SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Season 5 Episode 9, which aired on Paramount Network on Nov. 10.
“Yellowstone” killed off John Dutton on Sunday night’s premiere of Season 5 Part 2, but Kevin Costner hasn’t yet seen the episode.
“I’m going to be perfectly honest. I didn’t know it was actually airing last night,” Costner said in an interview with SiriusXM’s “The Michael Smerconish Program” on Monday morning. “That’s a swear to God moment. I swear to God. I mean, I’ve been seeing ads with my face all over the place and I’m thinking, ‘Gee, I’m not in that one.’ I’m not in this season.”
Costner, who departed from Taylor Sheridan’s Western drama after Season 5 Part 1, which premiered in November 2022, said he found out about how his character was sent off the morning after the episode aired.
“I didn’t see it. I heard it’s a suicide, so that doesn’t make me want to rush to go see it,” Costner said. When Smerconish said that Dutton “never struck me as a suicide kind of guy,” Costner responded, “Well, they’re pretty smart people. Maybe it’s a red herring. Who knows? They’re very good. And they’ll figure that out.”
Costner said that earlier in the series’ run, there were “a couple 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.”
Regarding Dutton’s death, Costner was right that the suicide was a red herring. In the episode, John’s death was a result of Sarah (Dawn Olivieri), the villainous fixer who is sleeping with John’s power-hungry son Jamie (Wes Bentley), calling a hit on him via a shady yet professional organization. Despite her protests that he would never commit suicide, the hitman liaison says it’s the easiest way to get away undetected, as they can stage a gunshot scene and not have toxicologists or other medical examiners dig in too deeply during the autopsy.
Elsewhere in his interview with Smerconish, Costner doubled down that he did not leave “Yellowstone.” He insists the show could not work around his contractual agreements for Costner’s “Horizon” movie saga.
“There was contractual things that would allow for both things to be done, but because both things were contractual, you had to make room for the other thing. There was room, but it was difficult for them to keep their schedule. It seemed to be, it was just too difficult for them to do it,” said Costner, who added: “I didn’t leave. I didn’t quit.”
Costner continued, “I had 300 people waiting for me, I couldn’t help them anymore. I just simply couldn’t help them. But I didn’t quit the show … everybody has to live up to what they say they’re going to do. And it doesn’t matter what business you’re in.”
Watch a clip from Costner’s interview below.
