• Cole Hauser revealed that 3,400 rattlesnakes were caught and removed from the Dutton Ranch set over eight months of filming in Texas.
• A night shoot was canceled after a director found a den of 40 to 50 rattlesnakes at the location.
• Kelly Reilly confirmed the show employed six professional snake wranglers at any given time on set.
• Michelle Pfeiffer has also spoken about brutal conditions on Taylor Sheridan’s Montana and Texas productions.
• Hauser also explained why the spinoff is called Dutton Ranch — as a tribute to Kevin Costner’s John Dutton.

Cole Hauser has survived a lot as Rip Wheeler. Bar fights, cattle drives, the full force of Beth Dutton. But nothing quite prepared him — or really any of us — for the sheer number of rattlesnakes waiting on the Dutton Ranch set in Texas.

During a recent appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Hauser and co-star Kelly Reilly sat down with the host — a Fort Worth native who knew exactly what she was asking — when the topic of Texas wildlife came up. Clarkson didn’t mince words: “In Fort Worth, look, I know because I lived there, and there are a lot of rattlesnakes there. People don’t realize how many snakes are there. So I imagine y’all had kind of a time with that.”

They did. Hauser’s answer was delivered with the calm of a man who has clearly made peace with things most of us never will.

“Eight months, 3,400 rattlesnakes we caught,” he said.

Just let that number sit for a second. Three thousand, four hundred rattlesnakes. In eight months.

Snake Wranglers, Stilettos, and a Den That Shut Everything Down

Reilly — who plays Beth Dutton with the kind of fearless intensity that would make anyone assume she’s unflappable — admitted the snake situation was genuinely nerve-wracking. The production brought in six professional snake wranglers who would sweep locations ahead of the cast before any exterior filming began. That sounds reassuring in theory. In practice, Reilly was sprinting through open fields in stiletto heels hoping for the best.

“We have snake wranglers, like literally six of them on set at any point and I’m in these stiletto heels running through fields,” she said. “And I’m just praying, like, please let them have gotten all the snakes in this vicinity. And they would just pick them up and put them somewhere far away from us.”

There was at least one moment where even the wranglers said enough. Hauser revealed that a planned night shoot had to be scrapped entirely after director and cinematographer Christina discovered something no one wanted to find in the dark.

“That particular location we were at, we actually were gonna go film there at night and got turned away,” he said. “Christina found, like, I don’t know, 40 or 50 rattlesnakes.”

A den. Of rattlesnakes. At a night shoot location. Production wrapped early that evening.

The Broader Reality of Filming in Taylor Sheridan’s World

The rattlesnake chaos is extreme, but it fits a pattern. Filming Taylor Sheridan’s sprawling ranching universe — across Montana and Texas — has never been a comfortable, climate-controlled experience for anyone involved.

Michelle Pfeiffer, who stars as Stacy Clyburn in Sheridan’s latest Paramount+ series The Madison, spoke candidly about the conditions on the LA Times podcast In Conversation: The Madison. “You may as well be in a tent because, you know, there is no bathroom,” Pfeiffer said of filming in open terrain. “Even the outhouse is not real. So there’s no AC, there’s no plumbing, there isn’t anything. But it is breathtakingly glorious.”

She described a production that was still figuring itself out mid-shoot — no trailers nearby because they were filming 360 degrees, no food, no shade in summer, no heat in winter. “It took us about halfway through to figure all of that out,” she said.

Hauser, at least, came with some relevant background. He grew up on a ranch in Oregon for the first six years of his life, riding a little pony named Cinnamon bareback up into the mountains. He’d only head home when his mother rang the dinner bell — and Cinnamon, apparently, knew the sound better than he did. “Wherever I was, that little pony would turn and take me back to the house, drop its mane and I’d slide down because I was so small,” he recalled.

When his family moved to Florida, he told Clarkson, “my mom said I cried all the way across America.”

Clarkson’s response was immediate: “There’s a country song in there… Chris Stapleton would sing the s*** out of that.”

Why the Show Is Called Dutton Ranch, Not Wheeler Ranch

Beyond the wildlife drama, Hauser also addressed something fans of Yellowstone have been quietly wondering: why is the spinoff named Dutton Ranch when it follows Rip and Beth Wheeler? Speaking to Screen Rant, Hauser explained that the title is an intentional tribute to Kevin Costner’s John Dutton — and to the man himself.

