landman, I think it’s only expected.
Yellowstone’s first four and a half season are currently available to stream with a Peacock subscription, with the final episodes hitting the streaming service at a later date.
