Yellowstone Creator Taylor Sheridan Realizes That The Franchise Makes No Sense

He might seem like he has everything under control in the "Yellowstone" universe, but the founder of the Dutton dynasty, Taylor Sheridan, has admitted that he knows full well that his sprawling saga doesn't always make sense. Nevertheless, others have tried to replicate the lighting in a whisky bottle that the actor-turned-writer has managed to maintain since 2018 with the show and five other spin-offs that are either in development or have already aired.

One such series that has come close to "Yellowstone" in some ways is the limited Netflix series "American Primeval," which, while bearing no connection to Sheridan's work, is set in 1856, 26 years before the spin-off that the first generation of Duttons inhabits. It was directed by Peter Berg, who had a one-on-one with Sheridan about their respective projects. Given that the settings and historical points were pivotal in the creation of both of their shows, it sparked a conversation that led Sheridan to confess he might approach things seriously with "Yellowstone," but the end result doesn't always track perfectly.

"With Yellowstone, which is nonsensical — there's a great writer named Gretel Ehrlich, who calls it my horse opera because it makes no sense and it's not trying to," Sheridan told Berg via Gold Derby. "And yet it's a window into a world. There's a very sort of loving nature with the camera that attempts to sell this place as the idyllic location to raise a family. I subtracted from that in 1883, and tried to make it look slightly more foreign."

Horse opera or not, Sheridan still knew he had a hit on his hands because of the space on television that he saw needed filling and the horsepower required to bring it to life. "I knew there was such a thirst, that a Western done well is a universally loved genre. It captures everything American, this sense of freedom and vastness and independence. And there's a romance to it. You get on a 1,200-pound animal, and that thing trusts you, and you trust it, and you run 40 miles an hour. It's just so romantic and brutal and beautiful."

This romance has been poured into the various chapters of the Dutton family and is set to stretch further by way of the spin-off shows that will focus on the future of Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) and Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly), as well as the newly announced Kayce Dutton series, "Y: Marshals," starring Luke Grimes. As far as Sheridan sees it, there's no ingenious route he's taken to bring it all to life, either. "I just don't think I'm that unique. If something's interesting to me, it's probably going to be interesting to a lot of other people. I'm just not that f***ing special." Maybe not, but the ever-feuding family and their questionable activities certainly are, and the world is still hungry to see as much of it as possible, for as long as Sheridan still has stories to tell about them.