Taylor Sheridan’s 1923 is going to be a much darker Neo-Western antihero crime drama than even Yellowstone. Helmed by Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren’s 1923 characters Jacob and Cara Dutton, the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch survived what was essentially the most difficult years in the state of Montana in 1923. The spinoff is going to be a deep dive into what the Duttons are really made of.
Showrunners have promised to put the Dutton family through the era of Prohibition and the Great Depression. Jacob and Cara Dutton will be joined by John Dutton Sr. (James Badge Dale), Jacob’s oldest nephew and right-hand mand, John’s wife Emma Dutton (Marley Shelton), and their son Jack Dutton (Darren Mann), the grandson of Tim McGraw’s James Dutton from 1883. Apart from the Duttons, the 1923 cast includes ranch foreman Zane (Brian Geraghty), a British woman named Alexandra (Julia Schlaepfer), and Elizabeth Strafford (Michelle Randolph), a feisty young lady set to marry into the Dutton family.
The 1923 cast is notably much larger than the cast of 1883 and is more comparable to the Yellowstone cast, which is fitting as the Taylor Sheridan show and shared Neo-Western universe enters an era in which the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch has begun to establish itself. Save for the main players and the exact year in which the series is set, not much has been revealed about the story of the Yellowstone spinoff. However, the historical events in the state of Montana back in the ’20s imply that 1923 could be Sheridan’s darkest series yet.
How Real Life Will Make 1923’s Yellowstone Story The Darkest Yet
Even before the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, which occurred from 1929 to 1939, Montana was already struggling with its own drought, which lasted from 1917 to 1927. Homesteaders – like the Duttons – and Indigenous settlements alike lost their crops and life savings to the drought and resulting economic depression. The unluckiest families lost their farms, homes, lands, and lives. From 1921 to 1925, more than 200 Montana banks failed, and throughout the ’20s, around 60,000 people moved out of the state. Seeing how 1883‘s Dutton family grew such deep roots under the site of the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch despite running a cattle business during the worst drought in 20th century Montana sets up both an interesting and potentially devastating plot for the Yellowstone spinoff to explore.
Indeed, the 1923 cast will be faced with even larger challenges than the ones faced by the Duttons in Yellowstone, and this is bound to be informed by Montana’s dark history. Apart from the above-mentioned events, it was 1923 when the first tornado hit Montana, killing two people and injuring several others in a logging camp. It was also 1923 when the Montana Legislative Assembly passed “An act to prevent the procreation of hereditary idiots, feebleminded, insane, and epileptics who are inmates of state custodial institutions, by authorizing and providing eugenical sterilization of said inmates.” Given how the 1923 synopsis mentions Prohibition, the Duttons were likely involved in brewing and smuggling alcohol to make ends meet, which was one of the few things the land was good for during the drought. The reason why 1932 was changed to 1923 is so that the show could tackle Prohibition, which was repealed in Montana only in 1926 – before that, the Duttons could have even been running a speakeasy.
Though 1923 is unlikely to adapt every significant event that happened in Montana in the 1920s, the state’s early 20th century history paints a dark and unruly setting for the Duttons that lived and survived during this era. Given Taylor Sheridan’s growing penchant for tackling sociopolitical issues and unraveling America’s uncomfortable history through the Dutton family’s backstory, any of these historical events can be adapted for 1923. In any case, 1923 will reveal what it took the Duttons to keep and expand the ranch that they founded in the ending of 1883. Maybe audiences will finally get to see just how many bodies are really buried underneath the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch.
