‘Yellowstone’ Season 4’s New Characters Revealed

Yellowstone Season 4 begins on Paramount Network Sunday night, meaning the return of the Dutton family. The new season also introduces a handful of new characters who were featured in a teaser for the upcoming episodes. Piper Perabo, Jacki Weaver, and Finn Little all play characters who will give Kevin Costner’s John Dutton and the Dutton family new challenges as they try to hold onto power in the West.

Perabo, best known for her work on USA Network’s Covert Affairs, stars as Summer Higgins, who comes to Montana as an animal rights activist. Once she learns what is really going on there though, “her plans get a lot bigger,” Perabo teased. In a scene from the show, Summer tells a police officer she and her group are there to protest the “existence of a state-sponsored police force that protects industrialized animal farming and the mass murder of millions f animals every year.”

Perabo also has a major behind-the-scenes connection to Yellowstone. Her husband, director Stephen Kay, worked with Yellowstone co-creator Taylor Sheridan on Sons of Anarchy. He also directed eight episodes of Yellowstone, including the second episode of Season 4, “Phantom Pain.” “What’s exciting about Season 4? It’s gonna be bad a—,” Perabo teased.

Next up is Weaver, who stars as Caroline Warner, the CEO of an investment company who has “come to town to straighten things out,” the Oscar-nominated star said. John Emmet Tracy, who plays Ellis Steele, called Caroline a “force of nature,” while Thomas Rainwater actor Gil Birmingham said she has “such a fire in her.” Weaver promised that her character will bring plenty of “fireworks” to the show as she tries to undermine everything the other characters have worked so hard for. Weaver is best known for her Oscar-nominated roles in Animal Kingdom and Silver Linings Playbook.

Little, who starred in Sheridan’s Those Who Wish Me Dead, plays Carter, a young kid who is taken in by the Duttons because he reminds them of Cole Hauser’s Rip. “Finn is great, I mean, he’s a natural,” Hauser said in the teaser. “It doesn’t start easy for him. You know, it’s tough treading.” Freddie J. Smith, who plays Lloyd said Carter is “more of an innocent slate” when he is introduced.

Yellowstone Season 4 kicks off on Sunday with the first two episodes at 8 p.m. ET on Paramount Network. Sheridan’s prequel series 1883 will debut exclusively on Paramount+ on Dec. 19. His other project, Mayor of Kingstown starring Jeremy Renner, will start on Paramount+ on Nov. 14. However, past episodes of Yellowstone are only available to stream on Peacock due to a previous licensing deal ViacomCBS struck with NBCUniversal.