A seismic event will change everything in Yellowstone‘s Season 5 Part 2 premiere, the episode that will no doubt reveal John Dutton’s fate following Kevin Costner‘s exit from the series. For the Dutton family, there’s no going back to life before after this. The family is at war, the stars tell TV Insider in the video interview above, and sides must be chosen.
The premiere descriptions simply says, “After an event rattles the state of Montana, nothing will ever be the same.” It’s clear that this event will be tragic in nature. Nothing else would force every member in the Dutton family into action like never before — something that Luke Grimes and Kelsey Asbille tell us is absolutely the case.
Kayce (Grimes) and Monica Dutton (Asbille) have tried to keep their family at a safe distance from the Dutton ranch turmoil, but as Grimes tells us in the video interview above, “this event [in the series premiere] has the most pull of anything yet, and we have to get involved. There’s no other choice. Everyone has to get involved.”
“It’s all hands on deck. It’s everyone having to figure out this big thing together. It’s bigger than any big bad we’ve had on any other season,” Grimes adds. “It sets in motion everything that happens throughout the rest of the season, and it happens pretty quickly.”
The premiere wasn’t made available to press in advance, so the only people who know what happens to Costner’s character are the cast and crew who made the series. But even then there are details throughout this potential final season that cast members weren’t privy to. Scripts were heavily redacted, with certain stars only getting information on a need-to-know basis. One thing that’s clear to all fans of the hit western: without Costner, this season is going to be unlike anything we’ve seen before from this show.
Monica and son Tate (Brecken Merrill) were in a terrible car accident last season that killed Monica and Kayce’s unborn child. “When we pick back up, [Monica’s] looking forward,” Asbille tells us, but notes that she too will be called to action by the events of the premiere. “She’s literally making a home for them. She’s called into battle in a different way and I think will end up being an important part of the Dutton legacy.”
We’ve theorized that Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley, also featured above) would be the one to kill his father, John. Bentley tells us how Jamie and his lover, lawyer Sarah (Dawn Olivieri), are changed by whatever life-altering event goes down in the Part 2 opener.
“Sarah and Jamie enter [the premiere] full-on ready for a fight and expecting to win,” Bentley reveals. “I don’t think Jamie’s coming from a place of real strength, but I think he’s coming from a place of, he’s finally just going to manufacture something and push it through. Jamie also knows that his life is on the line right now too. He is feeling his life in danger, and so he’s wild, unpredictable, unstable as usual, and he’s dangerous. And he and Sarah come in as a danger.”
Don’t expect reconciliation between the surviving Dutton siblings. Grimes says Kayce has kept his own separate relationships with feuding siblings Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Jamie, but those days are done. “This big, earth-shattering event, it’s just too much and as much as he’s tried his best not to get fully involved both feet into the family drama, he has to this time,” Grimes admits.
The moment fans have been waiting for could be coming this season as well. Bentley says it’s “very possible” that Rip (Cole Hauser) will finally find out what Jamie did to Beth when they were teens. Rip finding out is “the thing he would be most afraid of,” Bentley says.
Beth is “threatening to kill” Jamie, Bentley notes. “It seems like her biggest and best option [to kill him] would be Rip. That’s definitely a possibility coming up.”
Many adversaries have come and gone over the course of five seasons, but Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) and the indigenous people of this Montana land are still here and still as determined as ever to achieve their goals. Birmingham tells TV Insider above that John’s sudden absence doesn’t change much for Tom.
“His ambitions haven’t changed, his intentions haven’t changed. Some of these things are just transitory. The people may change, but the issues are still existing,” Birmingham explains. The events of the premiere will bring him closer to Kayce, a natural evolution of their series-long bond.
Find out more about Yellowstone‘s return in the full video interview above.
Yellowstone, Season 5 Part 2 Premiere, Sunday, November 10, 8/7c, Paramount Network, 10/9c, CBS