Why Monica Dutton Dies in Kayce Yellowstone Spinoff

[This story contains major spoilers from the season premiere of Marshals.]

In order to revisit Luke Grimes‘ Yellowstone character with a spinoff series, something would have to flip Kayce Dutton’s world upside down.

The son to the late John Dutton (played by Kevin Costner) rode off with a pretty perfect ending on the flagship series when he, along with wife Monica (played by Kelsey Asbille) and son Tate (Brecken Merrill), left his family’s ranch behind and set out to start a new ranch and a better Dutton legacy.

But that happy ending is quickly undone with Marshals, the first of two Yellowstone sequel-spinoffs to come this year that released its first episode on Sunday night. As was heavily hinted in the trailer, Kayce suffers an immense loss. The premiere has now confirmed that his wife, Monica, whose lineage is with the (fictional) Broken Rock tribe, died after battling cancer due to toxic levels on the reservation.

Spencer Hudnut, the showrunner, executive producer and writer who pitched Taylor Sheridan the idea of doing Marshals, said he, Sheridan and Paramount went through several ideas before he was told that Asbille, who played Monica on Yellowstone, was unavailable for the new series.

“When that happened, it cleared up what that thing was for Kayce,” Hudnut tells The Hollywood Reporter. “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?’”

Below, Hudnut details the process of getting Marshals on its feet, how he got over his fears of taking the show reins from prolific hitmaker Sheridan (who is a credited EP, but, for the first time, not writing the Yellowstone-verse series), how much of Yellowstone will loom over Marshals, if Kayce will be open to romance again in the 13-episode first season and his hopes for a multi-season run on CBS.

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Luke Grimes has credited your hook for this show as to why he decided to put on Kayce Dutton’s cowboy hat again. Now that we know that hook, can you take us inside the conversations to get Luke to say yes?

Yes, that was the final hurdle. I think I got a lot of help from Taylor [Sheridan], who told Luke that I was worth hearing out and that maybe had kernel of an idea worth exploring. So we connected and it was a very easy conversation. It wasn’t a straight-up pitch. It was a conversation. I quickly realized that Luke is a very smart guy. He is also a true artist. We both knew from the jump that Kayce had such a great ending on Yellowstone that, as Luke said in that conversation, “What are we going to do, watch him be happy? That’s pretty boring.” We both knew that we needed to flip his world. It was funny because me coming from SEAL Team, I was like, “I gotta do Yellowstone. I gotta do Yellowstone.” And he was like, “Let’s go back and look more at his time as a [Navy] SEAL.” We were almost pitching each other our own past. It was, honestly, one of the easiest creative conversations I’ve ever had where we just clicked right away. I didn’t leave that conversation wondering if he was on board.

Had you approached Taylor Sheridan with your idea, or did he and the studio seek you out to continue Kayce’s story? If you can go even further back.

My conversations started in May or June of 2024 with David Glasser at 101 and Keith Cox at Paramount, and it was really just exploring: “Can Kayce Dutton have a show that would be on CBS?” There were a few months of trying to figure out.

Why Kayce for a CBS spinoff?

Because of his background and the toolkit he has as a former Navy SEAL, and what we saw from him when he was in the Livestock Police — and also just from being such a kick-ass cowboy. Because of everything he’s been through — all the loss in his life — he’s an empathetic first responder who has seen it all. I think that gives him more drive to keep other people from going through what he’s gone through. In that first conversation, they asked me about a few of the people from Yellowstone, and I sort of honed in on Kayce, because, as a viewer, Kayce was always my favorite character. So it took us a while and a few iterations.

Who else did they ask you about possibly spinning off?

David did start the conversation by asking, “Would you rather watch a spinoff about Kayce Dutton or Beth Dutton?” And, because he’s David Glasser, he, of course, will have both shows on the air [with the forthcoming Rip and Beth spinoff Dutton Ranch]. But I think probably because of some of my own personal life and having just come off SEAL Team and Kayce’s backstory, that felt like the character I related to more. Fortunately, whatever I said was right.

