Spoiler alert! Do not proceed if you have not watched the series premiere of Paramount+’s 1923.
Did 1923 just hint at a major Dutton death? The Yellowstone prequel launched Sunday on Paramount+, introducing Harrison Ford’s Jacob and Helen Mirren’s Cara Dutton, John Dutton III’s (Kevin Costner) great-great uncle and great-great aunt, as well as a new cast of characters to the franchise. But one of the main members of the Dutton family may not be long for this world.
Narrated by the late Elsa (1883‘s Isabel May), who died in the 1883 finale after being shot by an arrow, the prequel issues a tragic warning for this generation of the Dutton clan, hinting that one of her two surviving brothers will die before the series is over.
“My father had three children,” Elsa says in voiceover early in the episode, referring to herself and her siblings, John Sr. (James Badge Dale) and Spencer (Brandon Sklenar). (Their parents are James and Margaret Dutton, who were played by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill in 1883.) “Only one would live to see their own children grow. Only one would carry the fate of this family through the Depression and every other hell the 20th century hurled at them.”
The ominous tease raises a lot of questions for 1923 over which of Elsa’s brothers, who were raised by Jacob like his own children after he found a widowed Margaret frozen to death, will be the one to perish and the circumstances that lead to his eventual death. In the first episode, there are barely any hints as to whether it’s John, who spends much of the episode serving as Jacob’s right-hand man, or Spencer, a World War I vet who left home some years ago and is in Nairobi hunting the wildlife that’s been terrorizing various camps.