‘Yellowstone’ Director Explains Why the Show Revisited That Key Death Scene

‘Yellowstone’ Director Explains Why the Show Revisited That Key Death Scene
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[This story contains major spoilers from the third episode of season 5B of Yellowstone, “Three Fifty-Three.”]

Time caught up to itself in the latest episode of Yellowstone and, just as director Christina Voros and the cast have been promising, the drama that ensued was propulsive.

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“Knowing that’s where we were going, it’s all made sense to me,” Voros tells The Hollywood Reporter of season 5B’s two timelines — the past and the present — merging with episode three, “Three Fifty-Three,” which aired Sunday. “Not knowing where it’s leading I think has left some people feeling like they don’t know where it’s leading — which is the point. You don’t understand the point until you get there.”

The point of arrival was 3:53 a.m., the precise time that John Dutton was murdered. The season 5B premiere had revealed what happened to the main character played by Kevin Costner, who departed the series between seasons 5A and 5B. John died by an apparent suicide, but his death was revealed to the audience to be the result of a murder-for-hire plot launched by the partner of his estranged, adopted son Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley), fixer Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri).

“Three Fifty-Three” flashed back to the night of the murder, showing in step-by-step detail how assassins broke into the Montana governor’s mansion and knocked him out in order to stage his death as a suicide. When John’s other son, Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes), pushes the coroner to reexamine John’s body, he helps her to realize that her initial finding was wrong, and her updated conclusion results in the state reopening the investigation into John’s death, which is now being treated as a homicide.

News that the murder-for-hire plot went awry sends everyone involved into a panic. Sarah and Jamie face each other down in an epic argument, where he blames her for being iced out of the investigation and she accuses him of being irrelevant without his father. But just as the lovers are making up over the phone, the assassins find Sarah and riddle her with bullets in her car, treating her like a loose end. Jamie is left wailing on the other side of the phone line.

Below, in another weekly chat with Voros, who directed the episode written by co-creator Taylor Sheridan, she tells The Hollywood Reporter why it was important to relive John’s death scene in such a “voyeuristic” way with the audience, explains what viewers learned about Dawn Olivieri’s Sarah in her death and shares why Kayce (Luke Grimes) is the only lifeline left for Jamie from here on out.

So this season has six episodes. We know the stakes are high. We assume, at some point, Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri) is probably getting taken to the “train station.” And yet, I was still shocked by her death. Can you talk about how you structured this episode to accomplish us not knowing where you were going until the very end?

The structure is all Taylor [Sheridan]. In terms of the execution, it is supposed to be a shock. It’s supposed to come out of nowhere. It is, I think, testament to Wes [Bentley] and Dawn [Olivieri]’s talents as actors and the relationship they’ve created together on this show that you are so wrapped up in the ferocity of the argument that has just transpired beforehand that you don’t see it coming. She doesn’t see it coming. He doesn’t see it coming. So, it was all there in the writing.

I will say, I gasped when I read it. I’ve had folks who have seen it on the team in postproduction who gasped when they saw it. It’s incredibly rewarding to be able to get that kind of response from the audience. It means you have drawn them into a place where they are so committed to something else being the reality that it comes out of the blue and knocks the breath out of you, and that was always the intent.