Major spoilers for everyone who hasn’t yet seen Yellowstone ’s Season 5B premiere, so be warned! Holy shit, y’all. We’ve been waiting nearly two years for Yellowstone ’s final Season 5 episodes, and I’m pretty sure every imaginable hypothesis has been considered concerning how the western would explain Kevin Costner ’s John Dutton either being absent or suddenly returning after all the behind-the-scenes issues.

After months of speculation, we now know the fate of the Dutton patriarch—and it's even more dramatic than expected.

This post contains spoilers for "Yellowstone" Season 5 Episode 9, "Desire Is All You Need." Thank you for your service, John Dutton. In the first episode of the second half of Season 5, it was revealed that the Dutton family patriarch,

How did the show handle Kevin Costner’s exit? Did it send John off on a trip? Did it kill him? Did it find a different way to write around the Costner-shaped hole in the story?

Written as usual by Taylor Sheridan, the long awaited final half of Yellowstone's fifth season with Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) pulling up to the governor's mansion to see all hell has broken loose with emergency vehicles flashing everywhere.

It's been nearly two years since the finale of Part 1 of Season 5 of "Yellowstone" - the massive Taylor Sheridan-created show's most recent episode - debuted on Paramount Network on New Year's Day 2023.

Curious whether John Dutton actually died? Fans of Yellowstone have been left reeling by the shocking twists in Season 5, especially regarding the fate of the Dutton family’s powerful patriarch, played by Kevin Costner.

Following a very public disagreement between the lead of the show, Kevin Costner, and creator, Taylor Sheridan, over how writing and production on the show was being handled, Costner chose to forgo returning to "Yellowstone,