Warning: Spoilers below.
The train station is busy.
As the hit ranch drama “Yellowstone” nears its end, its body count is getting high. Colby (Denim Richards) is the latest character to drop dead.
Currently airing its fifth and final season, “Yellowstone” follows the Dutton family, owners of the largest ranch in Montana, including patriarch John (Kevin Costner), who was also the governor, and his adult children Kayce (Luke Grimes), Jamie (Wes Bentley), Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Beth’s husband, Rip (Cole Hauser).
The show returned on Nov. 10 and kicked off the second half of Season 5 by killing off John, since Costner left the show amid rumors of behind-the-scenes strife. A hit man fatally shot John and staged it to look like a suicide. Jamie was partly responsible, as his evil girlfriend, Sarah (Dawn Olivieri), arranged it, but Jamie was not directly involved. Fans were unhappy about John’s death.
Sarah herself got taken out by another hitman not long after that. And in the most recent episode, a ranch hand, Colby (Denim Richards) also went to “the train station,” the show’s slang for killing someone off.
For Colby, it wasn’t a sinister murder plot. Rather, he died in a workplace injury after getting kicked by a horse.
Fans weren’t too pleased about that.
“That was a VERY UNNECESSARY death!!!” one fan complained on Reddit.
“You f–king kidding me? They just kill off Colby like that?! #YellowStoneTV this sh-t is cheesy as hell now,” another irate viewer fumed on X, formerly Twitter.
“Why would they just randomly just kill off Colby from @Yellowstone ? That might be the dumbest sh-t ive ever seen,” said another.
“That was not cool. I hate that they killed Colby.If ANYONE deserved a happy ending when this series ends, it was these two. Felt so bad for Teeter upon hearing the news. After they just said “I love you” to each other too,” another fan remarked.
Another fan said they were quitting the show over this.
“Y’all killed Colby. I’m good. No more #Yellowstone for me.”
During an interview with The Post before the second half of Season 5 premiered, Richards said that between the set drama about Costner leaving, and the long wait between the first and second halves of Season 5, he wasn’t even sure the second half of Season 5 would happen.
“For a lot of us, we thought maybe 18 months ago that that was probably going to be the end.”
But after Costner departed the show, “it’s the next man up, right?” he said.
Richards acknowledged that there has been “a lot of speculation in the last year,” about what was going on with Costner.
“But I mean, it’s entertainment, right? Things change so much…at a certain point, you’ve just got to show up and do your job, because there’s so many people that are making other decisions that are outside of our scope.”
About Costner, Richards said, “He’s been a juggernaut for over four decades I’ve had the opportunity to learn so much from him. Of course, there’s going to be some gaps that you feel. But I think that [creator Taylor Sheridan] has written characters that have so much depth, and they’ve been able to fill in those gaps.”
“Yellowstone” airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on Paramount Network. The series finale airs Dec. 15.
