These Yellowstone Characters Need Their Own Spinoff Now

Yellowstone didn’t just become a hit — it grew into its own frontier-sized TV ecosystem. Taylor Sheridan keeps spinning out new branches, and honestly, a lot of the best ideas are already sitting in plain sight: characters with enough history, contradictions, and unresolved business to carry their own shows. If we’re picking worthy leads from the flagship, here’s who makes the most sense and why.

Six Yellowstone characters who could (and should) anchor a spinoff

1. Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham)

   One of the show’s most grounded and layered figures, Rainwater runs the Broken Rock Indian Reservation and navigates the mess where politics, heritage, and survival all collide. A series built around him writes itself: the day-to-day push and pull on the reservation, activism and cultural preservation, the realpolitik of keeping a community intact, and yes, what the landscape looks like in a post-Dutton era. It’s a chance to actually center Indigenous leadership in modern America instead of treating it like background color.

2. Carter (Finn Little)

   His arc quietly sneaks up on you: a kid who’s been failed by everyone trying to carve out something resembling stability at the ranch. That’s classic redemption material and a clean entry point for the franchise’s next generation. A Carter spinoff could track what it means to grow up Dutton-adjacent without being one — the generational trauma, the scramble for belonging, and the idea of legacy from the perspective of someone who isn’t born into it. He’s a bridge character, and bridges take you somewhere new.

3. Lloyd Pierce (Forrie J. Smith)

   Lloyd is the bunkhouse’s soul — a lifer who has ridden for the brand longer than most viewers have been alive. The angle here isn’t just nostalgia; it’s time. Follow his younger years and you’ve got a story about the fading era of traditional cowboys and the cost of keeping that way of life on life support. It’s also a rare shot to stare down aging, loyalty, and masculinity in the modern West. Forrie J. Smith brings such unvarnished authenticity that Lloyd already feels like living folklore.

4. Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes)

   John Dutton’s son is a war veteran turned rancher who can’t stop colliding with his own past. Kayce’s Navy SEAL history and the spiritual journey he’s been on set up a series that could flex between character study and procedural muscle. The premise writes itself: a man trying to balance violence and peace, family and identity, the uniform he wore and the name he carries. Flash back to his SEAL years, push forward through his visions, and you’ve got something more introspective — and murkier — than Yellowstone proper.

5. Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser)

   The ranch’s hammer. Tough, honorable, scarred to the bone, and a full-on fan favorite. We’ve only seen parts of how Rip became the most feared enforcer under the Yellowstone brand. A spinoff could go all the way back: the abusive childhood, John Dutton taking him in, and the slow-burn transformation into the man everyone crosses at their own risk. The emotional ballast is his love for Beth, which keeps the story from becoming just a fistfight montage. Go darker and grittier and you can really examine how that brand makes — and breaks — the people who wear it.

6. Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly)

   Beth is the exception every time someone says Sheridan can’t write complicated women. She’s a cultural lightning bolt: fierce, razor-sharp, volatile, and carrying damage like a second skin — and she hijacks every scene she’s in. A Beth series could play in high-stakes corporate warfare while pulling back the curtain on her vulnerabilities, life beyond the ranch, and the upbringing that forged her. Kelly Reilly has already proven she can hold the frame by herself. The show practically pitches itself: power, self-destruction, survival — all inside male-dominated rooms that think they can handle her. They can’t.

Different flavors, same promise: political drama, personal redemption, brutal realism — pick your lane and the modern American West still has miles of road left to travel. Which one are you watching first?

Yellowstone is streaming on Paramount+.