Spoilers for Yellowstone season 5 episode 9.
Look at how they massacred by (cow)boy. John Dutton has roped his last steer, guzzled his last cup of Taylor Sheridan’s Bosque Ranch coffee, gone off to that big pasture in the sky. He’s dead, is what we’re saying. Kevin Costner is finally free. The season 5.2 premiere of Yellowstone saw the Dutton patriarch bumped off by assassins hired by his scheming son Jamie (Wes Bentley) and his cartoonishly evil girlfriend Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri). And to add insult to mortal injury, they staged it to look like a suicide. Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) and Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) arrive at the Governor’s mansion to find their father’s dead body with a gun by his hand. Only Beth suspects her daddy died by someone else’s hand.
“I think Taylor’s decision to begin this way was incredibly brave,†executive producer/director of this episode Christina Voros told The Hollywood Reporter. “I think it is testament to his faith in the characters and the actors who embody them to go, ‘Let’s not make this about the incident. Let’s make this about how these human beings exist in the aftermath.’ That was more interesting to [Taylor] than the incident itself.†Which works out great for Sheridan, given that they can’t show the incident itself without Costner’s participation.