What Kevin Costner Allegedly Knew About John Dutton's Fate on 'Yellowstone'

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

In Yellowstone’s explosive first episode of season 5B, fans finally got to see how Kevin Costner’s departure would be handled on the show after watching his real-life tensions with co-creator Taylor Sheridan play out over the summer last year. But, did Costner himself know about John Dutton’s ending?

The premiere episode of the long awaited final chapter of the Paramount Network series opens with members of the Dutton arriving to the John’s mansion, pushing past cops to see a body laying on the floor of the bathroom, a gun on the ground and blood spattered on the walls.

The death is declared a suicide but it seems a mystery about who might have ordered a hit on John could dominate the rest of the season.

As Yellowstone fans reel from one of the show’s best-kept plot secrets, we’re learning more about the efforts to keep the twist under wraps and who knew about it.

Did Kevin Costner Know About John Dutton’s Death?

Yellowstone’s executive producer Christina Voros made it clear that John Dutton’s death storyline was kept almost entirely a secret, suggesting Costner likely didn’t know about the fate of his character even though he still appears in the credits as an executive producer.

Voros, who directed four of the six final episodes, told The Hollywood Reporter in a Nov. 5 interview that producers didn’t have full access to scripts.

“Most of the cast only got the scenes they were in,” she said. “So for a large portion of the cast, even for some of our seven-year veterans, they will be learning what happens when the show premieres.”

Voros claimed the only people who know what happens for the rest of the season, aside from Sheridan, are: “Our department heads. Director Michael Friedman. The cast of the Duttons themselves are 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 happens 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 complete secret.

In a follow-up interview published on Nov. 10, Voros told The Hollywood Reporter that John’s death was only described in code.

“We didn’t talk about it as a death. Any time there is a death or some sort of event, we called it an ‘arrival,'” she said. “And we gave John’s character a pseudonym. We called him ‘Crosby.’ We were calling the opening scene, ‘Beth discovers that Crosby has arrived.’ It was on call sheets and the crew were like, ‘Who is Crosby? And, where’s he coming from?”

Sheridan also made it pretty clear that he wouldn’t be taking Costner’s feelings into consideration when writing him out of the show but nor would he be deliberately harsh to Costner’s character just because of their off-screen tensions.

“I don’t do ‘fuck-you car crashes,'” Sheridan told The Hollywood Reporter in June 2023, referencing a phrase coined after Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes killed off Patrick Dempsey’s character amid behind-the-scenes tensions. Sheridan’s Sons of Anarchy character was also dramatically written out with a car crash.

“Whether [Dutton’s fate] inflates [Costner’s] ego or insults is collateral damage that I don’t factor in with regard to storytelling.”

That said, in that same interview, Sheridan said he was still in talks to have Costner film some final scenes though we assume those never came to fruition.

“My last conversation with Kevin was that he had this passion project he wanted to direct,” Sheridan said. “He and the network were arguing about when he could be done with Yellowstone. I said, ‘We can certainly work a schedule toward [his preferred exit date],’ which we did.”

“My opinion of Kevin as an actor hasn’t altered,” Sheridan added. “His creation of John Dutton is symbolic and powerful … and I’ve never had an issue with Kevin that he and I couldn’t work out on the phone. But once lawyers get involved, then people don’t get to talk to each other and start saying things that aren’t true and attempt to shift blame based on how the press or public seem to be reacting. He took a lot of this on the chin and I don’t know that anyone deserves it. His movie seems to be a great priority to him and he wants to shift focus. I sure hope [the movie is] worth it — and that it’s a good one.”

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

Before you go, click to see Kevin Costner’s best movies.