‘Yellowstone’ Brings Back ‘1883’ Star for Special Finale Role

Yellowstone brought the Dutton family’s story full circle in Sunday’s series finale with a special cameo from 1883‘s Elsa Dutton.

Elsa, played by Isabel May in the Yellowstone prequel, lent her voice to the end of the series finale, wrapping up the Duttons’ story on a contemplative note. “Raw land, wild land, free land can never be owned, but some men pay dearly for its stewardship,” she said as the episode wrapped up. “They will suffer and sacrifice to live off it and live with it and hopefully teach the next generation to do the same.”

Elsa’s words strike home for her ancestors, who save the land their family had lived on for over a century by selling it back to the Broken Rock Reservation to save it from being seized and developed. In return, Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) and his family are allowed to remain at the East Camp of the ranch, and the Broken Rock tribe makes a promise not to offload or develop the land.

As the people of the Broken Rock Reservation celebrate their new land, Mo (Mo Brings Plenty) follows a group of kids into the woods, where he finds them toppling Dutton family headstones. Mo scolds the kids, vowing to protect the Dutton legacy, replacing Elsa Dutton’s headstone before her narration ties together some of the final loose ends of Taylor Sheridan’s finale.

Fans noted that the fate of the Dutton Ranch was actually teased in 1883, with a prophecy promising that the Duttons would keep the land for seven generations totaling 141 years before it was returned to the Indigenous people.

Elsa’s narration also tied together all of the existing Yellowstone spinoffs, as May has now provided voiceovers for each of the series in the Dutton universe. Elsa told her own character’s story on 1883 and also voiced the introduction of 1923, which follows the story of her younger brothers.

1923 returns for its second season on Paramount+ on Feb. 23 and stars Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, Timothy Dalton, Julia Schlaepfer and Brandon Sklenar in addition to Jerome Flynn, Darren Mann, Brian Geraghty, Aminah Nieves, Michelle Randolph, Sebastian Roché, and Jennifer Carpenter.