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 Marshalsand 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
01
Where does your power come from? In Sheridan’s world, everyone has leverage. The question is what kind.
02
Who do you put first, no matter what? Loyalty in Sheridan’s universe is always absolute — and always costly.
03
Someone crosses a line. How do you respond? Every Sheridan protagonist has a line. What matters is what happens after it’s crossed.
04
Where do you feel most in your element? Sheridan’s worlds are as much about place as they are about people.
05
How do you feel about operating in the grey? Nobody in a Sheridan show has clean hands. The question is how they carry the dirt.
06
What are you actually fighting to hold onto? Every Sheridan character is fighting a war. The real question is what they’re defending.
07
How do you lead? Authority in Sheridan’s world is never given — it’s established, maintained, and constantly tested.
08
Someone new 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.
09
What has your position cost you? Nobody gets to where these characters are without paying for it. The bill is always personal.
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.
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 modern 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 thin, 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: sharp, 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 smart 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.
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 hard 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 young 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 limited 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.
The jaw-dropping action sequence is ripped right out of Sheridan’s 2015 thriller.
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 new light on one of Yellowstone’s most important characters.
Yellowstone is available for streaming on Peacock.
