With the flagship Yellowstone series finished, it doesn't come as much of a surprise that the Taylor Sheridan narrative is set to continue beyond the
With the flagship Yellowstone series finished, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that the Taylor Sheridan narrative is set to continue beyond the original five seasons. After all, the neo-Western series likely would have lasted another season or two had Kevin Costner not departed from the show ahead of Season 5 Part 2. Either way, as Kayce (Luke Grimes) has already moved into his own next chapter with Marshals and Beth (Kelly Reilly) heads toward her upcoming continuation with Rip, I’m still convinced there’s one Dutton who deserves a spin-off of his own. No, it’s not Jamie (Wes Bentley), nor is it their other fallen brother Lee (Dave Annable). Instead, the younger version of their father, John Dutton, played to perfection by Josh Lucas.
If Any ‘Yellowstone’ Character Needs a Spin-Off, It’s Josh Lucas’ John Dutton
Now that Kayce has already gotten his own spin-off in Marshals, it’s even clearer that Lucas’ John Dutton is the character who most deserves the next Yellowstone expansion. While Costner played an aged John Dutton in the final years leading to his assassination, Lucas played the younger version, still raising his children to try to take over his growing cattle empire. Having appeared in merely nine episodes of the entire 53-episode series, Lucas’ interpretation was to Costner’s what Robert De Niro‘s Vito Corleone was to Marlon Brando‘s in The Godfather trilogy. He is John Dutton in his absolute prime, and we see him at a time when there was still potential for his family, long before Beth and Jamie fell out, before Kayce wandered in his own direction, and before Lee was unceremoniously murdered. In fact, this John existed alongside his wife Evelyn (Gretchen Mol) before her own fateful end.
Collider Exclusive · Taylor Sheridan Universe Quiz
Which Taylor Sheridan
Show Do You Belong In?
Yellowstone · Landman · Tulsa King · Mayor of Kingstown
Four worlds. All of them brutal, complicated, and built on power, loyalty, and the price of survival. Taylor Sheridan doesn’t write heroes — he writes people who do what they have to do and live with the cost. Ten questions will reveal which one of his worlds you were made for.
Yellowstone
Landman
Tulsa King
Mayor of Kingstown
FIND YOUR WORLD →
01
Where does your power come from?
In Sheridan’s world, everyone has leverage. The question is what kind.
ALand, legacy, and a name that’s been feared and respected for generations.
BKnowing the deal better than anyone else in the room — and being willing to walk away first.
CReputation. I’ve earned it the challenging way, and everyone in the room knows it.
DBeing the only person both sides will talk to. That makes me indispensable — and threatening.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Who do you put first, no matter what?
Loyalty in Sheridan’s universe is always absolute — and always costly.
AFamily — blood or chosen. The ranch, the name, the people who carry it with me.
BThe company — or whoever’s signing the cheques. Loyalty follows the contract.
CMy crew. The men who stood with me when it counted — I don’t abandon them for anything.
DMy community — even when my community is a powder keg and I’m the only thing stopping it from blowing.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
Someone crosses a line. How do you respond?
Every Sheridan protagonist has a line. What matters is what happens after it’s crossed.
AQuietly, decisively, and in a way that sends a message to everyone watching.
BI outmanoeuvre them legally, financially, and politically before they even know I’ve moved.
CDirectly. Old school. You cross me, you hear about it to your face — and then you deal with the consequences.
DI absorb it, calculate the fallout, and find the move that keeps the whole system from collapsing.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
Where do you feel most in your element?
Sheridan’s worlds are as much about place as they are about people.
AWide open land — mountains, sky, silence. Somewhere you can see trouble coming from a mile away.
BThe oil fields of West Texas — brutal, lucrative, and indifferent to whoever happens to be standing on top of them.
CA mid-size city where the rules haven’t quite caught up yet — fertile ground for someone with vision and nerve.
DA rust-belt town built around a prison — where everyone’s life is shaped by what’s inside those walls.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
How do you feel about operating in the grey?
Nobody in a Sheridan show has pristine hands. The question is how they carry the dirt.
