'Yellowstone' Returns With Series-High Ratings for Season 2 Premiere

Yellowstone returned for Season 2 with a even bigger audience for Paramount Network.

The drama series drew 2.4 million viewers Wednesday, the show's second-largest audience ever behind the series premiere (2.83 million). Replays on Paramount and fellow Viacom channel TV Land and a simulcast on CMT pushed the total for the night to 3.9 million.

The Hollywood Reporter writes the hit series also hit highs in the core demographic for the network, growing by double digits over the series premiere in both adults 25-54 and 18-49. The numbers are expected to get much larger in the future with delayed and digital viewing.

Season 1 averaged 5 million viewers per episode across all platforms.

The coder-day western drama from Taylor Sheridan and John Linson centers around the Dutton Family Ranch and its efforts to protect their generations-old ranch — the largest in the country — from land developers, a Native American Reservation, the first National Park and a slew of other outside forces threatening its existence.

Paramount Network gave the show an extra dose of confidence ahead of the premiere episode Wednesday when it renewed the show for Season 3, also announcing Lost star Josh Holloway would be joining the cast in the upcoming season, expected to air in 2020.

Holloway will play the role of Roarke Carter, a new recurring character described as a handsome, charming, shaggy-haired hedge fund manager with ambitious plans for Montana.

"We really want things to be cinematic with really great storytelling and have complex, nuanced, complicated characters where the setting is almost like a prime character of the whole piece," Kent Alterman, President of Comedy Central, Paramount Network, and TV Land, told the publication in May. "The best example of that is Yellowstone. It's very cinematic. It has a movie star in Kevin Costner. It's got really deep, rich, complicated characters, the great interpersonal family relationships, and it can just keep exploring a lot of different stories with those characters."

Kevin Costner, playing his first regular role on a TV series, leads the cast, which also features Luke Grimes, Kelly Reilly, Wes Bentley, Cole Hauser and Kelsey Asbille. Sheridan, John Linson, Art Linson, Costner, David C. Glasser and Bob Yari are the executive producers. The show is co-produced by 101 Studio.

Co-creator Sheridan is also set to premiere an unscripted series, The Last Cowboy, in July on the Paramount Network, showing the confidence the relatively new cable outlet has on the brand.

Yellowstone airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET on Paramount Network.