3 Potential Yellowstone Endings that Don't Require Kevin Costner

The obvious way: John Dutton disappears off-screen

The most predictable and lame way to arrange the ending of Yellowstone without Kevin Costner is to make his character, John Dutton, disappear off-screen. This is the oldest trick in the book and also the one that would piss off many fans.

Killing John off would be even lamer but there are endless alternatives here: he could suffer an injury or a severe medical condition so he’d need to relocate to a hospital — or he could travel across the country to take care of business elsewhere. We would know that the Dutton patriarch is alive but he wouldn’t be on the screen.

The clone way: John Dutton’s replaced with a copycat

This is a smarter way to go about it but it would require quite a bit of effort. Finding a proper lookalike for Costner would likely prove impossible since the fans know him all too well — but this isn’t the only option to naturally replace John Dutton.

A voice double is a clever option here: if John’s story ends with a series of phone calls, this would be really easy to pull off and would keep up the illusion of Costner’s presence. If Sheridan can spare the extra budget, Yellowstone could even finish John Dutton’s character arc by recreating his appearance with CGI — why not?

The timeline way: John Dutton’s story goes meta

Finally, there’s always an option to mess up the timeline of Yellowstone a bit to create the perfect ending for the character of John Dutton. As with the previous two options, there are multiple ways to go about it but they’re fairly simple.

For instance, the second half of season 5 could begin with a time skip that virtually eliminates the need to thoroughly explain why John Dutton remains off-screen. Alternatively, his story arc could end with a flashback with a younger actor playing him — and in that flashback, John’s finale would be metaphorically explained.