Ash Santos as Andrea, Logan Marshall-Green as Pete Calvin, Luke Grimes as Kayce Dutton, Arielle Kebbel as Belle, and Tatanka Means as Miles in MARSHALS – Season 1 – “Zone of Death” | ©2026 CBS/Sonja Flemming

The Paramount+ series YELLOWSTONE was huge hit that ran five seasons on Paramount+. In a reversal of the usual network-to-streamer model, some episodes eventually aired on Paramount+’s sibling broadcast network CBS.

Created by John Linson and Taylor Sheridan, YELLOWSTONE had two prequels on Paramount+ also created by Sheridan, the series 1923 and the miniseries 1883.

The new YELLOWSTONE spinoff MARSHALS is the first sequel series. Created by Spencer Hudnut & Taylor Sheridan, MARSHALS premiered to huge ratings on CBS, Sunday March 1, with new episodes broadcast every Sunday and thereafter streaming on Paramount+.

When YELLOWSTONE concluded, Kayce Dutton, played by Luke Grimes, was the last member of the rich, influential Dutton ranching empire to remain on the family’s Montana land. Kayce sells most of the ranch to the Broken Rock Reservation, saving it from development. He keeps the East Camp, where he intends to live happily and peacefully ever after with wife Monica (Kelsey Asbille) and their son Tate, played by Brecken Merrill.

However, when MARSHALS opens, Monica has been gone for a year, taken by cancer, and Kayce is still benumbed by grief. Then his old friend from Navy SEAL days, Pete Calvin, played by Logan Marshall-Green, shows up at Kayce’s doorstep. Pete is now a U.S. Marshal and needs local help with a case. Kayce finds that law enforcement gives him a new sense of purpose and joins Pete’s team, which also includes Ash Santos as New York transplant Andrea Cruz, Arielle Kebbel as Montana-raised Belle Skinner, and Tatanka Means as Miles Kittle.

When CBS hosts a press day for the Television Critics Association (TCA), their virtual panel for MARSHALS includes co-creator/EP/showrunner Hudnut and cast members Grimes, Merrill, Mo Brings Plenty (who plays Mo) and Gil Birmingham (who plays Kayce’s kin Thomas Rainwater), all of whom originated their characters on YELLOWSTONE, plus franchise newcomers Marshall-Green, Kebbel, Means, and Santos.

Asked about the chicken and the egg of whether MARSHALS was developed and then decided it was a better fit for broadcast than streaming, or whether it was developed directly for CBS network broadcast, Hudnut has a definitive answer.

“When I was approached, it was specifically for CBS to try to bring the YELLOWSTONE [franchise] to network television, so that was the aim. And trying to do it in a nontraditional network way has been our goal, and hopefully we executed that.”

How involved is YELLOWSTONE creator Sheridan in MARSHALS as its co-creator?

MARSHALS Key Art – Season 1 | ©2026 CBS

“Taylor’s fingerprints are obviously all over this show,” Hudnut replies. “He created these great characters. He created this great universe. He was very generous to me in terms of his time and helping shape this show. Whenever we hit a problem, he’s there to help solve it. His influence is in every aspect of this show. [But] I don’t think I’d be sitting here if he had to be involved in a day-to-day way. That was never the set-up. But he’s certainly there for us when we need him.”

Do the YELLOWSTONE veterans feel that MARSHALS has a different vibe, or is it a return to home turf?

For Birmingham, “There are definitely some reminiscent parts that are carrying over. I think we’re going to engage in more relationship development between [established] characters and then the introduction of a number of other new characters. But we still have the same backdrop. We still have the great cinematography landscape. And we’re going to still, I think have the center and the nerve of what was projected on for YELLOWSTONE and hope the fans enjoy it as much as they did on YELLOWSTONE.

“It was kind of surreal,” Grimes offers. “We shot on the same soundstages that we started YELLOWSTONE on in 2017. So, it was like a strange fever dream, being back on those stages. Obviously, we ended up in Montana all those years later, but to be on the same stages in the same costume eight years later but then having so many new faces and a whole new crew was very surreal, but something I’m really grateful for. I really love this job, I love this character, and I love the new cast and the new crew.”

Where does Grimes feel that Kayce is, psychologically speaking, at the start of MARSHALS?

As the series opens, Grimes feels, “He’s at the end of his emotional road. Obviously, in the original series, so many hard things happened to this guy with his family, with his past, suffering PTSD from things that happened to him at war.

“And then, right when you meet him here, you find out that his wife has passed away. Taylor and I talked about from the beginning, that was Romeo and Juliet, they were like twin flames, they belonged together. And so, he loses his soulmate. There’s really nothing darker than that.

“I remember even thinking, ‘How is this going to work? Maybe that’s just too sad, maybe that’s too much drama to watch this guy be in so much pain.’ But the really great device of our show is that Kayce finds a purpose and a reason to get up in the morning, and that comes from his old SEAL buddy who finds him and says, ‘Hey, I figured out a way to turn my life around and deal with my demons, and it’s becoming useful to other people in using our skill set to help out others.’ So, through that, Kayce slowly but surely starts to find his way, starts to find a reason and a purpose. Obviously, he has his son. But beyond that, I think we find a really lost man.”

Merrill believed that when YELLOWSTONE ended, he was saying goodbye to his character of Tate. After that, “I missed Tate. I thought it was done, and I feel like YELLOWSTONE ended too quickly. So, when I got the email that they were working on a spinoff, I was really excited, and now we’re here, and I’m excited to see the product.”

Marshall-Green says of the relationship between his U.S. Marshal Pete Calvin and old friend Kayce, “You realize pretty quickly that there’s something between them that is not allowing a true connection again, that is slowly revealed and very well done by Spencer and the writers throughout the entire season. It’s an event that happens in their past, that has tied them together intimately, but not necessarily in a buddy-buddy way. They were certainly teammates and good friends in the SEALS, but you’ll realize quickly that there’s a lot of unanswered questions.”

