Director from Yellowstone a spinoff The Marshals defends the show’s decision not to explain Monica’s shocking death off-screen.
“That’s why it didn’t affect me as a pilot. There is no explanation for Monica’s death in the pilot,” Greg Yaitaneswho directed the first game of the series, which was recently announced Collider about the launch of the CBS show.
The plan was not to go into detail about what happened to Monica (Kelsey Asbille).
“It would be once a year or two after the death of the character,” he continued. “You’ll be talking about the circumstances around you versus talking about that thing.”
Yaitanes thanked Asbille, adding, “It was really important that we had her protest photo, and she was lovely in giving us permission to do that. That was a really critical part of that scene. That’s what I thought that scene was about.”
Paramount Network Company Yellowstonewhich is spread from 2018 to 2024, is presented Us to Kayce (Luke Grimes) and his wife, Monica, who remained at the center of the show until the end. After teaching at a local school on the Broken Rock Indian Reservation, Monica went on to become a professor at Montana State University while accompanying Kayce, who brought them back to the Yellowstone Ranch following a falling out with her father John (Kevin Costner).
After John’s death, Kayce, a former US Navy SEAL, became the new owner and operator of Yellowstone Ranch. Kayce and Monica finished the show alive – and together – before the Marshals started.
When the series premiered in March, however, fans learned that Monica had died after a battle with cancer.
“My first question when I got the scripts, while I was reading them, was, ‘How are they going to undo Kayce’s happy ending?’ He had a great finish at the end of Yellowstone,” explained Yaitanes. “And I was really moved when I saw, ‘OK, life has gone to the other side.’ I can almost feel it [episode 2] really a driver, too [the pilot] it was a bridge between Yellowstone and the Marshalls.”
Yaitanes called the second episode “the show to watch.”
“Soon, being a single father to a son, which was something I couldn’t relate to, I’ve been a single father at different times in my life, I felt like the way it was handled and the humanity with which it was handled was really good, and I wanted to be a part of it,” he shared.
A runner Spencer Hudnut he also talked about the decision to kill Monica.
“Kayce had such a great ending in Yellowstone,” he told TVLine in March. “His dreams finally came true. When we were trying to figure out how to explain the next chapter in Kayce’s story, it felt like he really needed to be shaken up in that. Unfortunately, tragedy often gets to Kayce, so something bad was going to happen to him somehow. It just happened to be Monica.”
Hudnut said that Monica’s death will continue to drive Kayce, adding, “For me, Monica is really guiding Kayce in this first episode, trying to help her find her new path. And when you actually break it down, Tate is at that rally to honor her mother, and Kayce is going there to protect Tate. So if it wasn’t for Monica, Kayce wouldn’t be in that situation and she might not have found this path.”
He concluded by saying: “We really wanted to respect the way we said goodbye to him, and I didn’t want to step on the end of Yellowstone, because what they had was a good ending, unfortunately real life intervened.”
The Marshals airs Sundays on CBS at 8 pm ET.
