SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Season 5, Episode 9, which aired November 10 on Paramount Network.

“Yellowstone” killed John Dutton in Sunday night’s season 5 part 2 premiere, but Kevin Costner hasn’t seen the episode yet.

“I’m going to be completely honest. I didn’t know it actually aired last night,” Costner said Monday morning in an interview with SiriusXM’s “The Michael Smerconish Program.” ‘That is a moment to swear to God. I swear to God. I mean, I see ads with my face everywhere and I think, ‘Gosh, I’m not in that.’ I won’t be there this season.”

Costner, who departed Taylor Sheridan’s Western drama after Season 5, Part 1, which premiered in November 2022, said he found out how his character was sent packing the morning after the episode aired.

‘I didn’t see it. I heard it was suicide, so that doesn’t make me want to rush out and see it,” Costner said. When Smerconish said Dutton “never struck me as a suicide man,” Costner responded, “Well, they’re pretty smart people. Maybe it’s a red herring. Who knows? They are very good. And they are going to find out.”

Costner said that earlier in the series there were “a few times where I talked about possible endings for myself,” which did not include suicide. But he added that how the “Yellowstone” writers wrote Dutton out of the story is “their business.”

As for Dutton’s death, Costner was right that the suicide was a diversionary tactic. In the episode, John’s death resulted from Sarah (Dawn Olivieri), the evil fixer who sleeps with John’s power-hungry son Jamie (Wes Bentley), punching him through a shady but professional organization. Despite her protests that he would never kill himself, the hitman says this is the easiest way to get away unnoticed because they can stage a gunshot scene and not have to have toxicologists or other medical examiners dig too deep during the autopsy.

Elsewhere in his interview with Smerconish, Costner emphasized that he has not left ‘Yellowstone’. He insists the show cannot sidestep its contractual agreements for Costner’s “Horizon” film saga.

“There were contractual things that allowed both things to be done, but because both things were contractual you had to make room for the other. There was space, but it was difficult for them to stick to their schedule. It seemed like it was just too hard for them to do,” said Costner, who added, “I didn’t leave. I didn’t stop.”

Costner continued: “There were 300 people waiting for me, I couldn’t help them anymore. I just couldn’t help them. But I haven’t quit the show… everyone has to deliver on what they say they’re going to do. And it doesn’t matter what business you’re in.”

Watch an excerpt from Costner’s interview below.