Means says of his character Miles, “He has an athletic background. He’s former military, he’s a formal tribal cop. I can really relate to him.”

While she had several movies (including SITE and I CAN ONLY IMAGINE 2) released in the interim, Kebbel went quickly from the big action series RESCUE: HI-SURF into the equally physical MARSHALS. Does she favor these kinds of active characters?

“I love the outdoors,” Kebbel relates. “I grew up in Florida, being out in the ocean and the waves, and in Hawai’i. So, [RESCUE: HI-SURF] felt very familiar for me in terms of speaking to my childhood. I would always swim in the pool with my dad and be with my family at the beach. So, I’ve always been very outdoorsy.

“But,” Kebbel continues, “this role – I think we’ve all joked about it at this point – I’ve never had a character where Belle and Arielle were so in alignment. And so, it actually was kind of hard for me at first, because that’s scary, to play someone so similar to who I am, [with] my love of horses and the outdoors and nature. I am deeply, deeply grateful, and I feel like, as my career progresses, to be able to do things that align with me spiritually, physically, it’s a real gift.

“With Belle, all I’ll say is, she has a past that she’s trying to get away from. And so, she really wants to get to know this new team, but she has some resistance to it. But she’s so familiar in this world, because she’s a local from Montana. I was so grateful to become part of this world and it really was probably the first character ever that asked me to look so deeply into myself, which I didn’t see coming. So, yeah, thank you!”

For Santos, new challenges for her role on MARSHALS included learning how to lasso and how to box. “It was very eventful,” she laughs. The funnest part for me was all the tactical training that we went through. We have an incredible fight coordinator, Ryan Sangster, who worked on SEAL TEAM with Spencer. I just had so much fun learning all of the physical technique that went into the guns and how they carry them, and how they walk into a room. So, there were definitely a lot of days on set that were physically taxing, but that was probably my favorite part of doing the show.”

In addition to crime-solving and interpersonal issues, MARSHALS deals with life on the reservation, which Brings Plenty describes as “definitely eye-opening. I grew up and understand that we [Native Americans] are forgotten people, but we haven’t forgotten who we are. A lot of the issues that we’re up against, at the end of the day, are about protecting the Constitution, which affects every human being, but it seems like we’re always at the forefront of that, and the front line, and always battling against that, whether it’s the issues pertaining to the people, the environment, the unsolved murders [on reservations]. The list goes on and on.

“And so, a lot of the issues that happened back then still carry on today, and it’ll always carry on as long as it’s out of sight and out of mind. So, I’m so thankful for the courage that Spencer, CBS and everyone involved to five us this outlet to bring to light what is happening in Indian country, because what’s happening on Broken Rock is relatable to every reservation throughout the States.”

Do the actors see any echoes of old film or TV Westerns in the modern Western MARSHALS?

Grimes responds, “I don’t know if you ever saw the first poster we put out for this, but it’s a nod to UNFORGIVEN. Obviously, Clint [Eastwood] in UNFORGIVEN [plays] a character that I love. I’m not saying that it reminds me of Kayce, but I obviously would like to emulate some of that guy’s career, because I think he’s incredible.

“But when you find Kayce, he’s just lost his wife and he’s not doing too well. He’s not a hero. He’s kind of a loser and [like the protagonist in] UNFORGIVEN, he sort of gets his powers back, so I just saw a little bit of that in Kayce.”

For Birmingham, “There are some historical characters. There was Jay Silverheels who was Tonto, back in THE LONE RANGER days. He was a man of great dignity and purpose, for the material he was given, he really stood on his own. I think of people like Chief Dan George, who added humor to some movies, but even thinking about UNFORGIVEN, I would think that Morgan Freeman might be comparable [in his relationship to Eastwood’s character] to the relationship that Rainwater has with Kayce, somewhat of a guide and a supporter and just helping him piece his life back together, which is really one of the highlights, I think, of carrying these characters over and the development of the relationship between Rainwater and Kayce.”

Means, whose father was the actor and activist Russell Means, adds, “I think there’s been a lot of progress made. I think including a Native as one of the marshals is a big deal and I think just to have that representation is a big deal for Indian country.”

How familiar, if at all, are MARSHALS viewers expected to be with YELLOWSTONE?

Hudnut replies, “I think walking the line of culling enough YELLOWSTONE story to please that audience but also bring in people from the CBS audience may be one part of it. That was the challenge of this. But I think, given what YELLOWSTONE is and was, we’d be foolish to turn our backs on that rich history and all that great backstory from Kayce and from Chairman Rainwater and Mo and from Tate.

“I think early on, what’s great for us is that this is a team that’s just come together. So, a lot of Kayce’s teammates are learning about him, which offers a way for those who have watched the show to play along. But those who are new to this world learn a lot about Kayce. And so, my hope is that we have enough YELLOWSTONE for the YELLOWSTONE viewers and enough kinetic action and drama to please the CBS viewers.”

What is the balance on MARSHALS between running story and character arcs and weekly procedural elements?

Hudnut takes this question as well. “I think from the very beginning CBS and [CBS Entertainment president] Amy Reisenbach have been very open that they want this to be a non-traditional procedural. And so, this is a heavily character-driven show. We use the cases of the week or the missions, per se, as a way to reveal something about our characters. This is not a hardcore procedural, where by the end of the first act, we’ve been through seven red herrings and are putting clues together. In talking with Luke, when we started to put this show together, character and exploring these characters is what excites us. And so, we will always lean into character more than procedure.”

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Article: Cast and co-creator and showrunner talk the YELLOWSTONE spinoff MARSHALS

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