Yellowstone Taylor Sheridan’s crown is slipping. What once felt like lightning in a bottle now tastes like reheated leftovers, and fans are done pretending Landman and late-stage Yellowstone aren’t proof that the king of neo-Westerns has started phoning it in.
The Sheriff Who Once Owned the Range
Five years ago, saying “Taylor Sheridan” in a room full of TV fans was like dropping a lit match into dry grass. Sicario tore through theaters, Hell or High Water stole awards season, 1883 made grown men cry in their trucks, and Yellowstone became the biggest show on cable that nobody with a Netflix subscription wanted to admit they watched. He wasn’t just writing neo-Westerns; he was resurrecting an entire genre, dusting off the cowboy hat, and making it bleed, love, and swear in ways that felt brand-new.
The First Cracks in the Myth
Then the empire got too big for one man to ride herd on. Yellowstone Season 5 limped across the finish line with a finale that felt written on a cocktail napkin between private-jet flights. Jamie’s arc ended with all the ceremony of a microwave dinner, Beth screamed the same three insults for the 47th time, and John Dutton’s grave looked cheaper than the props on a community-theater stage.
Reddit lit up like a prairie fire. “Season 1-3 Sheridan could eat Season 5 Sheridan for breakfast,” one user wrote. Another posted side-by-side screenshots: the sweeping, silent tracking shots of 1883 versus the zoom-call dialogue dumps of 1923 Season 2. The verdict was brutal and unanimous; the magician had started reusing the same trick.
Landman: The Straw That Broke the Bronco
Landman was supposed to be the reset button. Billy Bob Thornton in hard hats, West Texas oil fields, billion-dollar deals, and enough explosions to make Michael Bay jealous. Instead it landed like a wet firecracker. Female characters were either shrill caricatures or sexy plot devices who existed to cry in pickup trucks. Dialogue that once crackled now clanged: every roughneck spouted the exact same “gruff wisdom” monologue Sheridan has been copy-pasting since Wind River.
Viewers who stuck with it started keeping score. “That’s the sixth time someone said ‘this land will kill you before it lets you leave,’” one X user posted, complete with time-stamps. The thread got 12k likes in a day. Even the drone shots, once Sheridan’s signature poetry, began to feel like stock footage he bought in bulk.
1923 Season 2: Gorgeous, Empty Calvary
1923 Season 2 should have been bulletproof. Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren aging like fine whiskey, Spencer Dutton hunting lions in Africa, Teonna Rainwater waging war on genocide; the ingredients were perfect. Yet somehow the soufflé collapsed. Episodes stretched tragedies until they snapped, turning real historical pain into prestige-TV torture porn.
Fans noticed the same disease that killed Yellowstone: every character started sounding like Taylor Sheridan doing stand-up in a mirror. A Catholic nun, a Maasai warrior, and a Montana rancher all delivered the exact same rant about “men who take what ain’t theirs.” When even Helen Mirren can’t sell a line, you know the writer’s tank is running on fumes.
The Numbers Don’t Lie Anymore
Paramount+ quietly stopped bragging about Landman viewership after week three. Yellowstone’s finale drew 11 million viewers, huge on paper, but the next-day buzz was funeral-quiet compared to the 2018 premiere that broke the internet. Rotten Tomatoes audience scores tell the story in neon: Hell or High Water (97%), 1883 (89%), Yellowstone Season 1 (83%), Landman (41%). The graph looks like a rodeo clown who forgot how to fall.
Too Many Saddles, Not Enough Horses
The math is merciless. Sheridan is credited as creator, writer, director, and showrunner on seven active series. That’s roughly 70 hours of television per year from one human brain. Even peak Aaron Sorkin never tried to juggle that much barbed wire. Die-hard fans point to the schedule and whisper the word nobody wants to say aloud: burnout.
When 1923 Season 2 spent an entire episode on a slow-motion cattle drive that advanced zero plot, viewers didn’t see artistry; they saw a man padding runtime because the script was due yesterday. When Landman killed off a major character with a shrug and a one-liner, it wasn’t subversive; it was lazy. Great storytellers know when to gallop and when to let the horses breathe. Sheridan forgot the difference.
The Kingdom Built on Quicksand
Here’s the cruelest cut: the early masterpieces aren’t safe anymore. Go back to Sicario today and you’ll still feel your pulse in your throat. But knowing what came after taints the memory. Every perfect scene now carries the shadow of the man who stopped trusting silence, who started believing his own hype, who turned poetry into a production line.
Legacy isn’t just the peaks; it’s the trajectory. Quentin Tarantino can vanish for five years and return with something that feels hand-carved. Sheridan chose volume over oxygen, and the audience smelled the smoke.
A Sunset He Can Still Outrun
None of this means the story’s over. Great artists have crawled out of deeper graves. Step away from three shows. Burn the template. Write one script that scares him again. Hell or High Water took two years and zero compromises; that’s the North Star he needs to follow home.
Until then, the sheriff who once rode taller than anyone is slumping in the saddle. The town still loves him, but love isn’t blind forever. Fans aren’t asking for more; they’re asking for better. And right now, better feels like a ghost town he used to know the way to but can’t quite find anymore.
Taylor Sheridan didn’t lose his gift. He just spread it so thin the wind carried it away, one dusty frame at a time. The range is still there. The question is whether he’s willing to ride slow enough to remember why he fell in love with it in the first place.
Also Read: YELLOWSTONE’S FINAL BATTLE: Studio & Cast BEGGED Sheridan Not to Cancel – Why Did He IGNORE Them?