Here's How Yellowstone Wrote Off Kevin Costner's John Dutton

Well, John Dutton is dead. Yellowstone's much anticipated return didn't waste much time before revealing how Kevin Costner was written off the show after he opted not to return for the final episodes over what he said were scheduling conflicts, and it was rightfully Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Kayce (Luke Grimes) who found out first as they arrived at a governor's mansion decorated with caution tape. They soon learned that John Dutton (Costner) had died via gunshot in the upstairs bathroom, and Beth immediately assumed the worst of her adopted and somewhat estranged brother Jamie (Wes Bentley). 

Jamie, who is still the attorney general, made the public announcement of his father's death and revealed that it was self-induced, which Beth took serious offense to, for good reason. The John Dutton we knew for four and a half seasons would never do such a thing, no matter how hard things got, and he wanted to die in nature, under the stars. Even if he were going to kill himself, he wouldn't do it in a fancy bathroom far away from his beloved ranch!

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A distraught Beth called Rip (Cole Hauser) home from wherever he had taken the cattle, and it appeared he planned to ride his horse all the way home, but before he got there, the episode flashed back six weeks. Beth was finishing up her community service while Kayce and Monica (Kelsey Asbille) were imagining their new life on the ranch and grossing out their son by making out on porches. Jamie and his dangerous girlfriend Sarah (Dawn Olivieri) had just decided to strike before they could be stricken, and so Sarah took a meeting with a mysterious bald man that was so secretive she had to remove her shoes and earrings, in case they were recording devices. After she got to watch footage of her and Jamie having sex in his bedroom, she gave permission for this firm of hitmen to take John out, and to make it look like a suicide. 

Sarah correctly protested the suicide part because she knew John just as well as any of the rest of us, but Hitman Stanley Tucci said that's the cleanest way to assassinate someone. So much for the last few episodes of the season turning into a murder mystery, because Beth called the culprits right away. 

The flashbacks mostly provided opportunity for this show to do its favorite thing, which is to stop doing plot for a few long minutes in exchange for sweeping footage of horses and cows and of the guys (and Teeter) on horses herding the cows. It took far too long to get back to anything interesting, but we did see Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) worrying about a pipeline being built in the valley, and Rip taking care of his camp. He bought some fancy spurs from an ancient spur-maker, then lamented how someday the land would all be solar farms and wind farms and beef would come from Brazil, then asked Walker (Ryan Bingham) to sing them a sad song. 

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Just when it became worrying that too much of these final episodes would be taking place six weeks before John Dutton's death but still would feature no John Dutton, the show jumped back to present day. Jamie arrived home in tears, having fully believed his father killed himself because of him, but Sarah was there to quickly confirm that it was her doing because she thought that's what he wanted. In that moment, it certainly didn't seem like he wanted that at all, and wasn't he thinking they were going to kill Beth? 

Anyway, officially, John's death was looking like it really was suicide, except for the fact that all the surveillance at the governor's mansion conveniently went down just before the death, then went back up soon after. Finally, Rip arrived, and the episode ended with Beth sobbing and screaming in his arms. 

In the end, the six week flashback was completely pointless and the important parts of the episode took up about 20 minutes, but at least they were a pretty good 20 minutes that drew the battle lines for the rest of the season. Hopefully it will be an interesting war in which no horses are harmed (or shown trotting around aimlessly for half an episode). 

Yellowstone airs Sundays at 8/7c on Paramount Network.