With the flagship Yellowstone series finished, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that the Taylor Sheridan narrative is set to continue beyond the original five seasons. After all, the neo-Western series likely would have lasted another season or two had Kevin Costner not departed from the show ahead of Season 5 Part 2. Either way, as Kayce (Luke Grimes) has already moved into his own next chapter with Marshals and Beth (Kelly Reilly) heads toward her upcoming continuation with Rip, I’m still convinced there’s one Dutton who deserves a spin-off of his own. No, it’s not Jamie (Wes Bentley), nor is it their other fallen brother Lee (Dave Annable). Instead, the younger version of their father, John Dutton, played to perfection by Josh Lucas.
If Any ‘Yellowstone’ Character Needs a Spin-Off, It’s Josh Lucas’ John Dutton
Now that Kayce has already gotten his own spin-off in Marshals, it’s even clearer that Lucas’ John Dutton is the character who most deserves the next Yellowstone expansion. While Costner played an aged John Dutton in the final years leading to his assassination, Lucas played the younger version, still raising his children to try to take over his growing cattle empire. Having appeared in merely nine episodes of the entire 53-episode series, Lucas’ interpretation was to Costner’s what Robert De Niro‘s Vito Corleone was to Marlon Brando‘s in The Godfather trilogy. He is John Dutton in his absolute prime, and we see him at a time when there was still potential for his family, long before Beth and Jamie fell out, before Kayce wandered in his own direction, and before Lee was unceremoniously murdered. In fact, this John existed alongside his wife Evelyn (Gretchen Mol) before her own fateful end.