“Yellowstone,” the most popular show on television, has ended.
Or has it?
The confusion over whether or not Taylor Sheridan’s blockbuster Paramount Network series is over for good after Sunday night’s season finale remains. But what is for certain is that a big chapter closed, with the family selling the ranch to Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) and the reservation; Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Rip (Cole Hauser) leaving the ranch; and Jamie (Wes Bentley) dying at the hands of a vengeful Beth.
Also: they finally buried John Dutton (formerly played by Kevin Costner), which was a touching and strange moment.
But as to where this leaves the show (and a number of potential spinoffs) is anybody’s guess. The ambiguity of the final moments of the finale, punctuated by narration that began in “Yellowstone” prequel “1883” and continued with “1923,” certainly didn’t help anything.
TheWrap spoke to Christina Alexandra Voros, an executive producer on “Yellowstone” and the director of most of the episodes in the back half of season 5 (dubbed season 5B). (Taylor Sheridan, who wrote every episode this season, directed the finale.) We talked about what it was like walking the tightrope of closing the door while also leaving it ajar, the Beth/Jamie fight scene and her work on Sheridan’s upcoming “The Madison.”
It was pretty emotional. It’s strange. You show up on set every day and you’ve got your list of things to do, and there isn’t time to really take a breath and let it all soak in, because there’s still work to be done, but I think it really started to permeate the way we all felt about the work on the last couple of episodes – that we had been we’ve all been able to be a part of something really special for the last seven years and it was coming to an end. It’s not just a turn of phrase. It really is a big family. The cast and crew, a lot of these people, have been together from the very beginning and I found myself getting a little distracted towards the end of the shoot, kind of going, God, this is the last time I’ll be standing in the great room, or the last time I’ll be standing in the barn. Memories came flooding back when we did John Dutton’s funeral from shooting Lee’s funeral in season one. I think it’s testament to something Taylor did really beautifully in the writing of this final episode, is he’s connecting us back, whether it’s Elsa’s voice, connecting us back to “1883” or the way the funeral is shot, bringing us back to Lee, which is the inciting incident in season one. He’s really brought it full circle. And as the creators who were on the ground working with Taylor to build this final season, I think there was a real sense of that in the last days that we were shooting.
About that narration (by Isabel May as Elsa Dutton from “1883”) – was that always in the script or something you discovered in post-production?
It was definitely scripted. Very few people saw that part of the script. The last 10 pages of the show were, completely redacted, except for the people who actually had words in those scenes. I think it came as a surprise to most of the cast.
What did you think of the hullabaloo over the penultimate episode?
It cracks me up a little bit, because, look, comedy has always been a key element in Taylor’s writing. And “Yellowstone” is known for these big swings and these big feelings and these big stunt and action sequences. But it’s also been funny, whether it’s zingers from Beth or banter in the bunk house, there’s always been humor infused into it. And there hasn’t been a lot of humor this season. It hasn’t been particularly a funny time to be a Dutton. From a creative perspective, I enjoyed there being these moments of levity to break it up.
And when you become an iconic personality in any realm, but certainly in a creative realm, people love to tear each other up and tear each other down. And there’s people who spend more time arguing or complaining about television shows than they do watching the shows themselves. The deconstruction of it is a lengthier pastime than the actual taking in of the narrative. It’s always been funny seeing all these different perspectives on what people like and don’t like that = completely contradict each other side by side. I think there are people who liked it, there are people who didn’t. There are people who are still talking about it. I thought it was a lot of fun. And I think there are elements of Travis that are elements of Taylor, and then I think there are elements that are fictional. If you’re doing the magic the right way, people aren’t going to be able to tell which is which. And I think that’s part of what works.
Talk to me about the balancing act of the final episode in terms of closing doors but also leaving enough open for future seasons or spinoffs or whatever else is coming down the mountain.
You know, when we got this script, we were tasked with making an ending. It is an ending. There are a lot of doors that are permanently closed and then there are doors that might be closed, maybe they’re locked, maybe they’re not. There are doors that look like they’re wide open. I don’t know where any of those doors lead. Now I think Taylor has a lot of storytelling on his plate for this next season. I don’t know what the alchemy is that allows him to go, Okay, this belongs in ‘Landman.’ And this is a character that I want to put in this show. I don’t pretend to know how any of it works. I just feel lucky that the scripts end up in my inbox and I get to read them. The shows are great. The scripts are incredible. There’s so much that doesn’t end up on the screen in the way that Taylor writes screen direction, the way he describes things, that it’s own level of artistry and humor and nuance that the audience doesn’t get to see. And it’s what you’re tasked with as a filmmaker is to do it justice, but there’s a lot that just doesn’t end up on the screen because you can’t put an asterisk and write the funny little aside of how this person is described. I don’t know how he does what he does. I am excited that there are doors that haven’t been permanently locked, but I don’t know what that means.
I kept waiting for somebody to turn to camera and say, “See you at The Madison.” The Taylor Sheridan Cinematic Universe is real!
I’m as excited for the next portal as you are. I feel very lucky to be working with him, and not only him. I mean that he’s put together a real family of artists and craftsmen and technicians that keep coming back. There’s a tremendous amount of loyalty to him and to each other and to the shows and that comes from the top down there. I have been lucky enough to live in this universe for seven years and I have worked outside of it, and I have a lot of friends who work outside of it, and there are families all over the television industry, but this one feels really special. There is a lot of faith in each other and he is a very loyal and protective general to the army of storytellers that he’s been leading.
Beth got her revenge in this final episode. Was that always how it was going to go down?
Taylor had a very clear idea of what that fight to end all fights needed to be. It needed to be the end of the war. And what I think is really interesting about it is, yes, it’s brutal and it’s bloody and it’s ferocious, but there’s some really unbelievable acting going on at the same time. And there’s this pause in the middle of the fight where Jamie thinks he has the upper hand and Beth says, “We sold it,” and the entire the table flips over on itself. I think what people don’t realize when you do a scene like that is, yes, it’s exhausting, and yes, the actors are doing most of their own stunts, and you can tell because you see their faces and it’s exhausting to throw punches and receive them. But to stay in that place where, performance wise, you are in the rage, you are in the ferocity – it’s a supersonic feat of acting to be able to embody that emotional orbit for as long as it takes to shoot a scene like that. And I thought Kelly and Wes knocked it out of the park.
Another big moment is Teeter going to the 6666 ranch in Texas. Did that feel like seed-planting for the already-announced “6666” spinoff that we haven’t heard much about lately?
I think what Taylor did with this episode is he closed some doors very definitively, you know, and then he left others open. And when you love a character as much as I love Teeter, of course, I hope there’s a story for her to continue. I think he balanced the loss of characters that people loved with giving them a sunset to ride off into … and we don’t know what’s over that horizon yet.
You’re working on “The Madison” now. Will fans of “Yellowstone” get that itch scratched by this new show?
Alright, the super safe answer to that is whether people admit it or not, I think they’re going to keep on showing up to see the stories that Taylor writes. And based on the little that has been released about “The Madison,” Taylor’s writing another story that takes place in in a world where the landscape is its own character. There is something to the way that he writes people’s experiences of land and space, whether that’s “Yellowstone” and the ranch, whether that’s “Landman” and the oil fields. He writes space and land into his stories as characters in themselves, and I think “The Madison” follows that pattern.