AI do what has to be done to protect what’s mine. I’ll answer for it eventually — but not today.
BGrey is just business. The line moves depending on what’s at stake, and I move with it.
CI have a code — it’s not the law’s code, but it’s mine, and I don’t break it.
DI’ve made peace with it. Keeping the peace requires compromises most people don’t have the stomach for.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
What are you actually fighting to hold onto?
Every Sheridan character is fighting a war. The real question is what they’re defending.
AA way of life that the current world is doing everything it can to erase.
BMy position — and the leverage that comes with being the person everyone needs to close a deal.
CRelevance. I’ve been away, I’ve been written off — and I’m proving that was a mistake.
DWhatever delicate order I’ve managed to build — because without it, everything burns.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
How do you lead?
Authority in Sheridan’s world is never given — it’s established, maintained, and constantly tested.
ABy example and force of will. People follow me because they believe in what I’m protecting — and because they know what happens if they don’t.
BThrough negotiation and leverage. I don’t need people to like me — I need them to need me.
CBy being the smartest, most experienced person in the room and making sure everyone quietly knows it.
DBy being the composed centre of a situation that would spiral without me — and accepting that nobody thanks you for it.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
Someone modern arrives and tries to change how things work. Your reaction?
Every Sheridan show has an outsider disrupting an established order. Sometimes that outsider is you.
AThey’ll learn. Or they won’t. Either way, the land was here before them and it’ll be here after.
BI figure out what they want, what they’re worth, and whether they’re an asset or a problem — rapid.
CI was the outsider once. I give them a chance — one — to show they understand respect.
DNew players destabilise everything I’ve built. I assess the threat and manage it before it manages me.
NEXT QUESTION →
09
What has your position cost you?
Nobody gets to where these characters are without paying for it. The bill is always personal.
AMy family’s peace — maybe their innocence. The ranch demands everything, and I’ve let it take too much.
BRelationships, time, any version of a normal life. The job eats everything that isn’t nailed down.
CYears. Decades in some cases. Time I can’t get back — but I’m not done yet.
DMy conscience, mostly. And the ability to ever fully trust anyone on either side of the wall.
NEXT QUESTION →
10
When it’s over, what do you want people to say?
Sheridan’s characters all know the ending is coming. The question is what they leave behind.
AThat I held the line. That the land is still ours and everything I did was worth it.
BThat I was the best at what I did and that no deal ever got closed without me at the table.
CThat I built something real, somewhere nobody expected it, and I did it on my own terms.
DThat I kept the peace when nobody else could — and that the town is still standing because of it.
REVEAL MY SHOW →
Sheridan Has Spoken
You Belong In…
The show that claimed the most of your answers is the world you were built for. If two tied, both are shown — you’re complicated enough to straddle two Sheridan universes.
Yellowstone
Landman
Tulsa King
Mayor of Kingstown
You are a Dutton — or you might as well be. You understand that some things are worth protecting at any cost, and that the current world’s indifference to history, to land, to legacy, is not something you’re willing to accept quietly. You lead from the front, you carry your family’s weight without complaint, and when someone threatens what’s yours, you don’t escalate — you finish it. You’re not cruel. But you are absolute. In Yellowstone’s world, that combination of ferocity and loyalty doesn’t make you a villain. It makes you the only thing standing between everything that matters and everyone who wants to take it.
You thrive in the chaos of high-stakes negotiation, where the money is enormous, the margins are skinny, and the wrong word in the wrong room can cost everyone everything. You’re a fixer — the person called when a situation is already on fire and needs someone with the nerve to walk into it. West Texas oil country rewards exactly what you are: pointed, adaptable, unsentimental, and absolutely clear-eyed about what people want and what they’ll do to get it. You’re not naive enough to think this world is fair. You’re sharp enough to be the one deciding who it’s fair to.
You are a Dwight Manfredi — someone who has served their time, paid their dues, and arrived somewhere unexpected with nothing but their reputation and their wits. You adapt without losing yourself. You build loyalty through respect rather than fear, though you’re not above reminding people that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Tulsa King is for people who are still standing when everyone assumed they’d be finished — who find, in an unfamiliar place, that they’re more capable than the world gave them credit for. You don’t need a throne. You build one, wherever you happen to land.
