‘Yellowstone’ Draws Comparisons To ‘Game Of Thrones’ As Fans Blast Taylor Sheridan For Rushed, Nonsensical Finale
Despite Taylor Sherdian choosing to title the episode Life is a Promise, the series finale of Yellowstone offered very little in the way of ‘promise’.
[SPOILER WARNING: Significant spoilers for the series finale of Yellowstone follow below. If you’d like to avoid them, please refrain from reading any further.]
Given its existence as one of the greatest TV shows arguably ever created, the ending of Yellowstone was always going to disappoint many people, as the sheer size of the fanbase made it guaranteed that the episode would be unable to fill everyone’s personal theories and hopes.
Since launching the series, Sheridan has not only blown out the story of the Dutton family into a full-blown franchise – which currently includes the main series, the prequel series 1883 and the upcoming spin-offs 1923, The Madison, 6666, 1955, and an unnamed television outing centered on Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler – but also redefined the neo-western genre at a time when it was just about as extinct as the buffalo.
However, the premature exit of series lead Kevin Costner, who departed earlier this year to film his cinematic Horizon: An American Saga duology, dealt a huge blow to Yellowstone‘s continuity and left Sheridan to fumble his way through its conclusion.
In light of the show’s astronomical viewership numbers, fans expected the series creator to treat the script for the second half of its final season with the respect it deserved.
But with the entire thing now said and done, many viewers are now blasting Sheridan over their opinion that he chose to take the easy way out, in doing so delivering a television disaster akin to the ending of Game of Thrones.
“They skipped over a LOT!” reads one of the first comments posted to the Yellowstone finale thread on the massive /r/television Reddit community. “Seems careless …. I mean – How did Beth heal so fast? lol … I’m still going to miss the show, but I think it’s sad when really popular shows just dial it in for the ending (a la Game Of Thrones).”
“This is a worse downfall than Game of Thrones!” another Redditor commented. “This is the equivalent of Cersi coming out on top!”
A third asserted, “To me, this feels like it’s up there with Game of Thrones. Great series which ended in a huge let down because the Director rushed the finale to get onto other projects…”
And unsurprisingly, these posts are but a small sample size of the numerous comments on Reddit alone that raised the comparison between the series finales of Yellowstone and Game of Thrones.
Notably, perhaps the most prominent fan complaint concerned the stark plot holes surrounding Rip and Beth’s killing of Jamie.
While the decision to so violently end the longstanding rivalry between the half-siblings was a noble attempt at keeping viewers on the edges of their seats, the entire resolution ignored too many real-life factors, as well as common sense, to make any sense.
“I’m sure no one saw Rip fly in at 90mph in [that] massive whale’s dick of a pick up truck, or at least caught it on their doorbell camera,” explained one fan of the scene’s poor writing. “I know it’s just a TV show but FFS the guy is the attorney general, and they rolled him up in a carpet drug him outside in broad daylight and jammed him in his own car!”
Notably, despite these comparisons, one should note that Yellowstone was never originally intended as a TV production, as it was initially written as a feature film.
However, when big studios found themselves uninterested in the film, Sheridan continued to fight for the project’s production, and in doing so eventually got Paramount to pick it up and launch it as a series.
And much to the surprise of those studios who showed Sheridan the door, the show became a surprise hit, with many even going so far as to credit Yellowstone for reviving American interest in cable programming.
Sadly, that the series finale left so many Yellowstone fans disappointed could hurt fan interest in all future Yellowstone prequels – especially the upcoming second season of 1923, as the fate of the ranch at the center of the series’ conflict has now already been revealed.
However, it ultimately remains to be seen whether fans will be willing to forgive Sheridan and continue returning to the ranch, or if this backlash will have any effect on future Yellowstone productions.
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