Spoiler alert! This story discusses plot details of the “1923” Season 2 finale.
For most of “1923” Season 2, Alexandra (Julia Schlaepfer) has desperately sought to reunite with her new husband Spencer Dutton (Brandon Sklenar), while the prodigal fighting machine hightailed it back to the besieged Yellowstone Dutton ranch to save his uncle Jacob (Harrison Ford) and aunt Cara (Helen Mirren).
Star-crossed lovers Alex and Spencer overcame every conceivable obstacle separately on ships, cars and trains before joyously coming together near frozen Montana train tracks in Sunday’s two-hour season finale (now streaming on Paramount+). After Spencer jumps from his moving train for a final sprint to his stranded, near-frozen wife, their rapturous reconciliation is so hot.
Like, literally hot. The cruel Montana winter for the Taylor Sheridan series was recreated with special effects and fake snowbanks on an Austin soundstage in the dead heat of Texas summer.
“Oh my God, it was like 100 degrees hot, the opposite of winter,” Schlaepfer, 30, says during a joint interview with Sklenar, 34, for USA TODAY. “We had to do this weird combination of shivering while actually drenched in sweat.”
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We mapped ‘1923’ out: Inside Spencer Dutton’s journey back to the ranch in ‘Yellowstone’ prequel
We bow to the power of storytelling and new-fangled technology, because that much-awaited moment works. “It’s powerful,” says Sklenar. “Running that last distance in the snow, you see how they’ve been fighting to find one another.”
The new Dutton wife is preggers, Spencer discovers. He gallantly bundles up his weakened spouse to sprint towards warmth on the tracks. Unorthodox acting was required.
“It was really funny,” says Sklenar, laughing while recalling the dead-serious moment. “I had to hold Jules and pretend to just sort of run in place, and jostle her about. I’ve never had to fake run for such a pivotal, intense scene.”
Alexandra gives birth to John Dutton. But which John Dutton?
Fortunately, the train had stopped, making the fake run shorter than expected. But the finale never gets easier for Alex, covered in severe frostbite from her frigid ordeal. Things get much worse for the Dutton family enemies, who Spencer gets to smiting almost single-handedly.
Alex miraculously gives birth to their premature son and names him John. This is the awaited Big Bang in the Yellowstone-Dutton-verse. Bet the ranch that this is TV-series-connecting child John Dutton II, the father of John Dutton III, played by Kevin Costner in “Yellowstone.”
“It’s fun to think about. That it ties into the whole world,” says Schlaepfer of baby John. She hastily adds that she’s not confirming that the child is Costner’s TV daddy in swaddling clothes. “The only person who could confirm that is Taylor Sheridan himself, out of his mouth.”
“John’s a popular name,” adds Sklenar, avoiding confirmation of being Costner’s TV grandfather.
Who dies in the ‘1923’ finale?
New-found Dutton family bliss is short-lived. Alex dies in the hospital holding baby John, with Spencer lying next to her.
“They fall asleep together and she drifts away,” Schlaepfer says, adding that Ford and Mirren were present for the scene out of respect. “There’s no other way to say it. It hurt to film.”
Spencer puts on his revenge face to take his feelings out on family archenemy, Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton), the sadistic developer and early downhill skiing visionary. With Jacob at his side, Spencer shoots Whitfield dead at his pastry-filled breakfast table.
“Men at that time weren’t really exactly attuned to their emotions. There weren’t podcasts on how to process your grief at the time,” says Sklenar. “His pain moves through his physicality, and his revenge is vindicating. It’s a little bit of the power of Spencer, the power of love and the power of the bullet.”
Is this the end of ‘1923’?
Alex is bestowed with the ultimate posthumous Dutton honor, a gravestone in the famed ranch cemetery for top-tier clan only. She is an English aristocrat in Montana, yet still, Alex earns her plot in the Deceased Dutton Hall of Fame.
“It’s such an honor. I know that everyone will be upset about (Alex) being a part of the Dutton family cemetery,” says Schlaepfer.
But Alex lived strong, died well, gave birth to a pivotal Dutton baby, dumped her feeble aristo fiancé for Spencer, and gave viewers a love story saga.
Sheridan and Paramount Global have always planned to keep “1923” to two seasons while moving the story onto the next chapter, “1944” (presumably with a grown-up John Dutton II). So for Ford, 82, and Mirren, 79, the Season 2 finale appears to be the end of the line. Jacob already admits he’s retiring from ranching. Cara points out that baby John is “the future.” The finale fast forwards to an obscured view of the never-remarried, aged Spencer lying down by his wife’s grave. Sklenar refuses to confirm his character’s death.
“He’s an old man, possibly just taking a nap,” he says. “There might be a (“1923″) version with geriatric Spencer dragging his gun because he’s too weak to hold it.”
Even if “1923” is over, it’s been a ride. “We did our best to bring this couple’s story to life and do justice to their role in Dutton history,” says Sklenar. “It was such an honor.”
