The temporary end of Yellowstone was sealed a few weeks ago with the long-awaited second part of the 5th season and saw Taylor Sheridan’s western hit confronted with the exit of Kevin Costner. While Sheridan may have brought the series to a premature end due to Costner’s absence, one Yellowstone star initially didn’t believe there would be a fifth season at all. However, it wasn’t until this season that his big performance came.
Yellowstone star Josh Lucas made his big appearance in season 5 of the western hit
Josh Lucas took on the role of Yellowstone young John Dutton. In the first two seasons of the western series he only made a few brief appearances in flashbacks. However, Taylor Sheridan promised him back then that his big appearance was still to come, as Lucas revealed in an interview with Tell-Tale TV in 2023:
Taylor told me five years ago that Season 5 would feature a lot of flashbacks. And I thought he was crazy and not that there would ever be a 5th season. I just laughed and moved on with my life.
Five years later, Lucas actually received a call from the series creator to keep his promise:
He called me last year and said, ‘Here we are now. Now I’m writing the flashbacks I said I would write. And they will tell the other, deeper stories that happened 20 years before.’ It’s definitely one of the most interesting challenges I’ve ever had as an actor.
Warning, spoilers for Season 5 Part 2 of Yellowstone follow: The first part of season 5 gave us a more extensive insight into John Dutton’s past, which can now be read as a kind of preparation for his impending character death in the series. Sheridan included the scenes almost as if he had an inkling of the path the series was forced to take. A path that particularly played into Josh Lucas’s hands. Spoiler end.
What’s next for the Yellowstone universe?
After the preliminary finale of the main series, a spin-off about Beth and Rip is now being planned. In addition, the spin-off 1923 is currently in the starting blocks with a second season. Other planned Yellowstone spin-offs include The Madison and Yellowstone: 6666 series.
You can currently stream seasons 1 to 5a of Yellowstone as well as all previously published spin-offs with a subscription on Paramount+.
Podcast: Why Yellowstone is so enormously successful
We’ve been asking ourselves for a long time: Which series actually inherits Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad or The Walking Dead? One answer is: Yellowstone.
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In this episode of the Moviepilot podcast Streamgegewer we explain why the family drama could delight fans of GOT and Succession and what the crisis behind the scenes is all about.
A thematically similar article appeared on our sister site Sensacine.