Yellowstone Fans React to That Controversial Final Season Opener — Rotten Tomatoes Score Reveals the Brutal Truth md06

Yellowstone returned for the second part of its fifth and final season on Sunday, but fans have met the premiere with a significant amount of backlash, which shouldn’t be a massive surprise. Following the shocking exit of its lead, John Dutton (Kevin Costner), the show is now in uncharted waters, and audiences are not on board with the drastic new direction, particularly given the developments that occurred. After Costner’s departure to pursue his own Western film projects, the writers killed off John Dutton, who was still the Governor of Montana but facing an impeachment trial, in a storyline meant to look like a suicide but ultimately revealed as an assassination.

The response? Fans have expressed disappointment and frustration, as seen in the show’s plunging audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. With Yellowstone Season 5 now airing, Rotten Tomatoes shows it as the series’ lowest-rated season by fans—by a considerable margin. Here’s how the scores currently stand:

• Season 2: 90% audience score, 89% critic score
• Season 3: 87% audience score, 100% critic score
• Season 4: 82% audience score, 91% critic score
• Season 1: 83% audience score, 57% critic score
• Season 5: 40% audience score, 84% critic score

As these scores reveal, Yellowstone’s final season has left fans feeling deeply disappointed in the direction the show is heading in its final episodes. Despite an impressive 84% critic score, the audience score has plummeted to 40%, less than half of any prior season. For a show that has traditionally enjoyed high praise from its fanbase, these numbers highlight a noticeable disconnect, with longtime viewers unhappy with John Dutton’s off-screen exit and the show’s story choices. Indeed, it’s a complete 180 from the first season, where audiences immediately bought into the Dutton saga but critics didn’t quite see the appeal.

Are People Still Watching ‘Yellowstone’?

However, this frustration hasn’t translated into a decline in viewership. The season premiere drew a record 16.4 million viewers on cable, a staggering number in the streaming era, proving that even with fan disappointment, Yellowstone remains a cultural phenomenon and one of the most-watched series in America. Given how much the cast and Taylor Sheridan have put into the series to date, though, it seems like they’ve earned our goodwill and all we can do in the remaining episodes is pray they stick the landing.