We still don’t know whether Kevin Costner will be returning to his role as John Dutton for the final stretch of Yellowstone when the back half of Season 5 returns this November. However, some fans have a very clever idea for how the show could finish out the character’s arc by hiring someone else for the role: his Hollywood look-alike Bob Odenkirk to step into Dutton’s scruffy boots!
For those unfamiliar with the Odenkirk-Costner connection, the gag comes from the former’s hit series Better Call Saul. In the Breaking Bad prequel, Odenkirk stars as a pre-Saul Goodman version of his character, who still goes by his given name of Jimmy McGill and pulls off lots of minor (but still gnarly) cons on unsuspecting rubes. In one instance, he convinces a pair of girls to come home with him and his best friend on the pretense that he’s Kevin Costner, and it works (… at least until the morning light)! The scene was a callback to a scene in Breaking Bad when, as Saul Goodman, the character bragged, “If you’re committed enough, you can make any story work. I once told a woman I was Kevin Costner, and it worked because I believed it.”
As a play on that little Easter egg, a few members of the Yellowstone fan community on Reddit proposed a TV mash-up.
“If Kevin Costner can’t come back. Just have Bob Odenkirk take his spot. A girl in ABQ thought she was Kevin Costner anyway. Quality substitution,” one user wrote. Another shared a video of the Better Call Saul scene in question and captioned it, “They should just get Bob Odenkirk to replace Kevin Costner.” In yet another thread, a user joked, “Who can say he hasn’t been playing that role for the past season or two?”
Obviously, this is all just for kicks, but the humor is still quite top-tier with these quips. There are plenty of other, more serious suggestions and theories for how Costner’s potential exit could be handled by the show if you’re interested in those right here, of course.
Meanwhile, for those who don’t want to see Costner take his leave of the show, the latest update is that the actor recently revealed to Entertainment Tonight that he would “like to be able to do it” when asked in April if he’d be back. However, he also included the caveat, “but we haven’t been able to.” Still, Costner added that he “hope[s] it does [work out]… Maybe it will Maybe this will circle back to me. If it does and I feel really comfortable with [it], I’d love to do it.”
This comment came after months of reports that Costner would not return to the series due to creative disagreements with Taylor Sheridan over the trajectory of the show, and from what else he said in this update, that might still be the major sticking point: “Well, you know, [John] needs to be proactive in what happens, and I’ve kind of had my own fantasy how it might be. But that’s Taylor’s thing. I said as much to him a while back. I had thoughts how it could happen, but we just have to see,” Costner said.
For Sheridan’s part, he also indicated an interest in having Costner close out his role himself, telling The Hollywood Reporter in June 2023, “My last conversation with Kevin was that he had this passion project he wanted to direct. He and the network were arguing about when he could be done with Yellowstone. I said, ‘We can certainly work a schedule toward [his preferred exit date],’ which we did.”
Sheridan added, “My opinion of Kevin as an actor hasn’t altered. His creation of John Dutton is symbolic and powerful … and I’ve never had an issue with Kevin that he and I couldn’t work out on the phone. But once lawyers get involved, then people don’t get to talk to each other and start saying things that aren’t true and attempt to shift blame based on how the press or public seem to be reacting. He took a lot of this on the chin, and I don’t know that anyone deserves it. His movie seems to be a great priority to him and he wants to shift focus. I sure hope [the movie is] worth it — and that it’s a good one… I’m disappointed. It truncates the closure of his character. It doesn’t alter it, but it truncates it.”
Yellowstone Season 5 Part 2 is expected to premiere in November 2024 on Paramount.