Yellowstone is back! Paramount Network's neo-Western has returned from its incredibly long "midseason break" — which lasted almost two whole years — with the final run of Season 5 episodes. This second half, dubbed Season 5 Part 2, consists of just six episodes, but we're expecting them to be packed with action as the Duttons go to war with each other and everyone else who gets in their way. These final episodes were expected to be the hit show's last, but now there's a chance it might not be ready to hang up its cowboy hat after all. While we wait to see how it all shakes out, we're keeping track of what we do know about Yellowstone's return.
Star Kevin Costner will not appear in the second half of Season 5 as the actor moves on to a new passion project of his own, a series of Western films. But there is some good news from the ranch: Another sequel series is in the works. Can't have too much Yellowstone!
There was still a lot of unfinished business to take care of on the flagship series as Season 5 began. Civil war has broken out among the Duttons, with Jamie (Wes Bentley) and Beth (Kelly Reilly) at each other's throats, John (Costner) at risk of being impeached (or worse!), and a devastating illness spreading through Montana wildlife and endangering the Duttons' cattle.
Below, we'll go through what we know about the second half of the fifth season, including the release date, cast information, and recaps of the first part of the season to set you up for what's to come.
Kevin Costner, Kelly Reilly, and Wes Bentley, Yellowstone
Paramount Network
Yellowstone Season 5 episodes
SEASON 5 PREMIERE - Episode 1: "One Hundred Years is Nothing," Nov. 13, 2022 at 8/7c
Episode 2: "The Sting of Wisdom," Nov. 13, 2022 at 9/8c
Episode 3: "Tall Drink of Water," Nov. 20, 2022 at 8/7c
Episode 4: "Horses in Heaven," Nov. 27, 2022 at 8/7c
Episode 5: "Watch'em Ride Away," Dec. 4, 2022 at 8/7c
Episode 6: "Cigarettes, Whiskey, a Meadow and Fog," Dec. 11, 2022 at 8/7c
Episode 7: "The Dream Is Not Me," Dec. 18, 2022 at 8/7c
SEASON 5 PART 1 FINALE - Episode 8: "A Knife and No Coin," Jan. 1, 2023 at 8/7c
SEASON 5 PART 2 PREMIERE - Episode 9: "Desire Is All You Need," Nov. 10, 2024 at 8/7c
Episode 10: "The Apocalypse of Change," Nov. 17, 2024 at 8/7c
Episode 11: "Three Fifty-Three," Nov. 24, 2024 at 8/7c
Episode 12: "Counting Coup," Dec. 1, 2024 at 8/7c
Episode 13: TBD, Dec. 8, 2024 at 8/7c
SEASON 5 PART 2 FINALE - Episode 14: TBD, Dec. 15, 2024 at 8/7c
Yellowstone Season 5 Part 2 release date
This certainly qualifies as a YEEHAW. Yellowstone Season 5 Part 2 premiered on Sunday, Nov. 10 at 8/7c on Paramount Network. Before that, the last time we saw a new Yellowstone episode was Jan. 1, 2023. Paramount Network also revealed that internationally, Yellowstone Season 5 Part 2 was set to debut in Canada on Paramount+ on Nov. 10, in the U.K. on Nov. 11, and in Latin America, Brazil, and France at a later date.
Yellowstone Season 5 Part 2 trailers and teasers
The first full trailer for Yellowstone's new episodes is here, and tensions are high in the Dutton family as Beth and Jamie go to war with each other. "I can't do this anymore," says Beth. "Well, you're gonna have to, honey," her husband Rip warns. "Or we're gonna lose this place."
Along with the new trailer, Paramount Network dropped a behind the scenes featurette about the making of the back half of Season 5. (For the record, it looks much less dramatic than the reports that surfaced from set made it sound.) "This is the greatest office in the world," says Cole Hauser.
The first footage from Yellowstone's new episodes was released on Aug. 30. The teaser — which opens with an old quote from Kevin Costner's John Dutton, taken from Season 2 — shows the feud between the Dutton siblings heating up, as Jamie warns, "You destroy me, you destroy yourself."
