Yellowstone's Cole Hauser Has One Condition To Return As Rip Wheeler

"Yellowstone" is turning into more of a mystery show than a neo Western drama as it goes on. Not in terms of its subject matter, but in terms of the multiple questions swirling around Taylor Sheridan's mega popular series as it approaches the end of its fifth season. Take, for example, Kevin Costner's high-profile exit from the show, which saw the actor and Sheridan trading barbs and assigning blame for the long delay between 2022's season 5A and the upcoming season 5B (which may or may not constitute the series finale). Will we ever really know what happened behind the scenes? Is Costner ever going to return to the role of Yellowstone ranch owner John Dutton III? If not, how the heck has Sheridan managed to wrap up the series without its leading man in season 5B?

These questions have thus far have gone unanswered, though with season 5B of "Yellowstone" set to debut on November 10, 2024, we'll soon get some insight into how Sheridan has navigated the Costner-shaped hole in his series. But until the final episode airs, or Paramount makes an announcement, we won't truly know whether these episodes represent the final installment of "Yellowstone."

In the meantime, Kelly Reilly, who plays John's daughter Beth Dutton, has been in talks to front a sixth season of "Yellowstone," alongside Rip Wheeler actor Cole Hauser. None of this means that the show will, in fact, return after season 5B, but there is at least hope. Before any of that can happen, however, it seems the actors have one very specific condition to return, and Hauser just became the latest to talk publicly about that all-important requirement.

Luke Grimes, who plays John's son Kayce Dutton, previously teased how audiences will react to "Yellowstone" season 5B, talking up the second half of the season as a satisfying conclusion to the show. But if Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser do agree to star in a sixth season, then season 5B won't be the actual end of "Yellowstone." In order for that to happen, though, the two actors need one specific condition to be met.

As reported by the New York Post, during a promotional event for his coffee brand, Free Rein Coffee Company, and Walmart, Hauser was asked about "Yellowstone" season 6 and simply said, "If Taylor writes it, I would certainly love to do it." 

Kelly Reilly has one condition to return to "Yellowstone," and it turns out it's basically the same. The actress previously said she would only return to further seasons if Sheridan was penning the scripts, with Reilly being similarly terse on the subject: "If Taylor wants to write it, I would want to do it. That's it."

It might seem highly likely that Paramount would want to keep Sheridan on writing duties for the show he created and turned into a megahit. But there are some considerations here. Sheridan has reportedly known that "Yellowstone" was only to going to run for five seasons since the very beginning, telling his cast as much and planning the storyline out in detail before the pilot had even aired. It's one of the main reasons Kevin Costner's "Yellowstone" exit won't change the ending of the season and/or the show as a whole. Would the man be game for writing beyond five seasons if he had a very specific plan from the outset? That's not the only question surrounding Sheridan's involvement, either.

When Kevin Costner and Taylor Sheridan were in the midst of their mudslinging, the former alleged that Sheridan's commitment to the multiple "Yellowstone" spin-offs was part of the reason season 5B was taking so long to come to fruition. The actor claimed he was told that "Yellowstone" could be worked around his "Horizon" saga shooting schedule but that he never even saw scripts for the episodes, let alone a shooting date — all of which led him to press ahead with shooting "Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1," which lamentably ended up bombing at the box office.

The point here is that if Costner is right and Sheridan is tied up with too many spin-off series, then writing a whole new season of the mothership show isn't exactly going to be a cakewalk, or whatever the cowboy equivalent of that is. Which means that if "Yellowstone" does make it to a sixth season, we might be waiting another couple years before it arrives unless Paramount wants to get it out quickly and therefore hires some other writers. It's an interesting Catch 22 situation, because in so doing, the network would go against Reilly and Hauser's one condition for returning, and considering Reilly is ostensibly leading this as-yet unconfirmed season alongside Cole Hauser, that would make the whole thing untenable.

In all, then, "Yellowstone" is in the midst of a real debacle — and we haven't even gotten into the lawsuit between Sheridan and Hauser regarding the aforementioned coffee company, which was filed and then quickly dropped by the show creator. All of this sort of makes the whole thing even more interesting to watch from an industry perspective rather than anything else. That said, how Taylor Sheridan manages to wrap up his series sans Costner in season 5B is surely the most intriguing mystery. Once that's out of the way, we'll probably start to hear a lot more about whether the show creator plans on churning out any more seasons.