NEED TO KNOW
Luke Grimes is navigating a new chapter as Kayce Dutton.
The actor reprises his role as the youngest of the Dutton clan in a new Yellowstone spinoff, Y: Marshals, which sees him join an elite unit of U.S. Marshals.
In the first teaser for the spinoff, Kayce’s emotional upheaval is evident as he says, “I fought every day to get out from under the weight of the Yellowstone. I’ve lost my teammates, my parents, even my brothers. I know that sometimes good men have to do bad things, but I’m trying to find a new beginning.”
The new beginning he chooses is to combine his cowboy skills with his Navy SEAL training as he joins a squad led by Pete Calvin (Logan Marshall-Green), that includes Belle Skinner (Arielle Kebbel), Andrea Cruz (Ash Santos) and Miles Kittle (Tatanka Means), many of whom seem worried that he’s going to slow them down.
“Gangs, cartels, race warriors — it may look like God’s country to you, but the devil’s running free out there, man,” Pete tells Kayce.
CBS/Youtube
As the explosive teaser concludes, with Kayce on horseback in a high-speed chase, Yellowstone’s Chief Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) has some wisdom to offer.
“Duttons are all born with a killer instinct,” he tells Kayce. “But you’re not a killer, Kayce. You’re a protector.”
Per the logline, Y: Marshals sees Kayce and his teammates try to “balance the high psychological cost of serving as the last line of defense in the region’s war on violence with their duty to their families, which for Kayce includes his son Tate (Brecken Merrill) and his confidantes Thomas Rainwater and Mo (Mo Brings Plenty) from the Broken Rock reservation.”
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Since Kayce “sort of gets what he has been looking for, his dream life” at the end of Yellowstone, which concluded in December 2024, Grimes, 41, told PEOPLE he wasn’t sure how a spinoff about the cowboy would make sense. “It wasn’t until probably three or four months after [filming wrapped on Yellowstone] that everything started aligning.”
“We definitely wanted to make sure to give it a real story and make it interesting and make it believable,” he said. “If it was just like, ‘well, he’s happy’ — we’re just going to watch him be happy? That’s not very cool.”
CBS/Youtube
“But I’ll say this, the idea that was pitched to me is very, very good and very interesting and it really roped me in, and I think it will rope the audience in as well,” the actor said.
He teased that Kayce finds “a whole new world” in the spinoff, in a way that “makes sense.”
Y: Marshals premieres March 1 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS and Paramount+.
