Marshals finally gave us another big Yellowstone cameo to further connect the shows! But are we going to get more?
Caution: This article contains SPOILERS for Marshals season 1
Marshals has always had to thread the needle regarding its connections to Yellowstone. While that Paramount Network drama was a major hit, not all of its audience also watches mainstream CBS fare. So not everyone would be up on all the characters. It’s likely why the original title of Y: Marshals was dropped for simply Marshals.
The pilot threw Yellowstone fans by revealing that Monica (Kelsey Asbille), the wife of main character Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes), had died of cancer. That left Kayce getting a new job with the U.S. Marshals in Wyoming and raising their son, Tate (Brecken Merrill). That automatically let fans know things would be different for Kayce.
Episode 6 opened with a flashback to Monica’s death, establishing it had happened almost exactly a year earlier. Tate was upset that Kayce didn’t want to attend a memorial service in her honor. Instead, he was honoring Monica’s legacy of helping missing Indigenous women by tracking a dozen of them who had been abducted.
The storyline involved several twists and turns before Kayce and his team busted the motorcycle gang smuggling the women and freed them. Afterward, Kayce decided to attend Monica’s ceremony and was met by her grandfather, returning Yellowstone character Felix Long (Rudy Ramos), Monica’s grandfather.
He was happy to see Kayce there as he’d already lost a daughter and “didn’t want to lose a son.” Kayce also brought Monica’s necklace to place on a portrait of her, admitting to his son that it was time he let go.
It was a good celebration of Monica and showed growth for Kayce. It also leads to the question of whether we can see more Yellowstone characters on Marshals or not.
Is Marshals closing the door on Yellowstone?
It can be fun to imagine some other Yellowstone characters coming into Marshals, but that may be a pipe dream. Coming in May of 2026 is The Dutton Ranch, a new series following Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) and Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) as they move to Texas, only to clash with a powerful oil family.
It may be that Dutton Ranch will be the spin-off more in the spirit of Yellowstone and thus use more of those characters. It’s more likely some Yellowstone characters would show up to help Rip and Beth than would help Kayce and his Marshals team on a random case. It also sounds like Dutton Ranch will be more adult-themed on Paramount+ while Marshals has to conform to CBS standards.
So, this episode may be that Marshals is actually closing the door on so many connections to Yellowstone to stand on its own. It’s not the first time a spinoff has pretended that its parent show barely even existed to have its own identity, as Marshals is more a procedural drama than the soap opera of Yellowstone. Killing off Monica to make Kayce a widower was a huge step, and other Yellowstone references may lessen over time.
So while it was fun to see at least one Yellowstone face coming into Marshals, the chances of more crossover happening seems pretty low.
Marshals airs Sundays at 8/7c on CBS.