Major spoilers for everyone who hasn’t yet seen Yellowstone ’s Season 5B premiere, so be warned! Holy shit, y’all. We’ve been waiting nearly two years for Yellowstone ’s final Season 5 episodes, and I’m pretty sure every imaginable hypothesis has been considered concerning how the western would explain Kevin Costner ’s John Dutton either being absent or suddenly returning after all the behind-the-scenes issues.

How did the show handle Kevin Costner’s exit? Did it send John off on a trip? Did it kill him? Did it find a different way to write around the Costner-shaped hole in the story?

This post contains spoilers for "Yellowstone" Season 5 Episode 9, "Desire Is All You Need." Thank you for your service, John Dutton. In the first episode of the second half of Season 5, it was revealed that the Dutton family patriarch,