If there’s one character apart from Kayce who deserves their own spin-off, it’s undoubtedly Josh Lucas’ John Dutton. While Costner played an aged John Dutton in the final years leading to his assassination, Lucas played the younger version, still raising his children to try and take over his growing cattle empire. Having appeared in merely nine episodes of the entire 53-episode series, Lucas’ interpretation was to Costner’s what Robert De Niro‘s Vito Corleone was to Marlon Brando‘s in The Godfathertrilogy. He is John Dutton in his absolute prime, and we see him at a time when there was still potential for his family, long before Beth and Jamie fell out, before Kayce wandered in his own direction, and before Lee was unceremoniously murdered. In fact, this John existed alongside his wife Evelyn (Gretchen Mol) before her own fateful end.

To say that the adventures of a younger John Dutton have a wealth of untapped potential would probably be an understatement. There is a lot about John Dutton that we still don’t know or fully understand, and a prequel series about his life — even if it were a miniseries event that took us through it in stages — would offer some additional insight into the man that Costner played in those final years. Why did John really take Jamie in as a child? Why was he so hard on Kayce in particular? How did he deal with the loss of his wife, and how did that change him long-term? We can try to answer all of these questions based on what we see in Yellowstone, but they may be better explored in a series that intends to lean a bit further into the ranching life of John in his younger days.