How would ‘Yellowstone’ have ended if Kevin Costner never left?

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With Yellowstone fans still reeling over the intense series finale on Sunday night, inquiring minds want to know: How would the show have ended if Kevin Costner had never left?

Yellowstone executive producer Christina Alexandra Voros revealed just that — or at least, as much as she could— in an interview with Variety published on Tuesday, December 17.

“I never had a specific conversation with Michelle McGahan Taylor Sheridan about where this was going to end prior to Kevin’s departure. I do know that members of the cast have talked about conversations they had with him early on — you know, Season 1 — where they got the sense that he has always known that the ultimate ending has to be the loss of the patriarch and passing on the legacy,” Voros explained, clarifying that “that information is almost secondhand for me.”

Still, she said, “I do know that [Costner’s exit] changed the ‘how’ if not the ‘what,” while noting that she “wouldn’t be able to talk specifically about what that differential was.”

As fans know, Costner’s John Dutton was killed during the first episode of Season 5B, which aired in November. While the Dutton patriarch’s death initially seemed like a suicide, it was soon revealed that John’s estranged son Jamie’s girlfriend hired a hitman to take him out.

The series finale, which aired on Sunday, December 15, was centered around this plot line — with John’s daughter Beth (Kelly Reilly) promising, at his funeral, to avenge her father’s death by killing Jamie (Wes Bentley). After revealing to her estranged brother that they sold the family’s ranch for a mere $1 million, it appears that Jamie is about to kill her — until he is pulled off of her at the last minute by Rip (Cole Hauser). Beth then takes the moment to kill Jamie by plunging a knife into his chest.

Costner — who announced his official exit from the show in June, amid long-standing rumors of a rift between him and Yellowstone creator Sheridan — did not appear in the episode where his character was killed off, nor the series finale. His final episode of the fan-favorite series was Season 5, Episode 8.

As for the Academy Award winner’s exit affected Sheridan’s reworking of the show, Voros was candid in her response.

“I think the limitations that were put on Taylor with Kevin’s departure really brought out a side of his writing that I know people have mixed feelings about: The flashbacks and the way that the season was structured overall,” she admitted.

In her opinion, however, “I actually thought it brought out a different layer, the way that he puzzled through how to tell this story with the absence of the person that you’re telling the story about,” Voros explained. “I thought it made for some really interesting creative choices.”

Ultimately, she said, “Sometimes limitations can be the best friend of good art because it forces you to think creatively about things in a way that is not as straightforward as you might have originally planned.”