SD enterprise: April 2025

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'1923' Was Ambitious. Did Taylor Sheridan Pull It Off?

This story contains spoilers for 1923 episode 7.

Howdy, folks! We've finally reached the end of 1923. It only took a supersized two-hour finale featuring shoot-outs, long-awaited conversations between characters who had never spoken to each other before, and the fulfilled promise that Spencer would finally make it to the Dutton family ranch. There's a lot for us to cover. But first, I want to take us back to the season 1 finale.

After watching the final episode, I returned to the conversation I had with Spencer Dutton himself, Brandon Sklenar, in early 2023. Esquire called him "The Baddest Dutton of All Time" then—and he certainly lived up to the title in the series finale. I wanted to see if he dropped any hints about the ending that I didn't pick up at the time. I was feeling a bit nostalgic too, okay? Covering Yellowstone—and its spin-offs—has consumed much of my professional life for the past three years. And I wouldn't change a thing about it, to be clear. Until Paramount tells us otherwise, both Yellowstone and its prequels have come to an end. Before a single tear rolls down this cowboy's face, let's cut back to Sklenar.

"It's essentially Homer's Odyssey," he told me after season 1. "There's so much built into it with him getting home and he has so much to fight for and so many people to defend… It's just such a sweeping character arc, and I'm just so fortunate. The man we meet in [Season 2] is a much different man from who we see at the end of this season."

Spencer's arduous journey home tested the patience of 1923's audience more than anything else this season. I'm sure that most of you watching at home certainly thought season 2 wouldn't send the Dutton hero on another wild goose chase across the globe. Hell, he doesn't set foot in Montana until the series finale. But now that I see the whole picture, 1923 was certainly Sheridan's adaptation of the Odyssey for the American West.

If you're not familiar with the Greek tragedy, Christopher Nolan is currently adapting the legendary epic for a 2026 film starring Matt Damon. The story follows Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, who experiences a perilous journey fraught with monsters on his way home from the Trojan War. Meanwhile, his wife Penelope attempts to hold off an unruly assembly of young men who wish to wed her in his absence and become the new king.

Trade Penelope for the Dutton family ranch and you basically have the outline for 1923. After fighting in World War I, Spencer fends off lions in Africa, bulky gladiators at sea, and even the Italian mafia in Texas just to make it back home. Then, he kills everyone who threatens the ranch. It may sound silly to say, but Sklenar is right. 1923 is Sheridan's Odyssey.

It's quite the story as well for Alexandra Dutton, Teonna Rainwater, Banner Creighton, and every other ancestor of a character we come to know in Yellowstone years later. However you may feel about Spencer walking into Whitfield's home and shooting him without a struggle, the ending wrapped up Sheridan's most sprawling story yet. Largely, I'd say he pulled off something emotional and exciting week by week. Remember folks, this was just a limited series. I'm sure that Sheridan doesn't need his ego stroked any more than it already is—Landman was just renewed for season 2—but give this man a real budget and let him work. I'm sure he could write a modern Western that would even make John Ford weep.

As the hero of our story, Spencer is revealed as John Dutton's grandfather. The great Dutton family tree mystery is now complete. There is a throughline from 1883's James Dutton (Tim Graw) to his son, Spencer, and then the premature John Dutton Jr. That baby is John Dutton III's (Kevin Costner) father. Fans believed that they had it all figured out last week following Jack's surprising death, but it turns out the line Sheridan wrote in Yellowstone season 4 about John Dutton's grandfather losing his leg was either his maternal grandfather or just something the writer forgot about entirely. Oh well!

Speaking of plots that slipped Sheridan's mind… what happened to Elizabeth's baby? Many fans theorized that Spencer would end up raising Jack and Elizabeth's child instead of his own in the finale, but Elizabeth packs her bags for Boston and departs without a single mention of her pregnancy once the ranch is saved. Is there a Bostonian Dutton family out in the world somewhere?

It's also a shame that Spencer never remarried because awoooooga, am I right? According to Elsa's narration, Spencer, "took the comfort of a widow, made another boy, refused to marry her, and one day, the widow was gone." Incredibly spooky! Still, it sounds like John Dutton has a lot of uncles and cousins that we never knew about until now. Maybe we'll meet them in 1944, The Madison, or any of the numerous spin-offs that Sheridan writes next.

Okay, back to the mushy stuff. Even cowboys can cry! Much like Alexandra sacrificing her entire body to keep the Dutton family legacy alive, I'm finally ready to let go as well. It has been an absolutely wild ride writing about this crazy show for you all. I hope you enjoyed 1923 as much as I did—or at least laughed along when the show took itself too seriously—and I thank you again for reading. For a full recap of the massive finale, you can read all my thoughts right here.

Before you go, I'm excited to announce that this newsletter isn't going away just because 1923 is over. The Cliff-Hanger will continue to postgame the most important TV shows of the moment with exclusive interviews, recaps, and insights just like this.

Next week, HBO premieres the first episode of The Last of Us season 2. It's a post-apocalyptic drama starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey that's about to really shake its story up in the second season. Plus, we already have an exciting lineup of interviews headed your way. Since the show airs on Sunday nights, this newsletter will hit your inbox on Mondays starting next week. So don't change the channel, Duttonheads and TV fanatics. The Cliff-Hanger will return!

Have thoughts or theories you need to share about the 1923 season 2 finale and the Yellowstone-verse moving forward? Send me an email at josh.rosenberg@hearst.com.

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READ THE RECAP

The Cliff-Hanger's Winners and Losers of the Week

Winner: Banner Creighton

Last week, I said that Banner Creighton (Jerome Flynn) was fighting the wrong enemy. As much as I wanted to see him kill Donald Whitfield himself, I understand that was a job for the Duttons. Still, I'm glad he finally had a change of heart in the finale and saved his family—even if he couldn't live to see it through. Jerome Flynn is a fantastic actor. When he tears up to his wife about wanting to look his son in the eyes as a good man? Heartbreaking.

Loser: Donald Whitfield

Has a fantastic villain ever fallen so pathetically as Whitfield? I felt like I mentioned my disappointment with Timothy Dalton's character every week here in The Cliff-Hanger. The potential of this character was completely wasted. He's the ultimate Loser of the Week.

Winner: Unintentional Comedy

Maybe this is cruel, but I was dying laughing every time Alex said something at the hospital along the lines of, "They want to take my legs and my hands." This woman really went through hell and the fact that it would've ended with her losing all of her limbs is so insane. At one point, she asks Jacob, "How can I raise a child with stubs for feet and clubs for hands?" with full sincerity. At some point as a TV writer, you must see the campiness of the situation settling in.

Loser: Doctors

I mentioned The Pitt here once before. The Max drama has received heaping amounts of praise from the medical community for its accurate depiction of healthcare. 1923 is not that show. They may both feature scenes in which a doctor drills through a patient's skull to remove excess bleeding, but the doctors in 1923 are dolts. There's a scene in which a surgeon is searching for a bullet in Jacob Dutton's old wound, and he tells him that if he can't find it then the lead poisoning might slowly kill him. "You think I care about the slow ones?" Jacob yells. "I'm 80 fucking years old. Sow it up!"

Winner: Harrison Ford

Ford has another killer line at the end of 1923. When they finally catch up with Whitfield, he tells the villain: "I plan on making such an example of you that it'll be fifty years before one of your kind dares to enter this valley again! I want them teaching about how you die in schoolbooks!" Badass, Mr. Dutton. Badass.