Luke Grimes reveals "crazy" truth about one of Yellowstone's strangest ongoing mysteries

Luke Grimes has explained a mysteriously dropped storyline from the first season of Yellowstone, which has played on the minds of fans for many years.

After making a name for himself as Kayce Dutton in the original series, Grimes has stepped up as the main man in new spin-off show, Marshals. Long gone are the soap opera-esque storylines, replaced with a far more gritty, explosive, procedural vibe.

This new journey for Kayce has seen him deal with the death of his wife, Monica Dutton (Kelsey Asbille), while wrestling with the idea of moving out of the shadow of his family name and carving out a more purposeful career.

However, it's hard to keep the past buried, especially when there are still unanswered questions from the Yellowstone timeline. So, we decided to do some digging into one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the show, which dates right back to season 1 episode 2.

Hardcore Yellowstone fans will remember Kayce and his son, Tate, unearthed a bunch of dinosaur bones while trying to remove a tree stump on their land. The bones were later seemingly stolen, but the storyline came to nothing and was never mentioned again throughout the course of the show.

Well, we finally have some answers! In an exclusive interview with Radio Times, Grimes revealed that higher-ups pushed back against the storyline, which meant that it ended up being abandoned entirely.

When asked if he knew what the plan was for the dinosaur bones, Grimes said: "Absolutely. I got a script where that whole thing came back around. It was the season 2 finale. There was a completely different finale.

"But, it's basically the politics of the way that television shows work, when you have all these different producers, and you have a network and studio. There were a lot of notes about the original season 2 finale. It was finessed, and the dinosaur bones didn't make the cut, unfortunately."

Grimes was visibly excited as he recalled this lost storyline, and proceeded to share even more information about what that alternate season 2 finale would have entailed.

"I could probably tell you, because it doesn't matter at this point... Basically, Kayce goes on this mission, he just kind of goes off on his own and starts hopping trains, and then he meets a guy who had stolen the bones," he explained.

"It was crazy. It was out of this world. But I think [studio bosses] thought, maybe, it took the story a little too far from the ranch. But I was excited to do it."

The idea of Kayce hunting down the fossil thief in some kind of Indiana Jones-style subplot does sound tantalising. While we'll never get to see that play out now, at least we can finally rest easy knowing why the storyline wasn't taken any further.

Marshals: A Yellowstone Story is available to stream on Paramount+. Sign up to your seven-day Paramount+ free trial.

Add Marshals: A Yellowstone Story to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more.

Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.