As ‘Yellowstone’ crumbles, its fate reminds viewers of a most important life lesson | Opinion
Sometimes life imitates art and other times, it’s the other way around. When it comes to “Yellowstone,” it’s gotten hard to tell.
Creator Taylor Sheridan, who lives in Weatherford, and Kevin Coster, who plays John Dutton, the patriarch of “Yellowstone,” reportedly have an ongoing feud. Entertainment Tonight says it appears that Costner will not return after the Season Five finale.
There’s also reports that the remainder of fifth season itself may be on hiatus for awhile longer — it has been since the mid-season finale back in January — and that the series will end altogether at the end of this season. Once that fifth season airs, that’ll mark the conclusion of the “Yellowstone” series altogether.
Meanwhile Costner’s wife of 18 years, Christine Baumgartner, with whom he shares three children, has just filed for divorce. Baumgartner cited irreconcilable differences; the couple has been married since 2004. Fans can only wonder if their issues had something to do with Costner’s reported demands to work only a week on the remainder of Season Five and, ultimately, the show’s unraveling.
Costner, for many, epitomizes Western men — or at least — the importance of Western life. Before “Yellowstone,” he’d made a name for himself as the renaissance Western man in the Oscar-winning “Dances with Wolves,” “Wyatt Earp,” “Open Range” and “Let Him Go.”
For this life-long Costner fan — “Field of Dreams” was one of my favorite movies as a kid — and a newer “Yellowstone” viewer, the whole thing is sad — Costner’s impending divorce, his departure from “Yellowstone,” and the show’s abrupt ending. It’s one of the most watched shows across all of TV in 2022. While Hollywood isn’t known for long-lasting love, his nearly two decade second marriage seemed to have defeated the odds. It’s hard not to look at both of these things and say: If they can’t make it work, who can?
The loss of an 18-year marriage is no small thing, and while the ending of a hit series is a bummer on a much smaller scale, it’s frustrating because it represented a new era — an era where the Western was popular again, even if it wasn’t exactly “True Grit.”
In Costner’s divorce and “Yellowstone’s” fate, it feels like life is imitating art a bit too much. We watch films, television shows and theater to have an escape from life. Sure, we’re dramatic and messed up, but at least we’re not getting into fist fights like the Duttons. We love each other passionately, but we don’t look like both ends of a toxic relationship are burning to a crisp. We love our way of life and heck, even a Western ranch sounds cool, but there’s no way we’d bribe and hang people for it. In many ways, we watched “Yellowstone” because it was an escape and therapy; we got away from our real lives then returned feeling a lot better about ourselves.
The sad news around “Yellowstone” and Costner’s life reveals some important lessons. Sometimes, good things end faster than you’d hoped. Real love doesn’t always last, even if it seems like it should. The people you admire are flawed, just like you.
Really, maybe that’s why we liked “Yellowstone” so much: It was melodramatic, macabre and unrealistic, and yet the Duttons loved each other fiercely — as much as they loved their Western way of life.
We saw a little bit of ourselves in them, even as we hoped John Dutton and his family would ride off into the sunset, his ranch and way of life secure, once and for all.
