Brandon Sklenar as Spencer Dutton in “1923” season 2. Photo:
Lo Smith/Paramount+
Warning: This post contains spoilers for 1923 season 2.
The 1923 season 2 finale is not for the weak of heart, or so says star Brandon Sklenar.
Sklenar, 34, plays Spencer Dutton in the Yellowstone prequel series, a war hero who’s been on a treacherous journey home all season long as he races to help defend his family’s ranch at the behest of his aunt Cara (Helen Miren) and uncle Jacob Dutton (Harrison Ford). At the same time, his wife Alex (Julia Schlaepfer) is also making her way to Montana, on her own, to reunite with him after a heartbreaking separation ended season 1.
The season finale, which airs April 6 and has a nearly two-hour runtime, is an “insane” ending to the epic story Taylor Sheridan has been telling, Sklenar tells PEOPLE.
“I mean, I couldn’t even prep it because it would just make me so emotional reading it,” he says. “Even thinking about it, I get emotional.”
He knows fans “definitely won’t be disappointed” as the finale is an “eater, for sure.” He recalls, “I read it and I was like, ‘Whoa, this is absurd.'”
It’s not that he doubted how good it would be, of course, but he says that even with the expectations he had, the story exceeded them. “I knew it was going to be good, but I was like, this is on a level for sure. They tap into something.”
Brandon Sklenar as Spencer Dutton in the “1923” series finale. Lauren Smith/ Paramount+
After sitting on the scripts, which he had for “six months before we started filming,” and the filming experience for so long, Sklenar says “everything” about season 2 has been hard to keep under wraps.
“I keep saying it. My friends are always telling me to shut up,” he says. “It was very difficult to not talk to my friends about it, just, like, ‘This scene’s so cool.’ They’re fans, they want to see it and they don’t want me to spill everything, but I’m terrible with it.”
Despite all the build-up and the two-year wait for season 2, he told PEOPLE that he was surprisingly less nervous to play Spencer this time around than he was at first.
“I felt way more [pressure] in season 1, because I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know who this guy was. I didn’t know how he was going to sound. I didn’t know how he was going to feel. I didn’t know the tone of the show really.”
He continued, “And then I had almost two years between season 1 and season 2 and did other projects and just grew as a human being over two years. I was my early 30s — those are some big years developmentally. I’m effectively a different man going into season 2 and therefore [Spencer] is.”
Brandon Sklenar as Spencer Dutton in “1923” season 2. Paramount+
Sklenar — who previously said the season 2 finale is “one of the best things I’ve read in my life” — said he decided to “pour every ounce of myself into” season 2 as he felt “a responsibility to do the best work I could possibly do.”
“I was literally like, ‘I’m going to approach this like it’s the last thing I’m ever going to do.'”
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The season 2 finale of 1923 premieres Sunday, April 6 on Paramount+
