During a scene when John’s daughter, Beth (Kelly Reilly), goes out to a bar, the molasses-paced episode even spends a long time lingering on Beth’s drink order. It felt like without Costner, the show was just killing time until it ran out the clock.

"I think even in the face of that information, people don’t want it to be true," Christina Voros said in a new interview.

As Monsters and Critics have reported, fans desperately want John to remain alive and have even concocted scenarios in which he could still return. A Yellowstone star, Luke Grimes