“It’s in honor of John Dutton, and the love that they both have for him,” Hauser said. He added that Rip’s entire identity was shaped by John’s mentorship, and that influence carries into the new show — especially now that Rip and Beth have adopted Carter (played by Finn Little). The lessons John passed down to Rip are now being passed down again.

It’s a quieter kind of tribute than a memorial scene or a direct reference, but for a show built around legacy and land, it feels exactly right.

Dutton Ranch is currently airing on Paramount+.

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• Dutton Ranch, the Yellowstone spinoff starring Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser, premiered May 15 on Paramount+ and Paramount Network
• The nine-episode season drops new episodes every Friday through July 3
• Beth and Rip relocate to a fictional South Texas town after a wildfire destroys their Montana ranch
• Oscar nominees Ed Harris and Annette Bening join the cast as new series regulars
• Finn Little returns as Carter — and says he found out he was cast just a week before filming began

Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler are back — and this time, they’ve traded the Big Sky for South Texas. Dutton Ranch, the long-awaited Yellowstone spinoff, dropped its first two episodes on May 15, and if you thought the Duttons could ever actually settle into a peaceful life, well — you haven’t been paying attention.

The series picks up after the events of Yellowstone’s December 2024 series finale, with Kelly Reilly’s Beth and Cole Hauser’s Rip having retreated to a quiet ranch near Dillon, Montana. That peace lasts about five minutes. A wildfire tears through their property, leaving them with no choice but to start completely over. Six months later, they’re in Rio Paloma, Texas — a fictional South Texas town — on a 7,000-acre spread that comes with beautiful land, a slower pace, and, naturally, a whole new set of enemies.

Created by Chad Feehan with Yellowstone’s Taylor Sheridan serving as executive producer, the show is built squarely around the two characters fans most wanted to follow after the flagship ended. And based on those first two episodes, it’s already delivering the drama, the slow-burn tension, and the Beth Dutton one-liners that made Yellowstone appointment viewing in the first place.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ljQbO8NHeuY%3Ffeature%3Doembed

What Happens in the First Two Episodes

Episode 1, “The Untold Want,” wastes no time establishing the show’s central conflict. While Beth navigates the social dynamics of a new town — including a tense first meeting with Beulah Jackson (Annette Bening), the iron-willed matriarch of the rival 10 Petal Ranch — Rip is already stumbling into trouble. He discovers the body of a murdered ranch hand on his land and, in true Rip Wheeler fashion, decides to hide it rather than involve anyone else. Beth doesn’t know. Yet.

The murder belongs to Rob-Will Jackson (Jai Courtney), Beulah’s younger son and the ranch’s foreman. He killed the hand after suspecting the man knew about his involvement in something shady. His older brother Joaquin (Juan Pablo Raba) — polished, calculated, the businessman of the family — is left to manage the aftermath and deal with the dead man’s grieving wife. The contrast between the two brothers is already one of the more compelling dynamics the show is setting up.

Bening’s Beulah is the kind of character you immediately understand: firm, no-nonsense, used to getting what she wants. When Beth comes looking for a butcher to slaughter her steer, Beulah offers to help — but only in exchange for a cut of the profits. Beth, predictably, is not having it.

The Beth-Rip dynamic gets its own tender moments too, including a steamy shower scene that reminded fans exactly why this couple became such a phenomenon. And in a notable twist on one of the show’s familiar patterns, Beth’s sharp tongue finds a different target in Texas. Rather than tearing someone apart at a bar — a Yellowstone calling card — she meets Ed Harris’ veterinarian Everett McKinney under completely different circumstances: a roadside car accident involving an injured horse. She persuades him to save the animal on the spot, and the two strike up what looks like a genuine friendship. It’s a warmer side of Beth than Yellowstone often showed.

Episode 2, “Earn Another Day,” deepens the Jackson family drama as Joaquin and Rob-Will realize the body has been moved, and Carter begins forming a connection with Oreana (Natalie Alyn Lind), Beulah’s granddaughter and Rob-Will’s daughter — the heir apparent to the 10 Petal Ranch, whether she wants the job or not.

Finn Little Found Out He Was Cast a Week Before Filming

Finn Little is back as Carter, now 19 years old after first joining Yellowstone at 14. He told PEOPLE the character “has been my life” — and that he almost missed the call entirely. “I didn’t hear anything about it until like a week before I flew out,” he revealed. “Yeah, it was just like, ‘Hey, it’s happening, hope you’re ready.’ I was like, ‘Oh, all right. Let’s go.'”

