Taylor Sheridan Explains Kevin Costner's Surprising Yellowstone Exit

• Television
• Drama Shows

Ever since Kevin Costner left Taylor Sheridan's mega-hit streaming series "Yellowstone" during its fifth and final season, there's been no shortage of speculation as to what really went down behind the scenes. Productions tend to get messy and contentious when Costner is involved (just ask the other folks who worked on "Waterworld"), so the fact that this didn't seem like a clean break came as no surprise at the time. Still, "Yellowstone" fans were stunned by the manner in which he departed, and Costner didn't help matters by grousing over his exit and saying he might have to take Paramount to court over it.

Costner never did follow through on his legal threat, but while "Yellowstone" limped to a bizarre finale where Sheridan turned himself into a hero-savior character out of nowhere, the show's spin-offs have proved mightily popular with fans. Clearly, Sheridan's sprawling neo-Western universe was much bigger than one movie star.

Still, viewers have understandably remained curious about how the off-screen drama played out. Finally, two years after the flagship series ended, Sheridan is telling his side of the story. If you're hoping for an acrimonious tale of blow-ups and betrayals, I'm afraid you're going to have to settle for a familiar story of network timidity.

Paramount wouldn't let Costner walk after three seasons

While appearing on "The Bill Simmons Podcast," Taylor Sheridan revealed that Kevin Costner was only supposed to hang around for the first three seasons of "Yellowstone." "That was in his contract," Sheridan explained. "And in my mind, that's when his youngest son takes over and then we watch him lose that ranch or not lose it, whatever the case is gonna be."

It sounds as though Costner would've been more than happy to adhere to this contract, but Paramount wanted him to stay on. Per Sheridan:

"The network was so scared of not having Kevin be a part of it. Even though Kevin was ready to go —he had other things he wanted to do — he stayed on for another two seasons and that was just because the show was such a behemoth and such a huge hit that the notion of giving up a hit before it had run of juice to squeeze is very foreign to a network."

Costner stayed on, but the star, who was eager to get cracking on his Western epic "Horizon: An American Saga," eventually decided he'd had enough of the Dutton family drama. Sheridan admitted that having to adjust his narrative forced him to "tread water for a bit," which was apparent to many of the series' fans.

The "Yellowstone" franchise is still going great guns, with the well-liked spinoff "Dutton Ranch" set to conclude its first season on July 3. ("Dutton Ranch" Season 2 has already been ordered.) Meanwhile, Costner is in a whole heap of legal trouble with the unfinished "Horizon." The second installment is finished but has yet to be released. As for the planned third and fourth films, Costner's determined to make them, but who's going to finance those?