The full story on why Monica met such a tragic end on Marshals. Last night, the latest Yellowstone spinoff series officially premiered on CBS, and (spoiler alert), it was confirmed what many who have been paying attention to the promo materials already knew… Monica Dutton, who was played by Kelsea Asbille in Yellowstone, is dead.
Of course, none of this is a shock as she was nowhere to be found in the cast list, nowhere to be found in any media leading up, and she was nowhere to found in the trailer… except for a dark silhouette of Kayce by a headstone and near what appeared to be a body under a sheet.
The opening scene of Marshals, we see Kayce awake from a frightening dream where he is screaming for Monica, our first clue that she’s gone. His son Tate, played by Brecken Merrill, makes an early appearance, but it’s clear that Monica, for whatever reason, is no longer part of the picture. During the episode, residents of the Broken Rock Reservation are protesting against a nearby mine that has been dumping toxins into the water, which as lead to a high cancer rate in the community, and when you see Tate hold up a photo of Monica, it’s a giveaway that she passed from cancer along with many other members of the tribe.
Later in the episode, we see Kayce visit her headstone, and viewers also see him talking to their son, Tate, telling him how much Monica “suffered” and that “the only thing more cruel than losing a parent, is losing the wrong one.” So it sounds she went through a lot in the lead up to her death, which I’m sure more will be revealed about as the season goes on.
And during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Spencer Hudnut, who also severs as executive producer and writer, revealed that he, Sheridan and Paramount went a few ideas for the show before they learned that Kelsey Asbille, who played Monica on Yellowstone, would not be available for the new series.
The original conversation was that there had to be some sort of catalyst for Kayce to get into being a Marshal, because at the end of Yellowstone, he is very content with his life and seemingly exactly where he wants to be:
“The original conversation was that it has to be something. There was the thought of, ‘Maybe we find him and he’s just bored because he was protecting his family and was a Navy SEAL, so then actually a calm life is not for him, which is a path.’ But probably not a satisfying enough path for Kayce. Then, truthfully, as we were trying to figure it out, Monica was not one of the ingredients that was available to me.
It wasn’t like Luke and I were sitting there saying, ‘We should kill Monica.’ It was more like, ‘If she’s not available for this, then what’s the best way to move on from that character in the least exploitive way?'”
Hudnut says he wasn’t part of any of the conversations regarding Asbille, but he knew when she wasn’t available that obviously they would have to kill her off right away, and that would set the scene, so to speak, for how Kayce would move forward following such a tragedy
Then it became a matter of how exactly they would do it, and Hudnut says he wanted to “honor her death” and “give it more meaning,” rather than just having her killed by some random person:
“It was important to me to honor her death and give it a little more meaning. Of course there’s the version where you really exploit it and she’s just been killed, and he needs the [Marshals] badge to get vengeance for her.
But Kayce Dutton doesn’t need a badge to go out and do something like that. It felt like he would be coming in at a different temperature than we wanted. So as I started thinking about the inciting incident, it felt like tying her death to a real-life issue that we could shine a little bit of a spotlight on [was right].
Our reservations have really high cancer rates, and it’s because of all the terrible things that have been done to them. So that felt like a way to honor that character, and she is kind of guiding Kayce.”
They were also able to get Tate involved, and they’re able to show how Tate and his dad are on very different journeys with their grief, which is an interesting element of the show, especially now that Tate is a teenager and that also changes the dynamic of their relationship. We’ll see both Tate and Kayce try to tackle their grief as the season goes on.
Of course, what happens at the rally sets up an action-packed first episode, but I won’t reveal all of that in case you haven’t had a chance to watch it yet.
Marshals airs on CBS on Sunday nights, and you can stream it on demand on DIRECTV or Paramount+. Check out the trailer here:
