Taylor Sheridan’s Difficult Decision Makes Dutton Ranch Yellowstone’s True Successor

Image courtesy of MovieStillsDb Published Nov 10, 2026, 1:05 PM EST Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. Sign in to your ScreenRant account While Dutton Ranch and Marshals are both technically Yellowstone sequel shows, one tough choice turned the former into the show’s true successor. If ever there was a real-life example of a creator suffering from success, it would be writer/ director Taylor Sheridan. Since the creative first made a name for himself penning the screenplays for Sicario, Hell or High Water, and Wind River back in the 2010s, his career has gone from strength to unprecedented strength. Now, Sheridan can be listed alongside Monster’s Ryan Murphy and Scandal’s Shonda Rhimes as one of the biggest voices in TV, and Sheridan may even have set a record for the most seasons of TV in production at the same time by one writer/ director. Between Dutton Ranch, Lioness, Landman, Mayor of Kingstown, The Madison, Tulsa King and its upcoming spinoff Frisco King, Sheridan is a busy man, and that’s without even mentioning Yellowstone’s recently announced third prequel, 1944. Notably, the Yellowstone sequel series Marshals is missing from that rundown, since, although the show is part of the franchise, it doesn’t come from the pen of Sheridan himself. Sheridan is an executive producer on the CBS show, with SEAL Team’s Spencer Hudnut running Marshals. There is also another major difference between Marshals and Yellowstone, though, and it is the bigger difference that makes Dutton Ranch the original show’s true spiritual successor. Dutton Ranch Was Right To Hold Onto Yellowstone’s TV-MA Rating MovieStillsDB Unlike Marshals, Dutton Ranch is rated TV-MA thanks to its infrequent bloody violence, frequent swearing, references to drug use, and sexual content. The TV equivalent of an R-rating, the TV-MA rating of Yellowstone was what allowed the original show to get as gritty, gruesome, and sweary as any HBO or AMC series. This was vital, as it was a big part of the reason that the series garnered as many comparisons to Justified and Succession as it did Dallas and Dynasty. As a saga following the soapy, melodramatic antics of a scheming, super-rich family, Yellowstone was effectively an update of the Dallas/ Dynasty formula. However, Yellowstone’s Dutton family story was treated as something much grittier, darker, and more self-serious than, for example, 2017’s five-season Dynasty reboot, and the main reason for this was the show’s rating. With a TV-MA rating, Yellowstone could tackle tough storylines like Beth’s abortion, which allowed the show to smuggle in sillier, more outlandish twists, like Rip killing a character with a weaponized rattlesnake. Dutton Ranch maintained this rating, meaning Beth’s spinoff also kept the ruthless edge of the original show. Beth and Rip are less like heroes and more like almost villain protagonists, as the pair are rarely any behaving more morally upright than the equally dishonest and dangerous people they are trying to stop from buying up their ranch. Thematically, this allows the franchise to further underline just how much Beth is John’s true Yellowstone replacement, rather than Kayce. Why Marshals Had To Drop To A TV-14 Rating Kayce was always conflicted by his father’s history of violence, whereas Beth openly idolized her father’s vicious brutality. Kayce had every reason to be less impressed by John’s antics, since his father left his chest permanently disfigured with a brand after Kayce refused to force Monica to obtain an abortion while they were both still teenagers. However, Marshals losing Yellowstone’s TV-MA rating only served to make the growing gap between Yellowstone’s sequels more obvious. Already, Marshals was always guaranteed to be a very different show from Yellowstone as, unlike Beth, Kayce never wanted to be anything like his late father. However, when Marshals committed to airing on CBS, the show was required to obtain a TV-14 rating to be broadcast on network TV. This meant its style, tone, and content had to shift even further away from the edge that made Yellowstone famous. To be fair, Marshals obtained access to a much bigger audience on CBS, so some viewers may feel like it was worth watering down the edge of Yellowstone to produce the biggest TV show of 2026. That said, ratings aren’t everything, and it would be tough to find any critics who think that Marshals improved on Yellowstone by dulling its sharp edges. Yellowstone never won many awards during its run, but the show was relatively well liked as a soapy, silly Neo-Western thriller/ family melodrama. In contrast, critics complained that Marshals feels too much like a standard-issue network TV procedural to do justice to the Yellowstone brand, but too much like a Yellowstone sequel to function as a straightforward alternative to an NCIS, Law & Order, FBI, or 9-1-1 show. Marshals is caught in the worst of both worlds, much like Sheridan’s critically hated prison drama Mayor of Kingstown was dubbed too dark to be fun, but too dumb and silly to be serious and substantial by the majority of reviewers. This is reflected in the markedly different critical reception of Yellowstone’s two sequel shows, with Dutton Ranch earning a superb 90% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes while Marshals beat Mayor of Kingstown to set a new career-low record for Sheridan, with a 48% approval rating on the same site. Dutton Ranch’s Yellowstone Similarities Make Marshals’ Problems Worse via MovieStillsDB Since Dutton Ranch picked up where Yellowstone left off with Beth and Rip's story, there is now a hit show that feels, looks, and sounds exactly like Yellowstone did. Meanwhile, CBS’s cop drama Marshals is saddled with an identity crisis as the series is too focused on Kayce’s personal story to feel like an ensemble police procedural, and too TV-14 rated to feel like the series belongs in Yellowstone’s fictional universe. There are other police procedurals that have a surprisingly character-centric approach, with ABC’s hit Will Trent being a particularly critically acclaimed instance of this phenomenon. That hit show is also notable for adapting a series of books that are far nastier, darker, grittier, and more R-rated than the show without losing the edge that made author Karin Slaughter’s novels so successful in the first place. Sadly, Will Trent has the advantage of being an original adaptation with no predecessors, whereas Marshals is expected to feel true to an existing five-season series that was firmly TV-MA. As such, it is weird and striking when the CBS show feels muted, sanitized, and censored in comparison to Dutton Ranch, resulting in Marshals never feeling like as true a Yellowstone successor as its sister show. Release Date May 15, 2026 Network Paramount Network, Paramount+ Showrunner Chad Feehan Directors Christina Alexandra Voros Writers Jacob Forman, Hilary Bettis, Chad Feehan, Hayley Tibbenham, J. Todd Scott, K.C. Scott Creator(s) Chad Feehan What keeps you most invested in Yellowstone when you hit “next episode”? John Dutton’s ruthless decisions and worldview John Dutton’s ruthless decisions and worldview 66.7% Beth, Rip, and the intense family drama Beth, Rip, and the intense family drama 0.0% The modern Western setting, ranch life, and cinematography The modern Western setting, ranch life, and cinematography 33.3% The power struggles over land, law, and politics The power struggles over land, law, and politics 0.0%