The Hollywood star Kevin Costner took to social media on Thursday night to definitively reveal if he will be returning to his hit show Yellowstone.
Costner Won’t Return To Yellowstone
In a video posted to Instagram, Costner confirmed that he will not be returning to Yellowstone to finish out the fifth and final season.
“Hi, everyone. I just want to reach out and let you know that after this long year and a half of working on Horizon, and doing all the things that that’s required, and thinking about Yellowstone, that beloved series that I love and I know you love,” he said. “I just realized that I’m not going to be able to continue Season 5, or into the future.”
“It was something that really changed me,” Costner added. “I loved it and I know you loved it. And I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be returning. I love the relationship that we’ve been able to develop, and I’ll see you at the movies.”
This came hours after Paramount announced that the second half of the fifth and final season of Yellowstone will premiere Sunday, November 10 at 8 p.m. ET/PT, according to Deadline.
Related: Kevin Costner Refuses To Rule Out ‘Yellowstone’ Return – ‘I Would Go Back’
Costner ‘Disappointed’ With Yellowstone Production Team
Costner played John Dutton III for many years on Yellowstone. Recently, however, he said that while he loved the show, he was “disappointed” with the way that production handled rumors of his exit.
“I loved the show. I liked the people on the show,” Costner said. He added that he “liked what it was about. I love that world. There was a moment where that show for me stopped for 14 months… That’s the fact. I could have done a lot of things in that time, but I wasn’t aware that [hold-up] was going to happen.”
Costner went on to claim that Yellowstone didn’t have scripts for the second half of season five. This made it difficult for him to balance working on both Yellowstone and his four-part western movie series Horizon. The third movie in that series is currently in production.
‘They Didn’t Have The Scripts’
“I left my movie [‘Horizon’] to be on time for them for 5B,” Costner said. “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,” he continued. “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. They didn’t have the scripts for anything else.”
This only caused relations between Costner and production to break down even further.
“So, what you read in the end was that I said, ‘Well, look, I’m doing my movie. If you want me to work a week because you want to kill me or whatever else, I can give you a week,'” he lamented. “I really didn’t have that week to give them, but I said, I’ll do that. And then they [spun that] into, I only wanted to work a week.”
Related: Kevin Costner Takes ‘Major Gamble’ After Leaving ‘Yellowstone’
Costner Had Been Open To Yellowstone Return
Costner had previously said that while he was open to returning to Yellowstone, it would have to be under the right circumstances.
“I’ve always felt that…It might be an interesting moment to come back and finish the mythology of this modern-day family,” he said. “And if that happens, I would step into it if I agreed with how it was being done.”
While it would be amazing to see Costner return to Yellowstone, it had become clear for quite some time that the problems behind the scenes would likely make this impossible. For the sake of everyone involved, we can only hope that the Yellowstone production team is able to finish out this series in the right way without Costner!
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