2 min read
Did you catch this week’s Rodeo Time episode? No? Well, Taylor Sheridan did. The Yellowstone creator and Bosque Ranch owner sat at the podcast’s poker-table-like set for nearly an hour with host Dale Brisby to promote his horseback-riding competition series The Race for a Million. But if you hoped that Sheridan showing up decked out in full 6666 (Four Sixes) Ranch riding gear meant that a certain long-awaited announcement was coming, the TV creator had another idea in mind.
According to Sheridan, rumors about a potential 6666 Ranch spin-off of Yellowstone were never true. “There’s never going to be one,” he said about the spin-off. “I would never fictionalize that ranch. People thought that that was going to be a thing, but I would never do that.”
Rumors of a 6666 spinoff bubbled up after he sent Jefferson White’s Yellowstone character, Jimmy, to the real-life 6666 Ranch in Texas to learn how to be a cowboy. “I’ve actually got, on my computer, all the scenes of Jimmy at the Four Sixes pulled out, and strung together it makes its own perfect little movie,” Sheridan said. “You watch him go there as a misfit and leave a man and a respected cowboy.”
For now, the only two Yellowstone spin-offs are Dutton Ranch and Marshals.
Other Yellowstone characters eventually found their way there as well, including Walker (Ryan Bingham) and Sheridan’s own in-universe horse wrangler, Travis Wheatley. But Sheridan says now that the spin-off never happened because he didn’t want to invent any more characters to live at the famous Texas ranch.
“If I was to try and make some show about the Four Sixes now, I’m making up lives,” he said. “I have to invent a drama, right? We can’t just watch some kid learn how to rope every single episode. So now I’m trivializing and fictionalizing something where real people work. They raise their families there, and I could never do that to them.”
“I’m very protective of the Sixes, and it’s a big responsibility to be the person who has to protect that brand,” Sheridan continued. (The TV creator purchased the ranch in 2022.) “So I have to be very, very careful with it,” he said.
Elsewhere, however, Sheridan’s come a bit under fire for trivializing the lives of another group. The original Lioness team spoke out following the season 3 premiere of the Paramount+ drama starring Zoe Saldaña and Nicole Kidman and accused Sheridan of “[taking] our history and kind of corrupt[ing] it.”
Still, the writer’s found success with other Yellowstone spin-offs, including Marshals with Luke Grimes and Dutton Ranch with Cole Hauser and Kelly Reilly. It looks like Jimmy will need to join up with Rip and Beth if we’re ever to see Jefferson White in the Yellowstone universe again. I certainly wouldn’t mind the idea.
