Yellowstone's Fate Sealed: Kevin Costner Is Officially Out

Yellowstone 's overwhelming popularity is due to the nature of the show: its immense brutality and totally gray-morale characters have captured the attention of millions of fans all over the world.

While the cast and the crew created this masterpiece together, two names typically pop up in one's mind when it comes to Yellowstone: Taylor Sheridan and Kevin Costner.

Sheridan is the genius behind the show, the man who takes his aspiration to make it the greatest as far as creating a dedicated cowboy boot camp to teach his actors the ways of the modern-day cowboys.

Costner is the lead actor and a legend in himself, the man whose intimidating portrayal of John Dutton became iconic the moment he first appeared on the screen.

These two people are largely the reason for Yellowstone's popularity, but their relationship has been very conflicted lately — and admittedly, it now led to the show's downfall.

Unfortunately, the lead actor stopped being invested in the series. For Kevin Costner, his other projects became more important lately, including another Western show he's currently directing — Horizon.

Due to Costner's busy schedule, he's been mostly unavailable for the Yellowstone shooting which stalled season 5 massively.

This stall resulted in only half of the season having been aired by now: its remaining six episodes are reportedly coming out later this year.

The conflict, however, turned out to be way deeper than a simple hiatus when the entire main cast of Yellowstone skipped their first-ever panel on PaleyFest without an announcement.

The show's fans have been nervously expecting the conclusion to the conflict for a long time now, and the speculations about Costner leaving — or being kicked out of — Yellowstone seemed more and more realistic by the day.

Now we know they were true: a source close to the Yellowstone production confirmed that Kevin Costner will leave the show after season 5.

This was reported by Entertainment Tonight this Wednesday, right after the news of Kevin Costner's wife Christine filing for divorce after 18 years of marriage.

Yellowstone's future is highly uncertain as of now. While there are reports of the second half of season 5 coming out later this year, there's been no confirmation of that by far; season 6 renewal without Costner might be in jeopardy, too.

The only silver lining we totally have at the moment is the fact that Sheridan's Western universe is rapidly expanding with at least three to ten (!) shows soon to add to the already-airing Yellowstone, 1883, and 1923.

One of them is starring none other than Matthew McConaughey himself, and it's official — so at least Sheridan's going to have at least one big star to replace Costner, after all.

Source: Entertainment Tonight