Taylor Sheridan Confirms Yellowstone’s New John Dutton

Despite his anticlimactic ending, John Dutton is still one of the best and most beloved characters in all of Taylor Sheridan’s shows. Many of Sheridan’s shows, from Landman to Tulsa King and Lioness, have used John Dutton as a blueprint. Most of Sheridan’s protagonists are played by A-list actors and are themselves incredibly stubborn, traditional, and railing against a rapidly modernizing world, just as Costner’s John Dutton was.

Even with so many protagonists following John Dutton’s lead, Yellowstone itself still hasn’t found a replacement for him. Even the protagonists of other Yellowstone spinoffs, like 1883 and 1923, don’t scratch the exact same itch John Dutton III did. Now, however, Sheridan has found an existing Yellowstone character who is perfectly poised to become the “new” John Dutton, and it’s going to happen in Marshals.

Marshals Season 2’s Trailer Hints That Kayce Is Becoming His Father

The trailer for Marshals season 2 heavily hinted at the idea that Kayce Dutton is becoming the Yellowstone franchise’s new version of his father, John Dutton. Kayce spends much of the trailer contemplating the Dutton family legacy, and the trailer also hints at Tom Weaver taking even more drastic steps to seize East Camp from Kayce’s ownership. Kayce’s son, Tate, also seems to have to kill an intruder in their home at one point.

All those bits from the trailer for Marhsals season 2 seem to indicate that Kayce is becoming his father. Like John Dutton III before him, Kayce is dealing with threats from people trying to take the land that his family has owned for generations, albeit a much smaller parcel of that land. Kayce is also stubbornly hanging onto said land, just as John did. That stubborn decision is even putting Kayce’s own child in harms’ way, robbing Tate of what little innocence he has left, and forcing him to mature before he’s even an adult. Kayce seems to be doing things in Marshals season 2 that he openly and frequently criticized his own father for doing in Yellowstone. Kayce was even widowed young, as Monica died off-screen before Marshals began, just as John’s wife Evelyn died before Yellowstone began. On top of it all, Kayce even seems to be aware that he’s becoming everything he hated about his own father, as the trailer also included a scene of him asking Dolly Weaver if he was a good man.

In almost every way that matters, Kayce Dutton is taking on the character traits and personality that defined John Dutton in Marshals season 2. He’s stubborn, he’s obsessed with protecting his land, and he’s emotionally distant from Tate after the death of his wife, all of which are traits he shares with John Dutton. Taylor Sheridan spent so long looking for a replacement for John Dutton, while the real replacement was right there in Yellowstone all along.

Kayce Has One Huge Difference From John Dutton That Holds Marshals Back

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For all their similarities, Kayce does have one major difference that sets him apart from his father: Kayce is a good man, and John very much so wasn’t. John Dutton is morally gray at best and an outright anti-hero for the vast majority of Yellowstone. He does awful things, from branding his own sons and employees to ordering people killed and much, much more. In John’s own words, he thought that he had to be “meaner than evil” to protect his land and family. John Dutton’s moral bankruptcy was a lot of the appeal of Yellowstone. It was entertaining to unravel this complicated figure. It was fun to see a man do awful things in his own self-interest and still find yourself rooting for him at the end of the episode, somehow. John’s character flaws also made for great family drama with his children, who rightfully resented him. He was ethically complex, and he made Yellowstone as a whole complex, too.

Kayce, on the other hand, never bought into the idea that he had to be “meaner than evil” to defeat evil. Even after everything he’s gone through, both in Yellowstone and with Monica’s death, he’s still a good man. He does the right thing at almost every opportunity he gets, and while he may be becoming more like his father, he’s far from the downright mean and nasty figure John Dutton was in Yellowstone. Because Kayce is a better person than John, Marshals doesn’t get to enjoy a lot of the moral tension Yellowstone was built upon. Marshals can, however, rectify that in season 2. The show can get a lot of complexity and maturity out of examining Kayce’s corruption as he becomes more like his father and as Kayce feels conflicted about using his father’s unsavory methods to protect his son and his land. Kayce may not be as bad as John Dutton, yet, but Marshals has a chance to make him just as engaging of a protagonist.