Sheridan Just Killed a Yellowstone Spin-Off Fans Waited 5 Years for: 'I Would Never Do That', and It's Personal

If you have been waiting, since the Biden administration, for the Yellowstone spin-off where Jimmy Hurdstrom finally gets his own show on the legendary Four Sixes Ranch in Texas — first of all, I respect your stamina. Second: it's dead. Taylor Sheridan killed it himself, on a rodeo podcast, on a Tuesday.

What He Said

Sheridan went on the Rodeo Time podcast on August 18 and, when the subject of 6666 came up, did not hedge. There is never going to be one, he said. He would never fictionalize that ranch. People thought it was going to happen, and he was never going to do it.

Which is a funny thing to say about a series that Paramount+ greenlit in February 2021, that was promoted at an upfront presentation, that had a logline, that had executive producers attached (Sheridan, John Linson, Art Linson, David Glasser, Ron Burkle, Bob Yari), and that was seeded so obviously into Yellowstone Season 4 that the entire fandom treated it as a done deal.

"I would never do that," says the man who announced he was doing it.

The Setup That Never Paid Off

Quick refresher for the normies. In Season 4, Jimmy — the lovable screwup played by Jefferson White, the one who kept falling off horses — gets shipped from the Dutton ranch in Montana down to the Four Sixes in Texas to become a real cowboy. He does. He meets a girl. He grows up. The whole arc has the unmistakable shape of a backdoor pilot, and the official series description leaned all the way in: a ranch founded when Comanches still ruled West Texas, the most history-soaked spread in America, where world-class cowboys are born and made. Etc.

Sheridan, for what it's worth, agrees the footage is good. He told the podcast he's pulled every Jimmy-at-the-Sixes scene off the show, strung them together on his computer, and it plays as its own perfect little movie — a misfit goes in, a respected cowboy comes out. So the show exists. It's just on Taylor Sheridan's laptop.

Why It's Personal

Here's the twist, and it's a good one. Between the announcement and now, Sheridan bought the ranch. The real one. With a group of investors. The 266,000-acre Four Sixes, in family hands since 1870, sold for the first time in its history, reportedly in the neighborhood of $320 million.

And once you own the place, the math changes. His reasoning on the podcast, paraphrased:

• Real people work there. They raise their families there.
• Making up lives for them and inventing drama would trivialize the place.
• He couldn't do that to the cowboys who've dedicated themselves to the ranch.
• He considers himself the person responsible for protecting the Sixes, and he's very, very careful with it.

Which, fine. It's a defensible position. It's also a position held by a man who has built an empire on fictionalizing ranches, oil fields, Tulsa, and the entire concept of Montana. The Duttons have committed roughly forty murders across five seasons. But the Sixes? The Sixes are sacred. The Sixes are his.

Taylor Sheridan will invent a body count for any patch of dirt in the American West, except the one he has the deed to.

Where This Leaves the Franchise

If you're keeping score at home, the Yellowstone universe currently contains:

• 1883 and 1923, the prequels
• The Madison, the Michelle Pfeiffer one
• Y: Marshals, the Kayce one, on CBS
• The long-rumored Beth-and-Rip show, reportedly titled Dutton Ranch
• A Matthew McConaughey spin-off that was announced, then quietly evaporated
• And now 6666, officially downgraded from "in development" to "a file on Taylor's desktop"

All of this against the backdrop of Sheridan leaving Paramount for a reported billion-dollar deal at NBCUniversal while his Paramount contract technically runs through 2028, which is the kind of corporate situation that makes "never" a very flexible word.

Jefferson White, to his credit, saw this coming. He said months ago that he'd heard nothing about the show, offered a "fingers crossed," and went back to his life. Uncross them, Jimmy. You had a perfect little movie. It's just that only one man has seen it.