Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone is going out with a bang… a number of them actually, as a number of fan favorite characters have been killed off in the series’ final season. As it turns out, keeping spoilers under wraps involved one particular code word.
It’s no secret that this season’s Yellowstone events are a highly guarded secret, with series EP Christina Voros explaining the elaborate efforts they used to keep the series’ large casts from leaking spoilers. Back in November, Voros detailed techniques like using closed sets, or shooting different versions of a scene to keep extras, and sometimes cast, guessing.
In her earlier discussions, Voros explained that “code words” were used to keep scripted secrets from being leaks. Thanks to a new interview as the series comes to a close, we finally know what the infamous code words were, and how they were used.
Decoding Yellowstone’s tragic deaths
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Voros detailed that the team used one specific word in any given script to hide a character’s death. If a script read that a character ‘arrives’, that character isn’t making it out alive.
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“For Colby’s [death]”, Voros explained, “we called it ‘Colby’s arrival.’ And for Sarah’s, it was ‘Sarah arrives.'” It’s an ironic move to list character departures as arrivals, but it’s a technique the team stuck with. It became their go-to for one simple reason.
“We continued working with the term ‘arrival,'” she continues, “because it’s so innocuous that you could read it on a call sheet and no one would ever think that there was anything wrong.” It’s a strategy that clearly worked, as evidenced by the lack of leaks and fans’ clear shock at very important deaths. Here’s how to catch the rest of the series and see what other characters tragically arrive.