Yellowstone Season 5 Part 2 first look photos
Paramount isn't about to let anyone forget that the star of the upcoming fall TV season is Yellowstone. In late August, the network released a first look at the show's long-awaited return. After Costner's departure, the remaining stars look like they're up to the task of carrying the drama.
Cole Hauser and Kelly Reilly, Yellowstone
Paramount Network
Gil Birmingham and Mo Brings Plenty, Yellowstone
Paramount Network
Finn Little and Cole Hauser, Yellowstone
Paramount Network
Kelsey Asbille, Brecken Merrill, and Luke Grimes, Yellowstone
Paramount Network
Wes Bentley and Wendy Moniz, Yellowstone
Paramount Network
Yellowstone Season 5 production
On May 21, Deadline reported that Yellowstone had resumed production on Season 5 Part 2 in Montana. Let's hope everyone remembers how to ride a horse.
There's a chance Yellowstone isn't ready to ride off into the sunset after all. On Aug. 27, the Hollywood insider newsletter Puck reported that stars Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser, who play Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler, are in talks to star in a sixth season. This would keep Yellowstone alive past its previously announced end date. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Paramount Network did not comment on the report.
In May 2023, Paramount announced that Yellowstone would end with Season 5. At the time of the announcement, the show's final episodes were scheduled to premiere in November 2023, while a sequel series was confirmed to be in the works and set to debut in December. However, the writers strike and the actors strike delayed both projects, and Season 5 will now return on Nov. 10, 2024.
The news that the show would be ending came after months of speculation surrounding the question of whether Kevin Costner would return for the remainder of Season 5. Costner has since confirmed that he won't be involved in the rest of the fifth season.
In an eye-opening interview with The Hollywood Reporter in June 2023, Sheridan insisted that his intended ending for John Dutton was still in play even if Costner did not return to the series. "I'm disappointed," Sheridan said in the Hollywood Reporter interview. "It truncates the closure of his character. It doesn't alter it, but it truncates it."
That doesn't necessarily mean the fifth season will be truncated, though. Yellowstone Season 5 Part 2 was expected to be just six episodes, and actor Ian Bohen indicated in March 2024 that six episodes are still the expectation. However, in June 2023, Sheridan told The Hollywood Reporter, "If I think it takes 10 episodes to wrap it up, [Paramount Network will] give me 10. It'll be as long as it needs to be."
Will Kevin Costner return to Yellowstone?
Kevin Costner has confirmed that his days in John Dutton's cowboy hat are over. On June 20, Costner posted a video on social media announcing that he will not return to Yellowstone for Part 2 of Season 5.
"Hi everyone," Costner said in the video. "I just want to reach out and let you know that after this long year and a half of working on Horizon and doing all the things that's required, and thinking about Yellowstone, that beloved series that I love, that I know you love, I just realized that I'm not going to be able to continue Season 5B or into the future."
The actor continued, "It was something that really changed me. I loved it. And I know you loved it. And I just wanted to let you know that I won't be returning, and I love the relationship we've been able to develop, and I'll see you at the movies."
In an interview with GQ in May, Costner claimed that the reason he left Yellowstone was that delays in production interfered with his schedule and some filming contracts he had surrounding his Horizon Western films.
Costner essentially said he had tried to come up with an amicable solution, offering up his time to finish out his arc before he was committed to shoot Horizon: An American Saga. He said he was even willing to come in to film John Dutton's death scene, if it needed to come to that. According to Costner, "I said, 'Well, if you want to kill me, if you want to do something like that,' I said, 'I have a week before I start [shooting Horizon], I'll do what you want to do.'" But Paramount and Sheridan didn't take him up on his offer.
Costner also bemoaned how he was portrayed in the media, with some outlets saying he was only willing to give the show a week of his time, when he feels it was the delays in production and scripts that left him feeling stuck while his passion project waited in the wings, so he moved forward on Horizon.
"What am I supposed to do? I'm just not a dog that waits in a driveway not knowing when the person's going to come home," he said. "I want to know. And I also understood that their universe was really big, so I just decided not to sit in the driveway, but to be busy myself and be available when I could. It didn't end up happening."
