"Marshals" Cast Previews Season 2: Jimmy's Arrival, Cal's Cancer Fight and Bigger Stakes

CBS’ Marshals returns for its second season tonight with “All Hat No Cattle,” written by showrunner Spencer Hudnut and directed by Christopher Chulack. In the premiere, Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) goes rogue when he realizes his son Tate (Brecken Merrill) has been taken hostage, while the Marshals uncover a powerful criminal operation tied to the East Camp land grab. At a recent CBS virtual press conference, Grimes and Hudnut joined co-stars Logan Marshall-Green, Arielle Kebbel, Ash Santos and Tatanka Means to preview what’s next for the series, which became the #1 new series on television.

Hudnut said the show isn’t trying to relitigate Kayce’s feelings about his father, John. He feels Yellowstone wrapped that up nicely and that Kayce made peace with him. Season 2 instead turns Kayce’s attention to his own son. “I think what Kayce’s dealing with is really watching his own son this season turning 18, becoming a man and trying to figure out what kind of Dutton man is he putting out into the world.”

According to the showrunner, that gives Kayce a better understanding of the difficulties his own father faced. There are now many parallels, he explained, between being a single parent and being frustrated with a teenager who has his own ideas about what to do with his life. “[Kayce] found his own path in season one,” Hudnut said. “And what path is Tate going to find this year?”

Off camera, Grimes has watched Merrill grow up. The actor was nine years old when they started working together, and he recently came to set on his own for the first time, without his mom. Grimes said the relationship has been fulfilling, though he doesn’t see himself as a father figure. “People always ask, do you feel like a real father or a mentor? I’m like, no, no, that’s never been our thing,” Grimes said. “We’re just buds, and we like working together. And, yeah, I’m just very proud of that kid. Man, he’s going to do well.”

Kayce has always been guarded, and Grimes said losing his wife, Monica, the one person he shared everything with, was very hard on him. Early in Season 2, tragedy strikes again just as Kayce begins to let his guard down. “He opens up just a little bit, and then that happens,” Grimes teased. “And obviously throughout the beginning of our season, he’s dealing with, like, is it me? Am I the reason bad things happen to these people?” Grimes added that Kayce starts to wonder whether he should ever open up again, and that it affects him “in a big, big way.”

Season 2 also brings back a familiar face from Yellowstone: Jefferson White as Jimmy Hurdstrom. Grimes said the idea came from story conversations with Hudnut about what their audience would enjoy most. He added that he loves working with White, who he calls a great guy with good energy. “There are characters in Yellowstone you either love or hate or whatever, but I think universally, everyone sort of loved Jimmy,” Grimes said. “It was just born out of, like, how do we delight our audience a little bit more this season and bring somebody back that everyone sort of misses?” 

Hudnut confirmed that Jimmy will be spending his time in Montana. “Jimmy’s coming to East Camp,” he said. “He’ll be getting to know this team, this newfound family for Kayce.” White was just as eager. “Jimmy and I have been through a lot together, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for us,” he said in a statement announcing his casting.

Pete “Cal” Calvin’s battle with cancer continues this season, and Marshall-Green said it will reshape the unit. “We’re smack dab in the middle of the cancer treatments and, without giving anything away, it’s going to directly affect the team, and there are going to be some dominoes that fall because of it, and there are going to be some new leaders on the team,” he said. He added that the diagnosis will “close a window for him but open a door for others.”

Means said Miles Kittle will keep moving between his loyalties to Broken Rock and his duties as a U.S. Marshal, with more of his time spent on Marshals work this season. That conflict comes to a head in the October 18th episode “Falling Sky,” when the team is sent to track three Broken Rock residents accused of shooting down a military test drone.

For Kebbel, the toughest part of playing Belle has been the weaponry. Despite past action roles, she said she underestimated how hard it is to look natural carrying a large rifle while moving as a team over rocky terrain, on horseback, or down mountains. The challenge intimidated her in Season 1. “Season 2, I’d say I’m pretty proud of myself,” she said. “I feel like I’m really coming into my own with these giant weapons.”

Santos grew up with a detective father who took her to the shooting range, so firearms weren’t new to her, and a few years of horseback riding helped too. The tactical choreography, though, still challenges her. “I’m sore right now as we speak,” she said. “That tactical training, it’s not for the weak.”

Kebbel has ridden since she was five and is a vocal advocate for wild horses. She got emotional describing how the Marshals cast and crew have supported her work. When she returns to set after spending her weekends on horse causes, she said, crew members, producers, and Hudnut ask how they can help. “I have never felt more supported, and it just cracks my heart right open, wide open,” Kebbel said. She has also moved her mustang, a rescued wild horse, out to Park City, Utah, where Marshals films. Working with her there and meeting the local horse community is a treat she said she never saw coming.

When production on Marshals began, Grimes found himself on the same soundstage and at the same Thousand Peaks Ranch exteriors where Yellowstone started in 2017. He was wearing the same wardrobe eight years later, but almost everyone around him was new apart from Merrill, Gil Birmingham and Mo Brings Plenty. He said that felt bizarre for about a month. “Now this is the normal, and that feels like another lifetime,” he said.

Grimes said he has changed as much as Kayce has over the years. “I was a 33-year-old boy when I started Yellowstone,” he joked. He now has a child of his own and has moved to Montana, and he said life and art keep imitating each other. “It’s been the best thing, besides my wife and kid, that’s ever happened to me.”

Hudnut said the team is raising the stakes and the production value this season, with plenty of twists and turns. “We get helicopters, we got a bronc riding team, we have a rodeo,” he teased. “So we’re really just trying to give the fans more of what they took to in Season 1.”

The second season of Marshals premieres tonight, Sunday, October 4th, at 8:30 p.m. ET/8 p.m. PT on CBS. It streams live and on demand for Paramount+ Premium subscribers, and on demand the day after airing for Paramount+ Essential subscribers.