“Tony Soprano on a Ranch”: Kevin Costner’s ‘Yellowstone’ Role Gets Branded as ‘Inherently Evil’ By Fans Due to a Ruthless Reason

Kevin Costner knows he did his job well when fans begin to avert their eyes in disgust at his fictional Yellowstone character.

The latest news coverage in Hollywood has been more concerned with the resolution or escalation of the conflict between Kevin Costner and Taylor Sheridan. Despite countless interviews and statements, the rumors whispering about Costner’s apparent return (or lack thereof) to Yellowstone have occupied our every waking hour.

But even in the middle of all the chaos, it becomes harder to hide the real reason behind the audience’s fierce attachment and loyalty to the Dutton patriarch.

With an almost sociopathic tendency in his character’s nature and a ruthless moral compass that moves its needle only when he commands it to, Kevin Costner’s terrifying character is quick to capture the audience’s hearts, simply based on historical evidence alone. Shows with characters as instinctively evil as John Dutton have been known to attract a higher percentage of viewers, and this has remained true since the days of The Sopranos.

Modern Television Gets a Do-Over After The Sopranos

The Italian-American mob drama opened up the modern audience to a whole new world of possibilities throughout its 8-year arc. The Sopranos dismantled the established format of silver screen entertainment, dispelling the notion that television was comprised of Lucy & Desi, late-night talk shows, and FRIENDS.

Hollywood then opened its eyes to a whole new dimension of creative outlet with shows like The Wire, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and Breaking Bad filling the market all while wrangling in colorful characters like Al Swearengen who ranks right up there with the villains of golden age television like Tony Soprano and Walter White.

Without The Sopranos, modern television genres would never have found their place in pop culture with such a gripping interest. 11 years after its end, Yellowstone gave that culture a much-needed push in order to evolve to the next stage of television supremacy. But with such an evolution also came an undesired side effect that has landed the audience with a problem on their waiting hands.

Since its premiere in 2018, Yellowstone has worked to elevate the caliber of excellent storytelling and usher in a new golden age of premium television. However, Taylor Sheridan‘s series, with its brilliant cinematography and expansive mythology, seems to be a bit more rotten on the inside than its ancestral counterparts.

While The Sopranos operated exclusively on the premise that it is a mafia crime drama, Yellowstone imposes no such limitation in its ambitious storytelling. It expands from a cowboy saga to a greedy power struggle over the ownership of land and property, and subsequently a Machiavellian political manipulation to ensure power stays where it should be – within the family.

In its evolutionary arc, Yellowstone makes its patriarch, John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner, do deeds of such ghastly and ruthless proportions that it makes the crimes of Tony Soprano and Walter White forgivable based on their code of conduct. Almost modeled as “Tony Soprano on a ranch” [via Reddit], one user named catch22bro puts it best when they point out:

[John Dutton] possesses zero moral values. He lacks empathy and exhibits clear fascist tendencies with his ruthless pursuit of power. This character is probably emblematic of neoliberal ideology and crony capitalism, which prioritise individual gain over social equity. In other words, he is everything wrong with America today.

With zero concern for his children or his employees, Kevin Costner’s character is a shrewd man who is willing to cross the Styx and beat Hades into submission if it means retaining power. Yellowstone shows how far the Dutton family patriarch would go in the process, even if it meant having to dump bodies across state lines and raising a fanatical cult-like following willing to fall on their swords with a single command.