Don't just take it from me, though. Here's what 1923's Brandon Sklenar had to say about the darker tone of season 2 when we talked over Zoom earlier this week. "Tonally, it's almost a different show entirely," Sklenar said. "I love that. It's fun to tap into that energy, especially with a character who has so much darkness in him. Season one we just kind of had to allude to it. Now, we get the chance to let the cat out of the bag."
Sklenar plays Spencer Dutton, the estranged nephew of the current Dutton patriarch, Jacob (Ford). He was hunting big game in Africa like Kraven the Hunter before Jacob Dutton (Ford) and his wife Cara (Mirren) wrote him a letter to book it back home. An evil mining magnate, Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton), partnered with a rowdy group of Scottish shepherds led by Banner Creighton (Jerome Flynn) to turn the Dutton family ranch into a tourist destination. It's what the villain always wants on Yellowstone: Pave paradise and put up a parking lot.
After fighting every animal on planet Earth to make it back home in season 1, Spencer is still far from landing on American soil when season 2 premieres. A comedy of errors placed him and his new wife in the direct path of her former betrothed while they were booking passage on a ship. The man challenged the ripped Dutton hunk to a duel, so Spencer threw him overboard to his death. It seemed a bit unnecessary, but it was clearly much easier to kill a guy and get away with it a hundred years ago. Now, Spencer's taken up residence on some criminal tugboat where he engages in Gladiator-esque fights for extra cash. Hopefully, he finds his way back to Montana in one piece.
"He goes through a lot this season," Sklenar told me about Spencer's journey. "I care about him deeply and he feels like he's a part of me. So, I didn't have to do much to tap into it to be honest with you. I just put on some size because I wanted him to feel a little more intimidating, like a bit of an animal. But I built out his life so vividly. What you view is a very, very visceral experience." You can read my full interview with Sklenar here.
Elsewhere in the episode, Jacob and Cara fend off a mountain lion while the villainous Whitfield engages in some evil debauchery that is too appalling to spell out here. Like I said, season 2 is dark.
The light at the end of the tunnel for Yellowstone fans is that this season will likely, at long last, address John Dutton's parentage. I can't say for certain if any theories are currently winning on the Internet right now, nor if John Dutton's parentage is something that fans still care about following his unceremonious fate in Yellowstone. Either way, I just want to see Sklenar on screen with Harrison Ford.
Check out our 1923 season 2 premiere recap for everything else that went down this episode, and I'll see you again next Sunday right here. Have thoughts or theories you need to share before then? Send me an email at josh.rosenberg@hearst.com.