I would imagine if you’re Taylor Sheridan, who gave Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Rip (Cole Hauser) an open-ended ending on Yellowstone but closed Kayce’s story with a beautiful ending, that he might hesitate about opening Kayce’s story back up. Was that an easy conversation to pitch your idea to Taylor?

No. I wouldn’t say it was easy because I was so intimidated and just fumbling all over it. Whenever you’re pitching someone, you want to be the best writer in the conversation. If you have a better writer with you, you want them to be next to you, not across from you. So the idea of telling him what his character that he created should do next was a little scary. But he was super gracious. And the timing was interesting in that it was either a week or two before the finale of Yellowstone, so I didn’t know where Kayce’s journey was ending.

Oh, wow.

I was like, “Well, maybe he still has some skeletons,” and Taylor pointed out, “You’ll see next week. He’s perfectly at peace.” I was like, “Oh, well, that’s a great place to start a new journey… (laughs).” So that was one of the complicating issues, to get Kayce on a new path when he had such a beautiful ending.

How did you then find your way to convince them?

Well, Luke loves the character. He loves the ability of Kayce maybe making a choice. Kayce struggled so much in Yellowstone. He was pulled in so many different directions, so seeing him actually commit to something and go down that path where it’s going to be difficult for him to escape the Dutton [legacy], I think, is what Luke really connected with. He saw the upside of unleashing Kayce in that way. So the question of how do we turn his life upside down? was one that became part of many conversations down the road. But I think he bought in because Taylor created such a great character, and I wasn’t coming at him with something that sounded like a boilerplate procedural. I didn’t use the word “procedural” with him, because that’s a bad word with Luke. (Laughs.)

Then how does Taylor give you the reins? This is, I believe, his first show where he’s not writing the first season himself. Did you have a bit of a “holy shit” reaction to that happening, or was that part of your pitch?

There’s definitely a “holy shit” every step of the way. “Holy shit, that’s Taylor Sheridan across from me” … “That’s Kayce Dutton that I’m talking to right now” and “Now I have to go off and write this.” The greatest part of this process was that work for me was watching Yellowstone on a loop, particularly Kayce. And also having access to Taylor’s scripts. Part of the work was really getting under the hood of the character and Taylor’s writing style, and eventually realizing that all I’m going to be doing if I’m trying to be Taylor is doing a Taylor Sheridan cover band, which is not great for anybody. So realizing that I’m not Taylor was also part of that journey, and freeing myself from those expectations. But it’s definitely intimidating, and not only with Kayce, but then you get Gil Birmingham as Rainwater. Everything Rainwater said on Yellowstone was the most profound, brilliant thing, so that was one [character] who I really, really struggled with. At the first table read, I went up to Gil and was like, “I’m so sorry, man. Like, I don’t know!” He was so gracious about it, but, yeah, it’s been a journey.

How did you then land on the idea — now that we can finally talk about this — that flipping Kayce’s life upside down meant Monica dying? They were always such a solid marriage in Yellowstone. Was it a big debate?

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?”

I was going to ask how the conversation went with Kelsey Asbille not being a part of this series, but that didn’t happen for you?

No, I wasn’t part of any of that, so I can’t really speak to how or why that played out the way it did. But when that happened, it cleared up what that thing was for Kayce. And I think the way we’ve done it, my goal was to not undermine that journey in Yellowstone because they do have [the dream] — she says, “This is a dream come true” at the end of it. They did achieve that. They did get what they finally wanted, and, unfortunately, life just intervened and disrupted everything that Kayce wanted. So that’s where we find him in Marshals.

How did you land on how she dies? And will we learn more about that time period, or is the show moving away from the past as it finds itself in future episodes?

