The fate of Kevin Costner’s John Dutton sparks anger among fans.

This post contains spoilers for Season 5, Episode 9 of Yellowstone.

The first episode of the second half of YellowstoneThe fifth season won’t be long in coming. Seconds into Sunday’s “Desire Is All You Need,” Beth (Kelly Reilly), the loyal daughter of the Dutton ranching family, is racing to her father’s house in her fast little car. She rages on the edge of a crime scene tape and begs a police officer to let her in. But it’s her brother Kayce (Luke Grimes) – the Montana state land commissioner, a former SEAL and heterosexual murderer of many of the Dutton family’s enemies – who shows up to help her push right past the officer so that these two can be loyal Siblings learn the truth: Montana Governor John Dutton died of a gunshot wound to the head in the bathroom of his home.

Kevin Costner has played John Dutton, the beleaguered patriarch of showrunner and empire builder Taylor Sheridan’s dreams, since 2018. Over the past few years, there have been repeated reports of back-and-forth between Costner and Sheridan regarding filming schedules. The highlight was Costner’s final decision in June 2024 to leave the series. Yellowstone The fans knew this was coming – we just didn’t know it would happen so soon. “Taylor Sheridan did John Dutton dirty in the first scene to get back at Kevin Costner” has resonated as a concept with some disgruntled viewers. “Wow, talk about lazy and petty writing,” said one fan on X. “Taylor Sheridan is a jerk and needs to be taken to the train station immediately!” -Ranch telling the Dutton family’s enemies that they are leaving, just before shooting them in the head and throwing them off a secluded cliff Just so you know, for the next time you see it a “train station” clue on a bumper sticker to give the vehicle some space.)

Seeing people argue about whether Sheridan’s Hollywood ego or Costner’s Hollywood ego deserves the blame for the meltdown here is pretty hilarious. Scientists could study this matter for years and never come to a solution. One thing that goes against this “Dutton’s bad death is Sheridan’s revenge” theory is the fact that you don’t see Costner’s face as the camera focuses on the body on the bathroom floor, giving the actor a sense of outrage over his character’s death spared. As Kayce storms into the room past more cops – one for the Duttons: they’ll always find a way – you catch a large splatter of blood at head height on the tiles of the bathroom wall and then a gun on the floor. When Beth goes to view the body, against Kayce’s advice, she looks down and sees the hands of her father, a crime scene technician, using an instrument to search for gunshot marks with a delicacy that could be read as tenderness. (This moment is classic Yellowstone:The show is all bombastic, screaming and scheming and then offers a little moment that breaks your heart.)

The technician finds this residue and the official story –Governor Dutton died by suicide– solidifies. That he was expected at the impeachment hearings that morning lends some credibility, although, as Kayce tells another police officer later in the episode, there was nothing about John Dutton that would have led anyone to believe he would do this to himself. Without delving too deeply into the often regressive views of who dies by suicide in this great nation, it is true that John Dutton was, narratively speaking, a survivor: he had colon cancer in Season 1, had a ruptured ulcer in Season 2, and and was shot multiple times in Season 3. The guy was the “look miserable and stoically blink into the sunset” type; That was kind of his thing. So what would have compelled this governor, trying to keep his far-too-large ranch together, to end it like this?

Luckily for people angry at the idea that their John Dutton could have died this way, we learn pretty quickly through flashbacks that this death was not at his own hand, but rather the result of another conspiracy against the Duttons were – and with success. Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley), the family’s estranged adopted son (and Attorney General), was paired with a real agent, a fixer named Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri), who made the call to order the assassination to further tighten security increase political goals that would be easier to achieve with Jamie as governor. Finding out how much Jamie knew about this will be part of the plot of Part 2 of this season.

Look on the bright side, Dutton mourners. The rest of Season 5 – and the next one, if Yellowstone remains (a sixth season is currently being discussed) – will be a big battle between Jamie and Beth, with Kayce, who has always been sympathetic to Jamie, in the middle. You should support Beth because Jamie is a villain in this series, more cosmopolitan and lawyer than any other Dutton, and never feels comfortable on the ranch. (Yellowstone believes there will be blood coming out.) A key part of the backstory between Jamie and Beth is that Jamie helped Beth get an abortion as a teenager, but did so by taking her to a free clinic on a reservation so that the Family wouldn’t stand the publicity – only the clinic also sterilized Beth, something Jamie knew but didn’t tell her for years. This earned him her eternal enmity and the opportunity for Kelly Reilly to say things like “I’m going to tell my husband you ripped his child out of my womb!” with maximum Beth fire. (That’s classic Yellowstone Melodrama – and classically messed up Yellowstone Policy.)

In the real world, Jamie “wins,” symbolizing the outside forces of urbanism and progress that threaten the ranch. The threat it poses and the modernity it represents is omnipresent. Every Dutton-related character in the series delivers a monologue about inevitability at some point. In the back half of this episode, Rip (Cole Hauser), the head cowboy of the ranch and Beth’s husband, introduces us to a new animal with his cowboys in the Texas pasture: “In 30 years, no one will do anything like this anymore, no one. All the land you see will be wind farms and solar farms, and we’ll get our beef from Brazil after the rainforest there burns down.” Yes – if Yellowstone If Jamie has the courage of his convictions, he will win the whole game. The chance of that is still worth watching, even if the token movie star of this series has been officially ruled out Pasture.