The Yellowstone Universe: Cast Connections Across Yellowstone, 1923, and Landman

Last reviewed on April 28, 2026.

Taylor Sheridan's television work has built into a connected catalogue of shows that share writers, locations, themes, and in some cases families across more than a century of fictional history. If you have arrived from a single show in the catalogue, this guide explains how the others connect to it and which cast pages on Cast.biz cover each title.

The connected timeline

Three of the shows share a single fictional family — the Duttons of Montana — across different generations:

  • 1883 follows the Dutton family's nineteenth-century journey west. (Not yet covered with a dedicated cast page on Cast.biz.)
  • 1923 picks up two generations later, with Jacob and Cara Dutton holding the Montana ranch through Prohibition and economic upheaval.
  • Yellowstone is set in the present day, with John Dutton fighting to keep the same ranch in family hands.

Landman sits in the same modern American West but tells a separate story about the oil industry rather than ranching, with no direct cast or family overlap with the Dutton storyline.

Yellowstone

Yellowstone is the original anchor of the universe. Created by Sheridan and John Linson, it ran on Paramount Network and follows John Dutton and his children — Beth, Jamie, Kayce — as they navigate land disputes, political ambitions, and family loyalty. Kevin Costner leads the cast as John, with Luke Grimes, Kelly Reilly, Wes Bentley, and Cole Hauser anchoring the principal ensemble.

For the full cast, see the Yellowstone cast page. The page covers principals, Yellowstone Ranch supporting cast, and the major recurring characters across all five seasons.

1923

1923 is the second prequel in the universe, set in the early twentieth century with Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren as Jacob and Cara Dutton. The series shares a setting and a family with Yellowstone but stands on its own as a period drama; viewers can watch it without prior knowledge of the modern show.

The full cast, including Brandon Sklenar and Julia Schlaepfer's parallel storyline, is covered on the 1923 cast page.

Landman

Landman is a separate thread in Sheridan's catalogue: same regional voice, same kind of ensemble construction, but a different industry and a different family. Billy Bob Thornton leads as Tommy Norris, a crisis manager working for a West Texas oil company, with Jon Hamm, Demi Moore, and Ali Larter in the principal ensemble. Where Yellowstone is about holding land, Landman is about extracting from it.

The full cast is on the Landman cast page.

Cast and creative connections

  • Showrunner. Taylor Sheridan creates and writes across all three productions and is widely credited as the unifying creative voice. Christian Wallace is co-creator on Landman, drawing on his earlier podcast work that inspired the series.
  • Production base. Several of the productions share crew, regional production support, and a common visual approach to the American West — wide exteriors, weathered interiors, location-driven photography.
  • Cast crossover. Dutton-family continuity links 1923 and Yellowstone within the fiction, even where the actors playing the characters are different. There is limited direct cast crossover between Landman and the Yellowstone shows; the connection is tonal rather than narrative.

Recommended reading order

Each show is designed to stand alone, so there is no single “correct” entry point. A few common patterns:

  • Modern entry. Start with Yellowstone, watch through its run, then go back to 1923 for context.
  • Chronological entry. Begin with the period prequels and arrive at Yellowstone with the family history already in place.
  • Sheridan-as-author entry. Sample one episode each of Yellowstone, 1923, and Landman to recognise the writing style across different settings.

Where this fits on Cast.biz

For more on how casts in connected universes are tracked, see How TV Casts Evolve Across Seasons. The reasons casts in newer streaming-era shows look different from earlier broadcast ensembles are covered in How Streaming Changed TV Casting. For the broader pattern of multi-title franchises, see Franchise Hub: Star Wars Live-Action.