Marshals Review: Yellowstone Fans Will Flock To Taylor Sheridan's Latest Spin-Off

When showrunner Taylor Sheridan first launched "Yellowstone" in 2018, he probably didn't know he was creating a full-blown cinematic universe. That's precisely what happened, though, and the latest "Yellowstone" spin-off, "Marshals," is here — so fans of Luke Grimes' prodigal son Kayce Dutton can catch up with the newly minted widower. (Sheridan, however, is not the showrunner here; that honor belongs to writer and producer Spencer Hudnut.) If you're already a fan of the "Yellowstone" franchise, you'll probably like this project quite a bit. If you're not? It requires some significant catching up and, perhaps, a lot of binge-watching if you really want the full story.

For better and for worse, "Marshals" drops you directly into Kayce's post-"Yellowstone" story, after he sells his family's home, Yellowstone Ranch, to the local Broken Rock Reservation in that show's series finale — technically returning it to the tribe, which includes Gil Birmingham's High Chief Thomas Rainwater. Even though "Marshals" is presenting itself as a pretty standard case-of-the-week procedural — at least in the three episodes provided to critics by CBS — it's mired in "Yellowstone" lore, all of which centers around Kayce and the infamous Dutton family. So what can you expect from "Marshals," and should you watch it? Maybe!

Again, I cannot stress this enough: "Marshals" might be a standalone project within the "Yellowstone" universe, but knowledge of the Dutton family — especially Kayce's parents John and Evelyn Dutton, played on the original series by Kevin Costner and Gretchen Mol — is pretty necessary here. Namely, you need some context on the Duttons and their years of wrongdoing any time Brett Cullen's Harry Gifford shows up on screen. Harry, who's in charge of the marshals unit that Kayce officially joins in the show's second episode, hates the Duttons, so at the very least, he provides a ton of helpful exposition in various conversations with the unit's leader and Kayce's old friend Pete Calvin (a welcome, heavily bearded Logan Marshall-Green).

Exposition is definitely a problem here. Because Kayce is new to this elite unit of U.S. Marshals — for which he's specifically enlisted by Pete — we get a lot of information dumps about his colleagues, including ATF veteran Belle Skinner (Arielle Kebbell), Native Miles Kittle (Tatanka Means), and the acid-tongued Andrea Cruz (Ash Santos). Still, even with all this new blood, you actually need way more information than the show deigns to provide if you want to follow "Marshals" fully.

Kayce's emotional journey is pretty clearly set up on "Marshals." In the aftermath of the death of his wife Monica Dutton (Kelsey Asbille), a Native American woman who spent most of her life on the Broken Rock Reservation — making Kayce an ally to the tribes that still reside there and making his son Tate (Brecken Merrill) a child of the reservation as well — Kayce wants to protect the land and do right by his son. When a bombing injures Thomas Rainwater in the "Marshals" pilot, it's what drives Kayce to join the marshals; there's also a looming threat, throughout these three episodes, of the United States government building a mine on reservation land that could have deadly consequences for the Natives who live there.

Still, it's admittedly tough to fully connect with this show if you are new to "Yellowstone," and one would imagine that Spencer Hudnut and his executive producer Taylor Sheridan might want to draw newcomers in with this new project. If you really want to experience "Marshals" fully, do your homework first — check out our guide for the best order to watch Taylor Sheridan's "Yellowstone" spin-off shows — and then settle in to watch Kayce's adventures with this Montana task force.

"Marshals" starts airing on CBS on March 1.