Updated 11/11/2024 — See update below.

It’s been almost two years since the wildly popular modern Western drama Yellowstone last aired an episode. Season 5, Part 1 concluded with the 7th episode in December 2022. Episode 8 releases today.

That’s a damn long wait, y’all. I’m allowed to write sentences like that because I’m from where this show takes place: Bozeman, Montana, born and raised. It’s where I rode my first horse, although I haven’t done any horseback riding and I can’t do a lasso to save my life. I can hit the side of a barn with a shotgun, but I’m no John Dutton.

In fact, that is “no John Dutton”. actually, because Kevin Costner will not appear in this half-season of the series. The show’s movie star and filmmaker had a highly publicized dispute with mega-producer Taylor Sheridan over the amount of time he needed to be on set. Costner was – and still is – busy making his epic four-part western film series Horizon: an American saga, and his attention was too divided to remain part of the Yellowstone melodrama.

(I quite liked it Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, and I’m excited to see Chapter 2 later this year).

Forbes‘Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1’ review – Kevin Costner’s sprawling western is flawed but still greatBy means of

Anyway, the Dutton family story continues tonight at 8pm ET on Paramount Network and at 10pm ET on CBS (a special).

The big “catch” in the title of this post is that it is the only way to see unless you wait months later for the streaming release on Peacock. That’s not entirely true. You can also buy the season on Prime Video and watch episodes online early. But the only way to keep up with Beth (Kelly Reilly), Rip (Cole Hauser), Kayce (Luke Grimes), Monica (Kelsey Asbille), Jamie (Wes Bentley), Jimmy (Jefferson White) and the rest of the vast world cast of cowboys and their opponents, will have traditional cable television.

Are you watching? Yellowstone still? I know many fans have been unhappy with the show’s trajectory over the past few seasons, but it remains a wildly popular soap opera (I call it a soap opera as I thought Sons of anarchy to be a soap opera, but you may not agree with that). Let me know your opinion TweetInstagram or Facebook. Also subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me here on this blog. Sign up for my newsletter for more reviews and commentary on entertainment and culture.

For more shows and movies this weekend, check out my weekend streaming guide. Netflix also just dropped the final season of one of its best shows, although it’s about as different Yellowstone as you can get.

Updated 11.11.24

Spoilers for Season 5, Part 2 ahead.

I thought I would check out the reviews for the fifth season of Yellowstone, and it’s interesting that 84% of critics give it a ‘Fresh’ rating, while only 41% of viewers do, making it Rotten on the Popcorn Meter. On Reddit and social media, people are deeply unhappy about one thing in particular: the death of John Dutton.

As mentioned above, Costner wanted out and so Sheridan wrote him out of the show in perhaps the most absurd way imaginable: by having him shoot himself and commit suicide. As many commentators note, there is no way Dutton could have committed suicide. It’s so far out of character that it defies all plausibility.

“John Dutton was a fantastic character, and despite the Kevin Costner drama, he deserved a better send-off than Yellowstone gave him,” one fan wrote on Twitter. “Yellowstone has its first episode without Kevin Costner and they blew it in the first five minutes,” said another.

It’s possible that the shooting wasn’t a suicide and that we’ll find out that Dutton was murdered, but it certainly feels like Sheridan could have given Dutton a more peaceful ending, like a heart attack.

Many fans blame Sheridan for the mess. “It wasn’t until this episode that I realized how completely John Dutton’s character the show was,” one fan wrote on reddit. ‘Like any family that seems to collapse when the matriarch or patriarch dies. Sometimes a strong child or grandchild lifts everyone from the ashes, and sometimes the family never recovers. But Taylor or Kevin totally ruined us with 5B. I suspect that arrogant megalomaniac Taylor has destroyed his own series with this sh*tshow. I will never invest in another Sheridan series again.”

I’ll be honest, this makes me even less interested in finishing season 5. I’m only a few episodes behind, but hearing that John Dutton may have committed suicide has sapped all the enthusiasm I had to get back on the show. come, taken away. What a shame.

Have you seen the latest episode? What are your thoughts? Let me know TweetInstagram or Facebook. Also subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me here on this blog. Sign up for my newsletter for more reviews and commentary on entertainment and culture.