Their lips were zipped.
“Yellowstone” is currently airing the second half of Season 5, which was announced as the final season of the hit ranch drama.
Before the final stretch of episodes, Kevin Costner left the show amid rumors of an alleged feud with creator and showrunner Taylor Sheridan.
Spoiler alert – in the premiere episode for the second half of Season 5, “Yellowstone” deals with Costner’s exit by killing off his character, John Dutton.
Executive producer Christina Voros, who directed the episode, told The Hollywood Reporter that there were code words used during filming in order to keep this plot development top secret.
“It’s so weird to talk about it all, because it has been so clandestine for so long,” she told the outlet.
She explained, “We didn’t talk about it as a death. Any time there is a death or some sort of event, we called it an ‘arrival.’ And we gave John’s character a pseudonym. We called him ‘Crosby.’ We were calling the opening scene, ‘Beth discovers that Crosby has arrived.’ It was on call sheets and the crew were like, ‘Who is Crosby? And, where’s he coming from?’”
Voros added that after she did some research, she discovered that John Schuyler Crosby was the last governor of Montana before it was turned into a state in the 1880s.
“It was a very random, obscure, esoteric reference [by Taylor Sheridan],” she said.
“Yellowstone” follows the Dutton family, owners of the largest ranch in Montana, including patriarch John (Costner), who had become the Governor of Montana before his death, and his adult children, quiet Kayce (Luke Grimes), villainous Jamie (Wes Bentley), headstrong Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Beth’s cowboy husband, Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser).
In the premiere episode of the second half of Season 5, it turned out that John was fatally shot by a hitman, but it was staged as a suicide.
Beth and Kayce both didn’t buy that it was suicide, and Beth was sure that Jamie did it. She was mostly right, but Jamie’s culpability was indirect, as his love interest, lawyer Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri), orchestrated it, to Jamie’s apparent dismay.
Fans were not pleased by how the show handled Costner’s exit.
One viewer said, “Even thought we know KEVIN COSTNER wasn’t supposed to come back for the rest of #Yellowstone. The way to end his character was just dumbfounded and lazy. Could’ve been a better way or he just could’ve rode off into the sunset.”
Another fan complained, “The fans of this show & Kevin Costner (John Dutton) deserved way better! Taylor Sheridan I don’t know if I’ll support another of your shows!!! #Yellowstone and ratings will suffer! The laziest writing.”
“Yellowstone” airs Sundays (8 p.m.) on Paramount Network.
