Fans Say Taylor Sheridan’s 5-Step Playbook Strikes Again: Landman Mirrors the Yellowstone Universe

Taylor Sheridan keeps cranking out shows like a one-man studio, and a chunk of his audience is starting to feel like they can see the gears turning. If you have been watching his stuff lately and thinking: Wait, didn’t we already do this? You’re not alone.

The fan gripe that keeps popping up

Over on Reddit, one frustrated viewer summed up the mood after binging the most recent 'Yellowstone' run and the first season of 'Landman'.

'Nothing has made me realize how much Taylor Sheridan is in love with himself than the last season of Yellowstone and the first season of Landman.'

Plenty of commenters piled on with the same complaints: predictable beats, the same character types in different hats, and those Sheridan cameos that feel more winky than necessary. It stings extra because this is the same guy who wrote 'Sicario' and 'Hell or High Water' and helped shove the modern Western back into the mainstream. The rap now? Formulaic structures and characters who test your patience.

How we got here

Sheridan didn’t hit this level of fame until he moved from acting to writing. 'Yellowstone' was the big swing that landed, and it landed hard. Ever since, it’s felt like that show’s skeleton has been repurposed across the wider Sheridan-verse, whether it is 'Mayor of Kingstown', 'Tulsa King', 'Special Ops: Lioness', or 'Landman'. The machine has been humming and shows keep arriving.

The method behind the output

In a Utah Film Studios interview, Sheridan described his process like this:

'I think the best stories are when you don’t plot it out, and you let yourself go on a journey, and you’re as surprised to see what happens next as the person who’s gonna read it, and so that’s how I like to write.'

That discovery-first approach can be electric when you’re focused on one project. When you’re juggling a whole slate at once, though, it also makes it pretty easy to drift back to what worked last time. And because 'Yellowstone' is the crown jewel, you can see why everything else might start to rhyme with it.

About those cameos

Another thing fans keep calling out: Sheridan popping up in his own shows. In 'Yellowstone', he plays Travis Wheatley, a horse trader who drops in across 12 episodes. He also turns up in the prequel '1883' and in 'Special Ops: Lioness'. You can trace the habit back to 2016’s 'Hell or High Water', where he slipped himself on screen too. The gripe isn’t that creators can’t have a little fun; it is that these appearances often don’t feel essential to the story (or to the Dutton family saga), so they read as distractions.

The bigger picture

Here’s the twist: even with all the criticism, plenty of people still see Sheridan as a singular talent who built a culturally loud TV empire mostly on his own taste and instincts. Both things can be true: the man moves the needle, and the playbook is starting to show through the pages.

• 'Yellowstone' quick facts: created by Taylor Sheridan; aired June 20, 2018 through December 15, 2024; Rotten Tomatoes score sits at 83%; streaming now on Peacock.
• Current availability: 'Landman' is streaming on Paramount+.
• Other Sheridan shows in the mix: 'Mayor of Kingstown', 'Tulsa King', 'Special Ops: Lioness'.
• Cameo track record: Sheridan as Travis Wheatley in 'Yellowstone' (12 episodes), plus appearances in '1883' and 'Special Ops: Lioness'; first self-insert back in 'Hell or High Water' (2016).

Are you seeing the same playbook across his shows, or do the differences outweigh the deja vu? Drop your take below.