Warning: This article contains spoilers for Yellowstone season 5 part 2

In from Yellowstone The explosive first episode of Season 5B, fans finally got to see how The departure of Kevin Costner will be treated on the show after following up on his real-life tensions with co-creator Taylor Sheridan last summer. But Costner himself knew about it End of John Dutton?

The premiere episode of the long-awaited final chapter of the Paramount Network series opens with members of the Dutton family arriving at John’s mansion, pushing past the cops to find a body lying on the bathroom floor, a gun on the floor and blood splattered on the walls.

The death is ruled a suicide, but it looks like a mystery about who ordered the hit on John could dominate the rest of the season.

That Yellowstone fans enjoy one of the show’s best-kept plot secrets, we learn more about the efforts to keep the situation under wraps and who knew about it.

Did Kevin Costner know about John Dutton’s death?

from Yellowstone Executive producer Christina Voros made it clear that the story of John Dutton’s death was kept almost entirely under wraps, suggesting that Costner was probably unaware of his character’s fate, although he still appears in the credits as an executive producer.

Voros, who directed four of the final six episodes, narrated The Hollywood Reporter in an interview on November 5 that the producers did not have full access to the scripts.

“Most of the cast only got the scenes they were in,” she said. “So for a lot of the cast, even some of our seven-year veterans, they’ll find out what happens when the show premieres.”

Voros claimed that the only people who know what’s going on for the rest of the season, other than Sheridan, are: “Our department heads. Director Michael Friedman. The Dutton cast is in the secret club.”

“But for the most part, people knew the scenes they were in. So if they were in scenes where something happened that needed to be protected, they knew about it. But if they weren’t, about half the cast doesn’t know what’s going on this season outside of their own work,” she explained.

The script included redacted sections, code names, and even alternate scenes to keep the real ending a secret.

In a subsequent interview published on November 10, Voros said The Hollywood Reporter that John’s death was only described in code.

“I didn’t talk about it as a death. “Every time there’s a death or some kind of event, we’ve called it an ‘arrival,'” she said. “And I gave John’s character a pseudonym. I named him “Crosby”. I was saying the opening scene: “Beth discovers that Crosby has arrived.” It was on the call sheets and the crew said, “Who is Crosby? And where does it come from?”

Sheridan has also made it quite clear that she won’t consider Costner’s feelings when taking him off the show, but she also won’t be deliberately hard on Costner’s character just because of their off-screen tensions.

“I don’t do ‘to hell with car accidents,'” Sheridan said The Hollywood Reporter in June 2023, referring to an expression coined after Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes killed off Patrick Dempsey’s character amid backstage tensions. Sheridan’s Sons of Anarchy the character was also dramatically written with a car accident.

“Whether (Dutton’s fate) inflates (Costner’s) ego or insults is collateral damage I don’t consider in terms of storytelling.”

That said, in the same interview, Sheridan said he was still in talks for Costner to shoot some final scenes, though we’re guessing those never materialized.

“My last conversation with Kevin was that he had this passion project that he wanted to direct,” Sheridan said. “He and the network argued when they could have ended it Yellowstone. I said, ‘Surely we can work out a schedule for (preferred exit date)’, which we did.”

“My opinion of Kevin as an actor hasn’t changed,” Sheridan added. “John Dutton’s work is symbolic and powerful…and I’ve never had a problem with Kevin that he and I couldn’t resolve over the phone. But once the lawyers get involved, then people stop talking to each other and start saying things that aren’t true and try to shift the blame based on how the media or the public seem to react. He took a lot of it on the chin and I don’t know that anyone deserves it. His film seems to be a big priority for him and he wants to change his focus. I hope (the film) is worth it – and that it’s a good one.”

Costner officially announced his departure from the show in June of this year after many reports of strained negotiations with Sheridan and Paramount over his future on the show. The conflict began a year earlier due to scheduling conflicts with Costner’s Western drama skyline.

Before you go, click to view The best Kevin Costner movies.