Why There Won’t Be An 1883 Season 2: Show Creator Explains The Cancellation
Created by Taylor Sheridan, the 1883 show was created as a prequel to Yellowstone and premiered in 2021. This is why it only got one season.
- Despite receiving positive reviews, the show 1883 only got one season because the creators wanted to tell a complete story in a 10-hour movie format.
- The focus is now shifting to other Yellowstone prequel shows like 1923, as well as Lawmen: Bass Reeves, which is not a direct sequel to 1883 but explores new characters and storylines.
- Lawmen: Bass Reeves has been well-received and has its own separate identity from 1883, garnering positive reviews and a high IMDb score.
Why did the show 1883 only get one season despite receiving positive reviews from critics? Created by Taylor Sheridan, 1883 is a prequel that takes place 135 years before the events of Yellowstone. The show follows the ancestors of John Dutton III (Kevin Costner) as the early Dutton family attempts to settle on the land that would later become the iconic Yellowstone Ranch. While the 1883 series primarily follows the Dutton family and their journey from Tennessee to Montana, the show also explores various characters’ backstories as many of them enlisted in and fought for either the Union or the Confederacy during the US Civil War.
While the show features a large ensemble of characters, 1883 primarily focuses on 4 of them: patriarch James Dillard Dutton (Tim McGraw), matriarch Margaret Dutton (Faith Hill), their 17-year-old daughter and the show’s narrator, Elsa Dutton (Isabel May), and Pinkerton agent and leader of the wagon train Shea Brennan (Sam Elliott). Due to the series being only 10 episodes long, 1883 manages to be a very tightly-written and paced show that explores the history of the Dutton family while also delivering a bittersweet ending that results in one of the Dutton family’s deaths. However, despite this show’s success, why did it get only one season?