He was excited to return, he says, because he genuinely wanted to see where Carter was headed. “A lot has changed since we last saw him,” Little said at the New York City premiere on May 12. “He’s growing into himself — but trouble’s brewing.” Specifically, that trouble involves Oreana. “I think Carter sees a lot of Beth in Oreana, that fierceness and that strong personality. I think that’s what attracts Carter.”

His pitch to Yellowstone fans sitting on the fence? “Beth and Rip are a staple of Yellowstone. They’re some of people’s favorite characters. So if you love Beth and Rip, you’ll love Dutton Ranch, and you’ll love all the new problems that come along with it.”

Behind the scenes, one of those new problems was surprisingly technical. In Episode 2, Carter and Oreana bond over shooting beer cans — a classic Texas meet-cute, essentially. But Little told /Film the scene gave the crew fits: “We kept having problems with the squibs, the bottles that kept going off. You’d shoot two, and then I’d shoot two, but you kept shooting … They were blank rounds, but you’d shoot two, and then three would go off.” Lind, who had prior experience with firearms on set, noted that blank rounds come with their own challenges: “It’s the recoil that’s a little bit more intense with a real bullet than it is with a blank. That was the hardest part about it.”

The Full Season 1 Release Schedule

Dutton Ranch runs nine episodes in its first season, dropping every Friday on Paramount+ and airing at 7 p.m. on Paramount Network. Here’s the full schedule:

• Episode 1 — May 15: “The Untold Want”
• Episode 2 — May 15: “Earn Another Day”
• Episode 3 — May 22: “Act of God Business”
• Episode 4 — May 29: “Start with a Bullet”
• Episode 5 — June 5: TBD
• Episode 6 — June 12: TBD
• Episode 7 — June 19: TBD
• Episode 8 — June 26: TBD
• Episode 9 — July 3: “El Padrino”

The season finale was directed by executive producer Christina Alexandra Voros, who also helmed the premiere episodes. Voros has already made her feelings about a potential second season clear. “I would stay on this ride forever,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “And I would go anywhere with Kelly and Cole. I think there’s an infinite number of possibilities for characters like Rip and Beth. They are like a modern day Bonnie and Clyde.”

The Yellowstone franchise — which a Bloomberg analysis estimated has generated nearly $3 billion in sales and $700 million in profit — isn’t slowing down anytime soon. And with Beth and Rip finally off the Dutton Ranch and onto their own, the show has room to go wherever it wants. New episodes drop every Friday. Don’t miss them.

The post Dutton Ranch: Full Episode Schedule and What to Expect appeared first on Cream.

• Dutton Ranch premieres May 15 on Paramount+ with two episodes, following Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler relocating to Texas after a wildfire destroys their Montana ranch.
• Annette Bening and Ed Harris join the cast as formidable new characters who critics say steal scenes from the leads.
• The series was filmed almost entirely outdoors in north-central Texas in extreme conditions — 118-degree heat and 275 snakes caught on set.
• Creator Chad Feehan was fired three weeks before premiere, though Taylor Sheridan remains an executive producer.
• Kelly Reilly says she wants Jennifer Landon, Luke Grimes, and Wes Bentley to cameo in future episodes.

Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler are back — and everything’s bigger in Texas.

Dutton Ranch, the long-awaited Yellowstone spinoff starring Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser, premieres May 15 on Paramount+ with two back-to-back episodes, and by nearly every account, it delivers exactly what fans have been starving for since the flagship series wrapped in 2024. The show picks up where Yellowstone left off — Beth and Rip living quietly on a small Montana ranch with their adopted son Carter (Finn Little) — right before a devastating wildfire burns it all down and forces the family to start over in the fictional Texas border town of Rio Paloma.

“That’s the point, this isn’t ‘Yellowstone,'” Reilly told USA TODAY ahead of the premiere. “We had to pluck these characters off a world they knew into a new one to start again and grow them in a different direction.”

She’s not wrong. After five seasons of Montana grandeur, John Dutton’s shadow, and the suffocating weight of family legacy, Dutton Ranch strips Beth and Rip down to something rawer and, arguably, more compelling: the underdog story. In Rio Paloma, nobody knows the Dutton name. Nobody owes them anything. And the land itself — sun-scorched, snake-infested, nothing like the lush green vistas of the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch — makes sure they feel it.

