Apparently, it wasn’t any easy “yes” for Luke Grimes to sign onto the Yellowstone spinoff, Marshalls. The show is set to premiere this Sunday, March 1st on CBS, and it of course stars Grimes, better known to Yellowstone fans as Kayce Dutton, in a new chapter after moving on from the Yellowstone Ranch.
The new show should provide fans with everything they want and more in terms of having him back on your screen for an action-packed show. The synopsis of the show’s first season, which will consist of 13-episodes seemingly finds Kayce Dutton got back to his violent ways because of a devastating loss that he suffered:
“With the Yellowstone Ranch behind him, Dutton joins an elite unit of U.S. Marshals, combining his skills as a cowboy and Navy SEAL to bring range justice to Montana, where he and his teammates must balance family, duty and the high psychological cost that comes with serving as the last line of defense in the region’s war on violence.”
Just in case you haven’t seen any of the trailers… all signs are pointing towards Kayce Dutton joining the U.S. Marshals because he loses his wife, Monica (played by Kelsey Asbille), which many Yellowstone fans are probably happy about. Country star Riley Green will appear in multiple episodes, and he will play former Navy SEAL Garrett, who arrives at the ranch, unexpectedly, hoping to lean on his friends Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) and Cal (Logan Marshall-Green) to help “put the demons of his past to rest.”
It seems like most Yellowstone fans are excited for this new series, and during an interview with Entertainment Tonight at the premiere earlier this week, Grimes revealed more about the series, saying it’s going to be “very different” than Yellowstone, adding that it will be action-packed and a much “quicker pace”:
“It’s a very different show, it’s a lot quicker pace, there’s a lot of action in the show.”
Towards the end of the Yellowstone series, a common complaint among fans (myself included) was that it started to drag, and there would be several episodes that went by where it felt nothing happened or there was just a lot of filler.
I think there were plenty of reasons for that, but hopefully this new spinoff will provide what started to lack in the original series while still being its own, new show, and Grimes says he hopes the “original fans” will still like Marshals:
“I hope you like it, that’s what I would say. I hope the original fans will still like it.”
But it sounds like he had some apprehension before signing up to lead this highly-anticipated spinoff. Grimes told The Hollywood Reporter that he didn’t think he wanted to come back, because he was so happy with how Kayce’s story ended in the original show. But, he says the “dream life” Kayce had is no longer possible, alluding to the fact that something’s going to happen to Monica I think, and we will get to see all of that evolve onscreen:
“I didn’t think I wanted to come back to it, because I felt like Kayce’s story ended so perfectly in the first show. And I was like, well, what are we gonna do now? He’s got his dream life. Everything he’s been fighting for, he’s gotten. He literally rode off into the sunset.
And what sort of breaks that world open for him is that that dream life became no longer possible.”
Grimes explained that the new storyline for Kayce will show off a completely new skill set fans haven’t gotten to see him use, opening up opportunities for everyone to see a totally new side of Kayce:
“That just opened up an opportunity for him to get really, really out of his comfort zone and open himself to a new world, and to new people, and to a new job, new responsibilities. And using an old skill set that we never really got to see him use.”
Taylor Sheridan, creator and lead writer for Yellowstone and many other shows within the universe, is also notably isn’t the lead writer on Marshals (but still serves as an exec producer), and showrunner Spencer Hudnut is in charge, and he said that it was “a little intimidating,” as you can imagine, to step into that role and create a show in “someone else’s universe” who was quite good at it, as we all know:
“I’m effectively sort of a Taylor Sheridan cover band. It’s a little intimidating. I mean, he is the best writer of my generation in the last 20 years; ‘Yellowstone’ is the biggest show to come out in 20 years. So, yeah, when you stop and think about it, it’s very intimidating, but fortunately for me, he made himself available to me.
I had a lot of resources to help me try to launch this show. I think once I stopped trying to do a Taylor impression, it really kind of freed me up because there’s only one Taylor Sheridan.”
Kayce was my favorite character on Yellowstone, so I’m looking forward to watching this new series focused on his life post-Yellowstone ranch, and as a country music fan, it will also be fun to see how Riley does with his big acting debut.
You can check out the newest trailer below, before Marshals airs this Sunday evening on CBS:
