‘Yellowstone’ Ratings: First Episode Without Kevin Costner Scores Show’s Biggest Premiere Night Audience Ever – You won’t believe it.

Millions of people couldn’t wait to see how Taylor Sheridan addressed the departure of Kevin Costner, it seems: Sunday night’s return of Yellowstone delivered the biggest premiere night audience ever with 16.4M viewers.

Still locked in a battle with Nielsen, Paramount Network is instead relying on data from the analytics outfit VideoAmp that looked at projected Total Persons/Live+SD gross viewership across all cable network and CBS airings.

According to those results, season 5B of the drama is up 3 percent versus the season 5A premiere in 2022 (16.4M vs. 15.9M).

The 2022 season 5A premiere/encores included seven cable networks while the 2024 premiere/encores include CBS and eight cable networks.

The Sunday night episode quickly answered the fate of Costner’s John Dutton; he was found dead by a fatal gunshot wound.

The initial thought was that he died of suicide, until viewers learned that a certain vixen played by Dawn Olivieri was just carrying out what Jamie (Wes Bentley) thought he wanted.

Six episodes are projected to wrap up Yellowstone before a contemporary spinoff takes the baton.

In June, Costner made it official via social media by announcing he won’t be returning to the ranch.

“I want to reach out and let you know that after this long year and a half of working on Horizon and doing all the things that’s required, and thinking about Yellowstone, that beloved series that I love, that I know you love, I just realized that I’m not going to be able to continue Season 5B or into the future,” he said.

“It was something that really changed me. I loved it. And I know you loved it.

And I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be returning and I love the relationship we’ve been able to develop and I’ll see you at the movies.”