Season 1 of 1923 ended a week ago, but an interview with the actor who plays Spencer Dutton reveals something that will hurt the heart of the Yellowstone franchise’s most loyal fans.
Brendon Sklenar actually spilled quite a few details about his character. For example, did you know that he learned to hunt and track animals from Native Americans?
In building a backstory for the enigmatic Spencer Dutton, Sklenar tells Insider that he conjured very specific memories.
“So when someone is speaking about the war, I have specific memories from the war, and they’re real to me,” he says in an interview published on March 3. “And when they’re speaking about my aunt, I have specific memories of her, and specific memories of my brother.”
- Spencer Dutton is the youngest son of James and Margaret Dutton, played by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill in 1883.
- He and his older brother John Sr. were raised by his Uncle Jacob and Aunt Cara, played by Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren on 1923.
- He never met his older sister, Elsa Dutton.
Here is your spoiler alert warning if you’ve not yet watched 1883 or 1923: Don’t read after this photo carousel of the handsome Spencer Dutton if you don’t want to know what happens!
View this post on Instagram
Eagle-eyed 1923 viewers spotted the knife that Spencer carries throughout Season 1 as the same one Elsa received as a gift from Sam, the Comanche Indian she married as the family trekked toward Oregon on 1883
. She’d die after taking an arrow to the stomach, and her mom and dad would eventually park in Montana. Still, the importance of the character can’t be overstated. It’s her voice we hear narrating 1923.
“I felt like Spencer needed to have something from Elsa, and we kind of came up with the idea of having the knife,” Sklenar says during the interview.
The knife symbolizes Elsa’s influence on Spencer, but also the idea that he first learned to track animals and hunt with Natives local to Montana. These could the same indigenous persons that inhabit the Broken Rock Reservation on Yellowstone.
There simply has not been a death as emotional as Elsa Dutton’s death in her father’s arms. This new detail recalls that heartbreak and potentially foreshadows Spencer and/or Alexandra’s (Julia Schlaepfer) fate. Should either of them not make it through Season 2 of 1923 (start date TBA), it’d rival that sadness.
