Yellowstone
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As rumors about the end of Yellowstone ran rampant, Luke Grimes (and the majority of the cast and crew) were less worried about the outside noise and trying to process the end of the show.

“On the last day of shooting, I thought it was my last day as Kayce. It was over to me,” Grimes, 41, recalled in an interview with People on Wednesday, June 25. “It was seven years of playing a person that I’ll never see again, except for having his hat and jacket in my closet. It wasn’t until probably three or four months after that that everything started aligning for the [spinoff].”

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Grimes didn’t expect to be so affected by his time as Kayce Dutton coming to an end.

“[It was] a lot bigger of a life moment than I thought it would be,” he noted. “To try to put that show away, it was hard. It was really hard, and I know this is going to sound weird, but it was sort of emotional. It was like losing a family in a way.”Yellowstone Casts PreShow Hits Where Youve Seen Stars Before
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It was even harder to say goodbye to the rest of the cast and crew. “Nobody wanted it to be over,” Grimes said. “I don’t think the fans wanted it to be over. A lot of us actors kind of didn’t want it to be over, and the studio and network certainly didn’t want it to be over.”

Yellowstone, which premiered on Paramount in 2018, followed the Dutton family, who own the largest ranch in Montana. Kevin Costner‘s portrayal of family patriarch John Dutton reeled in viewers, but other leads including Kelly Reilly, Wes Bentley, Gil Birmingham, Cole Hauser and Kelsey Asbille kept them tuning in for five seasons — as did the offscreen drama.

Despite becoming a pop culture phenomenon, the show went out on a low note after the final season was plagued with delays and rumors about the reason for Costner’s early exit (news broke in 2023 that he would not be returning andJohn was ultimately killed off in the season 5B premiere.)

Costner, 70, previously denied that he left Yellowstone due to a feud with creator Taylor Sheridan. “I have taken a beating from those f***ing guys and I know a lot of times where it’s coming from,” he told Deadline in May 2024. “I just elected not to get into that. But if you know me well enough, I made Yellowstone the first priority, and to insinuate anything else would be wrong. I did not initiate any of those things. They did.”

Costner continued, “I left exactly when they wanted, and it made it hard on me. It turns out they didn’t have the scripts for 5B. They needed four more days just to complete the first eight episodes. I left early to give them what they needed to have a complete eight, and I felt bad that the audience didn’t get 10.”

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While Costner was ready to move on to other projects, some of his costars are interested in continuing to play their respective characters. In addition to Grimes, Reilly, 47, and Hauser, 50, have been tapped for a spinoff series following Beth and Rip’s story.“We definitely wanted to make sure to give it a real story and make it interesting and make it believable,” Grimes shared about his CBS’ spinoff Y: Marshals. “If it was just like, ‘Well, he’s happy’ — we’re just going to watch him be happy? That’s not very cool. But I’ll say this, the idea that was pitched to me is very, very good and very interesting and it really roped me in and I think it will rope the audience in as well.”

According to the official synopsis, Y: Marshals will follow Kayce as he “joins an elite unit of U.S. Marshals, combining his skills as a cowboy and Navy SEAL to bring range justice to Montana, where he and his teammates must balance family, duty and the high psychological cost that comes with serving as the last line of defense in the region’s war on violence.”

“There’s going to be some familiar faces. There’s going to be a lot of new faces too, so we’ll see how that all feels,” Grimes teased. “To go back into it in a new set of circumstances is going to be kind of transition.”