Ignore the outrage, Kevin Costner’s Yellowstone exit was perfect

After almost two years of waiting, Yellowstone Season 5 Part 2 is finally here – and needless to say, not everyone is happy about John Dutton’s fate.

The stakes couldn’t have been higher for Yellowstone’s big return. Kevin Costner was out, and Taylor Sheridan had only six episodes to finish up his grand Western saga. His solution? Get John Dutton’s death out of the damn way.

The opening moments of Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 9 are unrelenting in their quest to move proceedings along. Beth speeds up to the Governor’s mansion, where police and paramedics fill the scene. When Kayce arrives, the siblings storm inside to find out what happened to their father.

John Dutton is dead on the bathroom floor, blood on the walls and a gun by his side. As he lies slumped on the cold hard ground in his underwear, one can’t help but think this may be Sheridan’s “f**k you” to his leading man who left him in the lurch. But if you think that, you’d be wrong – Sheridan is just making the best of a bad situation.

Taylor Sheridan wins this round

Now, I’ll admit, there was no one more ready and willing to criticize Yellowstone’s return more than me. Sheridan is the king of no follow-through. He abandons plot points left and right, forgets about some characters altogether, and typically allows his arcs to ebb and flow depending on what he wants to focus on.

Usually, this method leaves audiences baffled, reeling with questions they know they’ll never get answers to. But in giving John Dutton this particular death, Sheridan has proved himself as a master of his own universe.

Paramount

If I were a gambler, I would have put money down on John Dutton having a quiet, dignified death off-screen. But instead of, say, dying in his sleep, Sheridan used the tools he had at his disposal and the plots he’d already planted.

In Episode 8, a rattled and vengeful Jamie Dutton asks his girlfriend, Sarah Atwood, if she knows anyone who could help him take down the family. Put simply: he’s considering hiring a hitman. Sarah, who’s been sneakily getting her claws into him for her own gain, takes this as a sign to orchestrate the murder herself. 

So, Part 1 ended with a promise of murder. Part 2 opens with the aftermath of that murder. (Or rather, a murder framed to look like a suicide.) Really, it couldn’t have worked out better if Taylor had planned John’s death from the very beginning. The answer was right there all along.

Justice for John Dutton

Unfortunately, not everyone feels the same way. Post-premiere, a number of Yellowstone viewers are protesting John’s death. Some even argue he deserved “to go out like a gladiator”, and feel the character’s conclusion was “bullsh*t”.  

Paramount

Nobody likes to see a character they love bite the dust in an unsatisfying way. However, many of these reactions seem to misunderstand that John’s suicide wasn’t actually a suicide at all, and even those who do get it are slightly missing the point.

Kevin Costner is gone. This show needs to be wrapped up. What else was Taylor Sheridan supposed to do?

He had it coming

Sheridan did the best he could with the limited resources he had. When your leading man is gone, there are only so many ways you can remove his character without getting backlash from either end of the fandom. 

But presenting John’s death off the bat in a manner that linked directly back to the previous episode’s cliffhanger is about as good as it was ever going to get.

Yes, we know John Dutton would have fought back. Yes, he might have even been prepared for it. But guess what? John Dutton was not some deity who symbolized morality and grace. He was a killer, a bad father, and a selfish man who cost the state of Montana potentially billions of dollars to keep his land safe.

This isn’t even the first time someone’s tried to kill him. In the Season 3 finale, an assassination attempt against every member of the family ends with John on the side of the road, riddled with bullet wounds, unable to get help. He ends up in a coma, only to come out the other side, just barely scraping past death.

If this is how he’d met his end, there’d be fewer complaints. Let’s face it, you’re not mad that he’s dead: you’re mad you didn’t get to see him die. 

And that, my cowboy-loving comrades, wasn’t Taylor Sheridan’s choice.

Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 10 airs on November 17.

For more, check out our guides to Billy Klapper, the Yellowstone Season 5 release schedule, and 6666.