[This story contains spoilers to the season five two-episode premiere of Yellowstone.”]
The final time Yellowstone viewers noticed Kayce Dutton, he had a dire warning for his spouse, Monica. “I saw the end of us,” he mentioned, following a three-day imaginative and prescient quest. And viewers have been hanging onto these phrases for nearly a year, anticipating simply how his prophecy could be fulfilled with the return of Taylor Sheridan’s hit Paramount Network neo-Western household saga.
Season 5, which premiered with two episodes, jumped a little bit of time to meet up with the Dutton household, to point out patriarch John Dutton (Kevin Costner) being sworn in because the Governor of Montana, prize daughter Beth (Kelly Reilly) being promoted to his chief of workers and hated son Jamie (Wes Bentley) fulfilling his finale promise to leap on the Gov. Dutton bandwagon, after murdering his organic father in hopes of getting again in his household’s good graces.
The first hour, nevertheless, led to tragedy when Monica (Kelsey Asbille) went into early labor and acquired right into a automotive accident whereas driving herself to the hospital; she and son Tate (Brecken Merrill) survived the crash, however viewers are knowledgeable within the remaining moments of the premiere that the child, who was named after John, didn’t survive. The premiere ended with youngest Dutton son Kayce (Luke Grimes) cradling spouse Monica in his arms in her hospital mattress.
“It’s such a tragic loss and you really see Monica at her rock bottom,” Asbille says of how Monica will grieve the lack of her second son, chatting with The Hollywood Reporter in a joint interview with Grimes. “Throughout the show, she just wants to be a good mother, a good wife. A good person to her community, as well. And this really shakes her beliefs with all of that.”
But, she says, “There’s a very definitive moment where she does choose life and she chooses to heal.”
Courtesy of Paramount Network
That journey for Kayce and Monica, who’ve seen their fair proportion of tragedy on the Sheridan-created sequence, will really strengthen the Dutton pair because the season goes. “They’ve chosen to lean on each other; they’re dealing with a common pain together,” Grimes shares, with Asbille noting that Native tradition will play a big function within the grieving course of, together with an upcoming funeral ceremony — plotted with the assistance of co-star Mo Brings Plenty — that she says is a vital a part of Monica and Kayce’s therapeutic. Unlike in earlier seasons the place trauma has practically torn the couple aside, Grimes says this tragedy strengthens them — and isn’t what Kacey’s imaginative and prescient was referring to.
“There’s a scene between us [in episode two] where Monica asks Kayce if this is what he meant [and he says no],” Grimes tells THR of the ominous “end of us” warning, which got here to Kayce throughout a Native ritual the place he secluded himself within the mountains for 4 days and nights with out meals or water in hopes of searching for non secular solutions. When Grimes filmed the finale and shared the results of the imaginative and prescient, the actor wasn’t but clued into precisely what Kayce meant. But simply as he finally acquired his solutions, viewers will begin to perceive extra concerning the message as season 5 unfolds.
“When I read that, I immediately went to Taylor and I was like, ‘Hey man, I know you don’t want me to know anything about the end of this story and that’s great, and I love that, but just tell me how to say this.’ He gave me enough to understand how to play the line, but didn’t give anything away to me,” the actor shares. “But throughout season five, you start to learn what that meant and specifically what Kayce saw, and then also, their plan to go through with it in a way that makes sense to them.”
He continues, “I think what we gather from that vision quest is when that woman says, ‘Here are two paths and you have to choose one,’ and Kayce just says, ‘Oh, god’ — that was the line, ‘oh, god’ — you realize there’s no good option here. So obviously, he knows what the choices are. And those will become more clear as the season progresses.”
Considering the land politics at play within the upcoming season, Kayce’s warning might actually apply on a bigger scale, with the metaphorical “us” referring to the Dutton household or Montana at giant. John secures the governorship, with the intention to hold his household’s cattle ranch, with a bid to return Montana to the state and its folks, defending the farmers and ranchers who dwell with the land and never on it. “We are not New York’s novelty or California’s toy,” he warns to the billionaire land builders who change into the season’s new enemies, a transfer that might “set the state back 30 years,” Jamie warns.
And whereas Grimes and Asbille tease that the fifth season might be so expansive and huge in scope, that it would usher at first of the top of this Yellowstone story, followers of Kayce and Monica have hope to carry onto. “I think that she is beginning to understand her place in the family and its legacy,” Asbille says with a nod to Monica’s hesitant function within the Dutton clan.
“This season really tees up where this show is probably going to go and what could go wrong, and what they’re going to have to do to deal with it,” Grimes provides of the Dutton household’s evolving battles on the sequence, which at present ranks as the most well-liked present on tv and has spawned a complete Sheridan-created universe, together with the Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren-starring prequel 1923.
“I think we’re moving towards the end,” Asbille echoes of the sequence, which, since its 2022 Emmys snubs, has change into the supply of debate about being a so-called “red-state show” — a label Sheridan emphatically refutes. “With all of Taylor’s work embedded in the Western genre, he really uses the genre to talk about issues that matter. It’s very subversive in that way. Whether that’s land politics or Native issues, I think that’s kind of the beauty of Yellowstone as well.”
Courtesy of Paramount Network
The two-part fifth season of Yellowstone begins airing Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on Paramount Network, with episodes or the complete season obtainable for buy on choose streaming units. (The sequence doesn’t launch on Paramount+; earlier seasons stream on Peacock.)