Costner had previously indicated that he would be open to returning to the series under the right circumstances. On April 9, Costner was interviewed by Entertainment Tonight at CinemaCon, where he was promoting Horizon. "I'd like to be able to [return to Yellowstone] but we haven't been able to," he said. "I've loved making that series. I made five seasons of it, I thought I was going to make seven [seasons]. So how it works out — I hope it does — but they've got a lot of different shows going on. Maybe it will. Maybe this will circle back to me. If it does and I feel really comfortable with [it], I'd love to do it."
Yellowstone Season 5 cast
Kevin Costner will not appear in the second half of the season, but Season 5 has already brought a mix of familiar and new faces to the ranch. Josh Lucas returned as young John Dutton for the first time since Season 3. He was joined by Kylie Rogers as young Beth and Kyle Red Silverstein as young Rip. Jacki Weaver also returned as the Duttons' latest business foe, Market Equities CEO Caroline Warner, with Mo Brings Plenty and Wendy Moniz promoted to series regulars as Thomas Rainwater's (Gil Birmingham) right-hand man Mo and governor-turned-senator Lynelle Perry, respectively.
Four new characters have arrived on Yellowstone as well. Kai Caster plays a young cowboy named Rowdy. Lainey Wilson plays a musician, Abby. Lilli Kai plays Clara Brewer, Gov. Dutton's new assistant. And 1883's Dawn Olivieri joined the cast as Sarah Atwood, a Montana newcomer and "corporate shark" who has attached herself to Jamie.
Before the season premiered, it was announced that Kathryn Kelly, who plays Jimmy's fiancée, Emily, had also been promoted to series regular and returned to the show alongside Jefferson White as Jimmy. So far, they've only appeared in the midseason finale and are happily living and working at the Four Sixes Ranch in Texas.
The back half of the season is also likely to feature more Orli Gottesman as Halie, a young, confident girl drawn to Carter. So far, we've only seen her at the county fair and briefly in the midseason finale. "In Season 5, Halie becomes that person who gives Carter the chance to come out of his shell and to teach him not only about himself, but he finds himself always wanting Halie to be around," reads her character description. "Halie comes along and now there is someone who can fit that mold and be there for him."
After four seasons of manipulation, scheming, and fighting for power against the backdrop Montana's relatively untouched beauty, new governor John Dutton is now calling the shots, with Beth (Kelly Reilly) running the show behind him. His intentions are clear in the two-part premiere of Season 5. The ranch hands have not changed their ways, despite John's new gig, which makes for some of the best scenes in the premiere episodes.
Yellowstone Season 5 picked up after the bloody events of the Season 4 finale; Beth (Kelly Reilly), who we all know is the real brains behind every operation on the Yellowstone-Dutton Ranch, manipulated her adopted brother Jamie (Wes Bentley) into killing his biological father, Garrett (Will Patton). After it was revealed that Garrett was the one who ordered the attempted hits on John, Beth, and Kayce (Luke Grimes) back in Season 3, Beth figured he had it coming. She also made sure to hang onto the evidence, so now she's got Jamie under her thumb and out of the governor's race, clearing the way for their father to be the only Dutton running for office. She also just got hitched to Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) and watched her father's new, confusing vegan special friend (Piper Perabo) head off to jail, so basically, it's Beth's world and everyone else is just living in it.
Complicating Beth's quest for world/Montana domination is the fact that Kayce has been on a heck of a spiritual journey that showed him a vision of two paths. At least one of those paths, as he told Monica (Kelsey Asbille), would result in "the end of us." Whatever that means, it can't be good.
In November 2023, Paramount officially greenlit two more spin-off series: 1944 and a contemporary spin-off then called 2024. In August 2024, Paramount announced that 2024 was retitled The Madison, and it will star Michelle Pfeiffer, who will also executive produce. In a release, the series was described as "a heartfelt study of grief and human connection following a New York City family in the Madison River valley of central Montana." Paramount also did not mention whether The Madison will air on Paramount Network or Paramount+.
The news on The Madison was first broken by TVLine, which reported that the show will follow "wealthy matriarch Stacy Clyburn and her family as they leave New York City and head to Montana in the wake of her husband and brother-in-law's tragic deaths in a plane crash." Production is reported to start soon, with 2025 eyed for the premiere.
