‘Yellowstone’ Star Luke Grimes Spills About the Meaning of Kayce Dutton’s Vision Quest
Yellowstone fans were left hanging with a major question about the future of some of their favorite characters when Season 4 came to an end in January of 2022. In a new interview, actor Luke Grimes, who plays Kayce Dutton on the hit show, opens up about Kayce's vision quest, which ended with him telling his wife Monica (Kelsey Asbille), "I saw the end of us."
That moment came after Kayce spent days in isolation going through the indigenous ritual, hoping to find the answer to why he keeps seeing a wolf at certain important points in his family's life. At the end of the traditional ceremony, he reveals that he saw two possible paths forward, and that neither one appears to bode well.
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, the Yellowstone star reveals that while series creator Taylor Sheridan knows exactly what that ominous-sounding line about "the end of us" means, Grimes didn't want to know, so that he can play the character as much in-the-moment as possible as subsequent storylines unfold.
"So Taylor and I have this understanding that he knows how this thing ends for everyone. He knows how it ends for Kayce, and he’s known since he wrote the beginning," Grimes shares.
"He actually said that he knew the end first," he adds. "I’ve actually really gotten into the idea of never knowing how this ends until I get to read that last script. It’d be a great payoff as an actor to go through the journey. But Taylor and I sat down and he told me just enough about what those two paths looked like and just enough about that statement. It wasn’t enough that I know what’s going to happen or where he goes from here, but it was enough that I could say that line and have an idea of what I was talking about."
Grimes also says that while Yellowstone has become the most-watched show on cable television since it launched on the Paramount Network in 2018, he's confident Sheridan would never yield to any pressure to extend the show past its shelf life.
"As far as how long Taylor wants it to go, I know what I’ve heard firsthand from the source himself. But I also heard that before it became the biggest show on the planet, and when something becomes this big, I know there’s a lot of pressure to keep it going," he says. "But I do know that Taylor would never let it go past its due date. We’re never going to jump the shark."
Yellowstone's upcoming Season 5 is rumored to start shooting in May, and it will begin airing in the fall. Grimes says he doesn't have any insight so far into what the season will bring.
"Honestly, I one hundred percent do not know. I haven’t read a script yet," he says. "We start in a few weeks, so I’ll probably start getting scripts right before we show up. That’s usually the drill," he adds with a laugh.
As part of Taste of Country's comprehensive coverage of all things Yellowstone, check out our Dutton Rules podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.