Maybe John Dutton hasn’t ridden off into the sunset just yet after all. Though Kevin Costner has confirmed that he will not be appearing in the second half of Yellowstone’s Season 5 (premiering on Paramount Network Sunday at 8/7c), Christina Voros, who directed four of the six episodes, tells our sister site The Hollywood Reporter that the unyielding head of the Dutton family still casts a long shadow over the goings-on. “His presence is integral.
“I think to say any more than that,” she adds, “would potentially compromise all the work that went into redacting the scripts” to keep plot twists secret. “But I think the reason people are wondering, ‘Is he, isn’t he? Where is he, where is he not?’ is because he is the patriarch, and his presence is an essential component to the story. John Dutton is still central.”
Perhaps even more intriguing, Voros doesn’t come out and say that Costner was not on the set. “I don’t know if we were without him,” she insists. “I don’t know!”
She does, however, weigh in on the ending that series co-creator crafted for John. When she first read the script, “it made me feel really lucky to get to direct it. Taylor always has a sense of where something is going to end, and the joy is watching him find how we get there. So all I can say is… I felt tremendously grateful to be a part of telling this chapter in the story.”