So far, the cast of The Madison is also confirmed to include Matthew Fox, Patrick J. Adams, Elle Chapman, Beau Garrett, and Amiah Miller.
At one point, Matthew McConaughey was reportedly in talks to star in a Yellowstone spin-off, though it is unclear if he is still involved in any Yellowstone spin-off. Variety also previously reported that, according to sources, the contemporary spin-off would feature some crossover characters from the flagship show.
According to a report in early February by Puck, Yellowstone stars Kelly Reilly (who plays Beth Dutton), Cole Hauser (Rip Wheeler), and Luke Grimes (Kayce Dutton) were in some tough negotiations to star in an in-development follow-up series as well, but it now appears that the question is whether they'll keep the flagship series afloat for a sixth season instead.
A prequel limited series, 1883, aired on Paramount+ late in 2021 and revealed the origin story of the Dutton family arriving in Montana. The series starred Isabel May as the brave and adventurous teenager Elsa, elder sister to John Dutton's great-grandfather, John Sr., and Tim McGraw as her father, James.
A second Yellowstone prequel, titled 1923, premiered in December 2022. It picks up 40 years after 1883 with the next generation of Duttons tending to their ranch during the aftermath of World War I and the start of Prohibition. The series, which is slated to return for Season 2, stars Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren as Jacob and Cara Dutton, the brother and sister-in-law to Tim McGraw's James Dutton from 1883. The premiere of 1923 also revealed some hidden secrets about the Dutton family tree.
Sheridan is also writing a Yellowstone spin-off called 6666, which takes place at the real historic Four Sixes Ranch in Texas (which Sheridan owns) and tells the story of how the ranch has continued to operate in the same way today as it did over a century ago. That spin-off will air on Paramount Network, along with the original show, though it's currently on hold as Sheridan assesses its heritage — as owner, from a front-row seat — to honor its history.
The Sheridan-produced limited series Lawmen: Bass Reeves, starring David Oyelowo as Bass Reeves, was originally expected to exist within the Yellowstone universe as a prequel to 1883 but was changed to function as its own standalone series.
Additionally, Sheridan has previously said he had several more Yellowstone prequels in the works. "[The prequels are] time capsules of life in Montana as a microcosm of the world as a whole," Sheridan told The Hollywood Reporter in June 2023. "They're big spectacles, and the more that you move into the modern era, the bigger that spectacle becomes. I know these are huge bets Paramount makes on me every time. I'm asking them to give me Game of Thrones Season 6 money for what is essentially a pilot every year, and that's a big ask. As long as I do my job well, and people don't bore of the genre, I think there will be enough for many more [prequels] — three or four."
Yellowstone on CBS
Yellowstone is going BIG for the Season 5 Part 2 premiere. CBS aired the episode at 10/9c on Nov. 10, just hours after it premiered on Paramount Network. The move is obviously a play to get as many eyeballs on the show's return as possible, and CBS is no stranger to the series, having aired its first three seasons during the actors and writers strikes of summer 2023.
On Dec. 4, 2023, CBS announced it would continue to air Yellowstone in 2024, even though the writers and actors strikes had ended. Season 3 began its run on CBS with three episodes on Jan. 14 and concluded with a two-night finale event on Sunday, Jan. 28 and Monday, Jan. 29. Because CBS returned to regular programming after the Super Bowl on Feb. 11, it's unclear whether, or when, the network will air Season 4 of Yellowstone. CBS will be airing another Sheridan series, Tulsa King, in the summer, and hasn't announced plans to air Season 4 of Yellowstone in the summer or fall.
In its first week on CBS, Yellowstone drew 6.6 million viewers, much more than the 2.8 million who tuned into the series premiere when it debuted on Paramount Network back in 2018. (As the audience grew, episodes on Paramount Network peaked at almost 10 million viewers.)
30 fun facts about Yellowstone
If you think you're a fan of Yellowstone but want to become a super fan, then check out TV Guide's compilation of 30 (and counting) fun facts and behind-the-scenes secrets about the show, including how you can visit the real Dutton ranch and what it takes to be a cowboy on a Taylor Sheridan show.
