You might not see all that much social media chatter about “Yellowstone,” or even know anyone who watches the show. But since it began airing on Paramount Network back in 2018, Taylor Sheridan’s neo-Western has become a bonafide megahit.

According to Nielson (via Variety), season 5A was the most-watched entertainment show of the 2022-2023 TV season, averaging 11.6 million viewers a week. That made the first half of season 5 the only non-sports offering to average more than 10 million viewers a week. Then, when Paramount decided to air the “Yellowstone” pilot — in which John Dutton’s eldest son Lee Dutton meets his fate — on CBS in 2023, 6.6 million viewers tuned in, half of which had never seen the show before. That meant “Yellowstone” gained a whole host of new viewers as a result of it airing on a traditional network, further cementing the series’ standing as a true TV juggernaut.

Who is watching this show? Dads, mostly. The series is aimed at older audiences, hence the lack of any major social media hype and the reason younger audiences have likely never even heard of Kevin Costner’s ranch owner John Dutton and his travails. Whichever way you look at it, though, Costner himself has been a big part of the success of “Yellowstone,” which is why when it was confirmed that he wouldn’t be returning for the long-awaited season 5B, dads everywhere wondered how on earth the show was going to explain the sudden loss of the Dutton Patriarch and the figure around which their favorite series revolved.

However, it seems series creator Taylor Sheridan was never concerned about that particular problem, as he knew how the show was going to end before it even began.

Kevin Costner’s Yellowstone departure won’t change much

The debacle surrounding Kevin Costner’s exit from “Yellowstone” has been protracted and downright confusing. On the one hand, you have the veteran star claiming he wasn’t given any specifics or scripts regarding season 5B of the show, which made it difficult for him to pursue his passion project, the “Horizon: An American Saga” film series. On the other hand, you have Taylor Sheridan and Paramount claiming Costner made it difficult to plan for the second half of the season due to his commitment to that very project. Needless to say, there is no love lost between the two sides, and Costner is unequivocally not a part of what were initially touted as the final episodes of “Yellowstone.” Since then, it’s been reported that Beth Dutton actor Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser, who plays ranch foreman Rip Wheeler, are in talks to star in a potential sixth season, which will be a very different show without Costner’s John Dutton at the center.

Meanwhile, “Yellowstone” went to great lengths to ensure none of the cast or crew knew how season 5B was going to end, handing out redacted scripts and generally making it very difficult for anyone involved to leak information to the press. But for Reilly, who’s been with the show since its very first season, most of those efforts were in vain because, as she revealed to Entertainment Weekly in September 2024, “[Sheridan] told [her] the ending of the show when we were filming season 1.” That claim was backed up by executive producer David Glasser, who told the outlet, “Day one, episode one, Taylor said, ‘I know exactly how this ends.”

Now, Reilly has spoken more about how that ending has been affected by Costner’s exit. As it turns out, the star’s controversial departure hasn’t really changed all that much about Sheridan’s plans. Speaking to EW, Reilly said John Dutton’s absence “was part of the ending” from the start. She continued, “That’s not something that we had to pivot, that was already written into the tapestry of the story. It was always going to happen, it just happened a little bit differently.”

Taylor Sheridan always saw Yellowstone ending after season 5

So far, the ending of “Yellowstone” season 5B has been kept tightly under wraps, despite it being almost two years since season 5A wrapped up in January of 2023. All we’ve had to go off since then are tidbits from the cast, with Wes Bentley hinting at Jamie Dutton’s fate and Kelly Reilly remaining similarly cryptic about the way Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler’s stories end. But by far the biggest mystery of all has been how these final episodes will handle John Dutton himself — especially after Kevin Costner bowed out.

According to Reilly, however, that challenge was made somewhat easier due to the fact Taylor Sheridan had always envisioned his show lasting five seasons. “It was always going to be five seasons in [Sheridan’s] head,” the actor told EW. “But because the show became so successful, the network and everyone wanted more. So, in a way, fate took it and we ended this part of ‘Yellowstone’ in a way that he always envisioned it to end.”

Just how Sheridan has managed to pull of his original ending for the series sans Costner remains to be seen, but one thing you can be pretty sure of is that dads everywhere will be tuning in to find out when season 5B of “Yellowstone” finally debuts on November 10, 2024.