Texas Is a Beast — On Screen and Off

Hauser, 51, wasn’t being dramatic when he described the production conditions to USA TODAY. “Texas is a beast,” he said, with Reilly nodding along. “We’re not on soundstages, except for interior house shots. I don’t think a lot of people understand filming in that environment. The idea of the crew and the actors being outside — it’s 118 degrees out there. And then it will start snowing. It’s like the weather can’t make up its mind.”

The heat was only part of it. Director and cinematographer Christina Alexandra Voros — who also shot The Madison — supervised a production that had snake wranglers catching 275 venomous snakes during filming. “There are snakes onscreen, but far more don’t make it on camera,” Voros said. “Texas is filled with things that will bite you, sting you and scare you.” Add 2.6 million feral hogs roaming the state, and the new setting isn’t just a backdrop — it’s an antagonist in its own right.

The Dutton Ranch itself is deliberately unglamorous. Weathered, rustic, a far cry from the palatial Yellowstone Dutton Ranch. Hauser loves it that way. “We love it the way it is, it’s all sort of 1920s Texas,” he said. “They come from the glitz and glamor of the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch, but for them personally, they want to sort of slip right under the radar, and have some peace and serenity.”

Reilly echoed that sentiment, describing Texas as its own kind of character — one the show is still getting acquainted with. “Montana was the biggest character of Yellowstone,” she said. “So now we have a new character in Texas. We’re sizing it up, and it’s sizing us up as well.”

And yet those opening Montana scenes — shot after two to three months already deep into Texas production — hit differently because of it. “Being back in Montana, we were desperate for the mountain air,” Reilly recalled. “And our horses were ready too. You should have seen the horses and how they held their heads. They just wanted to fly.” The camera crews couldn’t keep up. “They had a truck with the camera on the gimbal, and they kept telling us to slow down,” Hauser said. “But those horses really wanted to go.”

Annette Bening and Ed Harris Walk In and Own the Place

If there’s one thing every critic agrees on, it’s this: the new cast is exceptional, and Annette Bening and Ed Harris are operating on another level entirely.

Bening plays Beulah Jackson, the iron-fisted matriarch of the 10 Petal Ranch — Rio Paloma’s reigning dynasty and Beth and Rip’s primary obstacle. Described by Variety as essentially “a lady version of John Dutton, with a lot more turquoise and a distinctive Texas twang,” Beulah is the kind of villain who doesn’t raise her voice because she doesn’t need to. Her introduction — coldly informing her foreman, “I will not tolerate disappointment” — sets the tone immediately.

When she and Beth first lock horns, it’s appointment television. Reilly described their dynamic to USA TODAY as “circling each other like animals,” adding, “I wanted these women to be completely different animals.” Beth’s private assessment of Beulah as a “grizzly in Gucci” is almost a compliment — and Collider’s review put it perfectly, comparing their scenes to “watching two sharks slowly circle each other in the same tank while anxiously waiting for one of them to strike.”

Harris, meanwhile, plays Everett McKinney, a Vietnam veteran and large-animal vet who becomes one of the few people in Rio Paloma that Beth and Rip can actually trust. TV Insider called it “the role that Ed Harris was born to play at this stage in his career,” and IndieWire noted that Harris and Bening are “already stealing Dutton Ranch out from under Beth and Rip” — which, given how much those two carry, is saying something.

Reilly, who is also an executive producer on the series, gushed about the new additions at the show’s premiere. “Everyone came with such passion and care, and they loved the original show — the mothership, I call it,” she told Entertainment Tonight. “That’s why they are all here. That’s why we have Annette and that’s why we have Ed. It’s because they loved the show, and they wanted to be a part of it.”

Jai Courtney rounds out the Jackson family as Rob-Will, Beulah’s volatile, reckless son whose bad decisions set much of the drama in motion. Juan Pablo Raba (Narcos) plays Joaquin, the more measured attorney brother left to clean up Rob-Will’s messes. Marc Menchaca (Ozark) plays Zachariah, an ex-con who found faith in prison and is now looking for honest ranch work — his job interview line, “God loves cowboys,” lands with the kind of earnest weight only this universe could pull off. And Natalie Alyn Lind plays Oreana, a free-spirited young woman who pulls Carter into his first real romance, much to Beth’s complicated feelings about it.