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. Tate is at that rally because of his mother, and Kayce’s there to protect Tate. So without Monica, maybe Kayce doesn’t find that path. So we will continue to explore [that]. I think Kayce is a little bit behind his son in terms of accepting the loss of Monica, and really embracing his grief. We will revisit that period a little bit and also really explore in the first half of the season Kayce’s journey of trying to let go and really accept that she’s gone.

How much are you trying to service Yellowstone fans, compared to welcoming in a new audience? Ending the premiere with Kayce at Monica’s tombstone felt like a big nod to how Yellowstone ended, because it circled around to honoring the generations who came before them. How much will you be sprinkling in Yellowstone ties every episode?

Given how successful and how popular that show was, and just the richness of Kayce’s backstory and the Dutton backstory — and we’re still in Montana; he’s still on the same ranch that he was all of Yellowstone, in a corner of it — it would be really foolish to turn our back on that. Early on, the balancing act was building off of Yellowstone, but in a way where people who didn’t watch that show can still follow along. And then over time, as we get to know the non-Yellowstone characters more, they can carry the story more. But I think we will always have that connective tissue to Yellowstone. It’s what makes the show unique, so I think we will always try to service that. Between Rainwater and Mo [played by Mo Brings Plenty] and Kayce, I would be foolish to not continue to tap into that.

Marshals is 13 episodes total?

Yes.

Have you outlined multiple seasons? Does the end of this season clearly set up the desire for more? What’s your vision, if it were up to you?

If you had asked me this nine months ago, I probably would have said that I’m just trying to get to episodes two and three. This came together very quickly. It was like — write the pilot and the [writers] room starts. But we definitely take the longview. It’s a CBS show. You’d like to hope that you have multiple seasons ahead of you. With all the character arcs, there are things we’re setting up in season one that we want to pay off in season two or even further down the road. But at the same time, we don’t want to tease things and have them never be answered. We certainly end the season in a propulsive way that paints us into a corner and demands us coming back for season two, so fingers are crossed.

Is there room for a Beth Dutton crossover, should the stars align?

Yeah, I think if the stars aligned that would be pretty cool to have Beth and Rip in our world. Luke and I have talked about it. I think it’s really just having these two productions, and trying to figure that out would be the challenge. But I certainly think the Yellowstone audience deserves seeing Kayce and his sister together, again, at some point. They ended Yellowstone at a really good place, and they both have lost so much family that it would seem like their bond would be even stronger than ever.

With Taylor as an EP, how hands on was he? Is there anything particular you took away from working with him on this first season?

Throughout this process, he’s always been available to me. When I pitched it, he was super gracious and we had a back and forth. In his brain, he took what my ideas were, which is a fair amount of what’s on the screen, but he reshaped them and put it in the right package for Marshals. He did that in about three minutes, which was really annoying, because I had been working on it for, like, six months. (Laughs.) Part of it was also accepting that he is on this heightened level with how his brain processes things — there’s a reason he’s who he is. But he wants the show to stay on its own. He has a very full plate. I do think my job is to keep things from getting onto Taylor’s plate. So with the day-to-day, he has really let me sort of run with it. But any time he will share his wisdom with me, I will happily take it.

Kayce is currently grieving, but is there room for romance in his future in season one? Anything you can tease?

I do think the first part of the season is him trying to figure out how to let go of Monica. Over a year has passed. So I think if he’s able to achieve that, it will open him up to some possibilities.

Is Mo Brings Plenty also consulting as American Indian affairs coordinator on this series?

Yes, he’s consulting and on camera.

Will Marshals continue to shine a light on reservation stories?

Yes. I think that’s one of the great things that Taylor has done in his work, not just in Yellowstone, but it also gives a little more depth to our storytelling. We do an episode shining a spotlight on how many children go missing from our reservations and how not enough is being done about that. The mine story [from the premiere] will continue throughout the season. The Broken Rock Reservation gives us that connective tissue to Yellowstone, which is so valuable.

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Marshals releases new episodes Sundays at 8 p.m. on CBS, streaming on Paramount+ the next day.