The series finale of Yellowstone is being kept so tightly under wraps that even some cast members are unaware of how it ends.
In an exclusive interview, Ian Bohen — who plays rancher Ryan — dished on the lengths production went to in order to keep what awaits the Dutton family a surprise. “There were redacted scripts this season to maintain the secrecy of the final episode,” the actor, 48, told Us. “There’s a page count and you have an idea where the end is [compared to] where you are looking, [but] I don’t know the distance between those two. It’s very nebulous.”
“To be absolutely truthful, I don’t know how it ends,” he continued. “I know what happens, so to speak, but I don’t know how it happens. I feel comfortable saying I don’t know how it ends.”
Bohen also stayed tight-lipped on what fans can expect from Ryan and Lainey Wilson’s Abby, who shared an emotional goodbye in the midseason finale after the singer learned the ranch hand would be heading off to Texas.
“What I can tell you is that the chemistry between Ryan and Abby, and the potential for their story to continue, is so massive that it would be a terrible shame if we didn’t see them again,” the Teen Wolf alum teased. “I would be shocked if you didn’t see that moment in the upcoming season.”
One thing Bohen is confident in is that season 5B — which he described as “incredibly dramatic, traumatic, heartbreaking and hopeful” — will meet loyal viewers’ expectations.
“From the very beginning, we kind of told you where we were going,” he shared. “If you go back and watch the first bit, it’s quite obvious where this thing is going to end up — and no one wants to believe that. But we do land there, and I believe it will be satisfying.”
Now that he’s wrapped filming (“It’s a feeling, I’ll tell you,” he admitted) Bohen is already looking back on what he refers to as the adventure that comes along “once in a lifetime.”
“We started in the great room of the house with a table read, and we [were] all looking at each other, reading and not knowing who characters were or where they came from,” he explained.
Seven years later, there’s been “discovery, playfulness, a lot of hard work and sometimes conditions and moments where you’re thinking, ‘Man, I don’t know if I want to do this anymore,’ but we push through together and we became a family.”
As for whether fans can expect to see Ryan’s story continue to unfold in a spinoff or a continuation of Yellowstone, Bohen is crossing his fingers (“He’s got a lot of untapped potential,” he shared of the character) but ultimately, it’s all up to the series’ cocreator, Taylor Sheridan.
“The characters are so brilliant that it would be a shame to not see them again,” he told Us, noting the “powers that be” are currently in talks. “But there’s so many factors that it’s impossible for anyone to say except the boss — and if he wants to do it, it will be done.”
Until then, Bohen is enjoying his downtime and adjusting to his new normal. “I miss early mornings on horseback in the arena at the ranch [with] the white barn on one side and the mountains on the other,” he said, noting the camaraderie he found on set of the Western drama is “hard to come by.” Most importantly, “I’ll miss the people, their faces and their energy.”
Yellowstone returns on Paramount Network Sunday, November 10, at 8 p.m. ET.