What the Critics Are Saying

The consensus from critics who received four episodes in advance is largely positive, with some caveats about the premiere’s pacing.

Collider called it “the best Yellowstone spin-off yet” and praised the writers’ room — led by showrunner Chad Feehan (Lawmen: Bass Reeves) rather than Sheridan — for revitalizing Beth and Rip in fresh ways. “The overexaggerated characterization that previously defined them in so many of Yellowstone’s final episodes… is nowhere to be found in this iteration,” the review noted, pointing specifically to the toxic Beth-Jamie dynamic that dragged Season 5 down.

TV Insider was enthusiastic, calling it “gut-wrenching” and praising the show for revealing Beth’s softer side — her bond with Everett, her maternal watchfulness over Carter — without defanging her. Movieweb gave it 4 out of 5, noting that “the fourth episode is particularly heart-wrenching, proving that Dutton Ranch can pull at our emotions in slightly different ways than we saw in Yellowstone.”

Page Six’s review called it “a winner” despite some clunky writing, while Tom’s Guide — written by someone who’d never watched a full episode of Yellowstone — declared it the best Taylor Sheridan-adjacent project in recent memory, ahead of Landman Season 2 and The Madison.

The criticisms that do surface are consistent: the series premiere is a bit scattered, some of the dialogue skews toward the faux-profound (there’s apparently a speech about how the Texas sky stretches on forever), and Finn Little’s Carter is flagged as a weak link by more than one reviewer. Variety also noted the conspicuous absence of Native characters, whose storylines provided some of Yellowstone‘s most nuanced material, with the show substituting Tejano characters like foreman Azul (J.R. Villarreal) in a similar narrative role.

IndieWire offered perhaps the most memorable critique — lamenting a scene where Everett is called to the stage to sing at a bar, only for the show to cut away before a single note is heard. “Why introduce Everett as a singer if not to hear him sing?” the review asked. It’s a small moment, but one that captures the show’s occasional tendency to set up something unexpected and then flinch.

The behind-the-scenes story adds its own layer of intrigue: Feehan was let go three weeks before premiere, long after production wrapped, with Sheridan remaining as executive producer. The AV Club noted that one of the stars insisted “Taylor’s got his hands all over this show” — and whether or not that’s literally true, the DNA is unmistakable. String-heavy score, sweeping slow-motion landscapes, animals mourned more visibly than humans, and shameless camp delivered with complete conviction.

Beth on Horseback — and Who She Wants to See Again

One of the more quietly meaningful changes in Dutton Ranch is Beth on horseback. During Yellowstone, she rarely rode — a traumatic childhood incident involving a horse led to her mother’s death, and the show honored that. But that chapter is behind her now, and Reilly’s riding skills are front and center in the new series.

“Kelly is a great rider, she slipped right in,” Hauser said — before adding, with characteristic dry humor, that his own riding double “gets a lot of money for doing nothing” since Hauser insists on doing his own riding. Reilly, for her part, is happy to use her double when needed but clearly capable without one. “I’ve been riding all my life,” she said. “My horse, Cowboy, is 25 years old. He’s been there, done that. He looks after me.”

As for the old Yellowstone faces she’d love to see pop up in the spinoff, Reilly didn’t hesitate when asked at the premiere. Three names: Jennifer Landon’s Teeter (“She’s a Texan. I think she should pop up”), Luke Grimes’ Kayce (“that would be fun — everyone has asked if we would meet”), and Wes Bentley, whose character Jamie didn’t survive Yellowstone but whose actor Reilly called “one of my favorite actors and humans on planet Earth.” A Dutton Ranch-Marshals crossover has been widely speculated, and a Beth-Kayce reunion does feel inevitable at some point.

For now, Hauser is confident that Yellowstone‘s devoted fanbase — which drew over 16 million viewers at its peak — will find their footing in this new landscape. “At times it’s been very difficult,” he said of the Texas shoot. “But the backdrop, in my opinion — our ranch, the topography, the sunsets — they are just to die for. The old audience that is used to Montana beauty will hopefully find beauty in Texas as well.”

Dutton Ranch premieres May 15 on Paramount+ and the Paramount Network with its first two episodes. The season runs nine episodes total.

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