The final episodes of Yellowstone season five are still in limbo due to the ongoing strike action.
The days of the Dutton Ranch are sadly numbered. The second half of Yellowstone season five has been a long time coming thanks to a number of issues which have snowballed to keep the one-time Paramount Network show from seeing the light of day again. The controversy surrounding Kevin Costner’s departure was the first problem to delay the show’s return, and actor Luke Grimes doesn’t have much good news to offer fans in the way of an update. Grimes said in an interview with People:
“We have not [started filming the second half of season 5] because of the writers’ strike. I think we would be if it weren’t for that. But that takes precedence over everything. They got to get that all sorted, and then we’ll be getting after it.”
Grimes has portrayed the role of Kayce Dutton since the series premiered back in June of 2018. New episodes of Yellowstone were originally scheduled to drop on the Paramount Network over the summer of 2023, but that couldn’t happen without Costner’s return as the show’s patriarch, John Dutton. The drama surrounding Costner has since abated, but now the production has stalled thanks to the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strikes.
Grimes Did Not Have Good News to Offer Fans
Luke Grimes will return as the son of John Dutton (Costner) on the hit streaming series Yellowstone — it’s now just a question of when. The series has been picked up by CBS even though Kevin Costner will not be coming back to rejoin the cast. The co-creator and showrunner of Yellowstone, Taylor Sheridan, was arguably just as blindsided as fans with the whole will-he-or-won’t-he drama swirling around the actor’s return. And before the Season 5 scheduling conflict came to light, Sheridan even admitted in a June 2023 interview that Costner wasn’t always happy with the Michael Corleone-esque direction the show was taking. As Sheridan told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year…
There was a time in Season 2 when he was very upset and said the character wasn’t going in the direction he wanted. I said, ‘Kevin, you do remember that I told you this is essentially The Godfather on the largest ranch in Montana? Are you that surprised that the Godfather is killing people?’ What he’s clung to is [Dutton’s] commitments to his family and way of life. Dutton’s big failing is not evolving with the times — not finding different revenue streams [for the ranch]. Kevin felt Season 2 was deviating from that, and I don’t know that he was wrong. In Season 3, we steered back into it. And I recall him winning a Golden Globe last year for his performance, so I think it’s working.
Once the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes have concluded, the final episodes of Yellowstone season five will air on CBS. After the show concludes, the untitled sequel series starring Matthew McConaughey will pick up after the events of Yellowstone. But judging from Sheridan’s description of the Yellowstone spin-off, the show is unlikely to include the Dutton clan’s cast members like Luke Grimes, Kelly Reilly or Cole Hauser.