You carry the weight of a system that is broken by design, and you do it anyway — because someone has to, and because you’re the only one positioned to do it without the whole thing collapsing. Mike McLusky’s world is for people who are comfortable operating where there are no good options, only less catastrophic ones. You speak every language: law enforcement, criminal, political, human. That fluency makes you invaluable and it makes you a target. You’ve made your peace with both. Mayor of Kingstown belongs to people who understand that keeping the peace is not the same as being at peace — and who do the job regardless.
↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ
To say that the adventures of a younger John Dutton have a wealth of untapped potential would probably be an understatement. There is a lot about John Dutton that we still don’t know or fully understand, and a prequel series about his life — even if it were a miniseries event that took us through it in stages — would offer some additional insight into the man that Costner played in those final years. Why did John really take Jamie in as a child? Why was he so challenging on Kayce in particular? How did he deal with the loss of his wife, and how did that change him long-term? We can try to answer all of these questions based on what we see in Yellowstone, but they may be better explored in a series that intends to lean a bit further into the ranching life of John in his younger days.
‘Yellowstone’ Season 5 Dropped the Ball With the John Dutton Flashbacks
Josh Lucas as John Dutton in front of the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch barn on ‘Yellowstone’Image via Paramount Network
Going into Season 5, we were promised that the teenage John Dutton flashbacks would be a major part of the final season — and indeed they were, at first. Season 5 Part 1 featured Lucas in earnest, further developing and examining John Dutton in both the past and present. The problem was, when Costner exited the show, John Dutton did too, and that meant that Lucas’ final flashback sequence didn’t feel so, well, definite. For years, Lucas had rumored that Sheridan wanted to do entire flashback episodes, perhaps even a whole flashback season, but that never came to be. With Yellowstone finished in its current form, Sheridan missed an opportunity to further explore Lucas’ younger John as the patriarch’s children grieve him in the present. This would have allowed the character to still be present in the final few episodes, even as Costner’s version is written out.
I’m also disappointed that Season 5B only got six episodes compared to Season 5A’s eight. An entire episode could have been devoted to rounding out the flashbacks first established in the first half of the season, and if executed correctly, it may have been the best way to send John Dutton off. Instead, we were left with the fallout. While it was good to see Kayce, Beth, and Rip (Cole Hauser) all explore their own methods of grief during this time, especially since John’s departure allowed them to really carry the series, it still felt odd that the last few episodes didn’t feature the Dutton patriarch in any capacity. This is where Lucas’ younger version may have softened the blow. Of course, with the Yellowstone universe still growing, the decision not to build something around Lucas’ John Dutton feels like an even bigger missed opportunity.
Shows Like ‘1883’ or ‘1923’ Prove That a Direct ‘Yellowstone’ Prequel Would Work
In the same vein as 1883, Sheridan could develop a narrow series that centers on John as he struggles with the loss of his wife, the branding of the ranch, and raising his children to take over in the years leading up to the flagship series. This would be the perfect opportunity for us to flesh out John Dutton in his entirety, apart from Costner’s iteration, and maybe even further connect this version of the character to his ancestors as seen in 1923.
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A spin-off like this could also explore some of the adolescent dynamics between Beth and Rip, Kayce and his father, and the tragedy of Lee and Jamie, who each craved approval from John — not to mention possibly getting a clearer picture of what John and Evelyn’s marriage was really like, helping viewers better understand why the Dutton family turned out the way it did. There’s certainly a lot that could still be developed and explored in a prequel like this, and while it’s not necessary, a Josh Lucas-led John Dutton series would shed meaningful modern lightweight on one of Yellowstone’s most vital characters.
Yellowstone is available for streaming on Peacock.
Release Date
2018 – 2024
Network
Paramount Network
Directors
Stephen Kay, Taylor Sheridan, Christina Alexandra Voros, Guy Ferland, John Dahl
Writers
John Coveny, Ian McCulloch
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