Fans of Yellowstone, and the prequel shows 1883 and 1923 that make up the larger Yellowstone Cinematic Universe (YCU), often grasp for familiar points of reference, trying to explain the phenomenon to friends and family who have yet to take the plunge.
It’s like Succession meets the Sopranos … but with cowboys. It’s a love letter to ranchers and to a dying way of life. It’s a show about land, with the American West as its central character. It’s a series about masculinity, the forms it takes and the hazards it creates.
Each of these comparisons gets at some essential aspect of the YCU but I think they all ignore a central truth. At its core, Yellowstone (and 1883 and 1923) is a show about glorious mustaches and the men who wear them. Spanning more than 140 years, the shows capture the evolution of the American mustache, its diversity of forms and the way this signature facial hair can tell a story all on its own.
With the second half of season 5 of Yellowstone coming soon, a second season of 1923 looming and the new spin-off, 6666, on the way, this is the perfect time to take stock of the role of the mustache in the YCU. Below, you’ll find the 10 best mustaches from Yellowstone, 1883 and 1923, ranked with the significance of each fully unfurled. So grab your wax and tiny combs and start growing out your YCU mustache knowledge.
10. John Dutton Sr. — 1923
Played by: James Badge Dale
Mustache Style: A little pepper to go with all that salt
Technically, Badge Dale is sporting a full beard in his role as John Dutton Sr. in 1923 but, whether by nature or cosmetic alchemy, his beard is fully silver while the mustache has stayed gray. This is the first of a few mustaches included on this list where the lip foliage is defined by color, enough that we can distinguish the mustache as a distinct entity even when paired with a beard.
I will admit I have been in the bag for Badge Dale since the days of Rubiconand this isn’t even his best work with a mustache (catch him rocking a truly epic Chevron in The Long Ranger). But, in a role where his character mostly blends into the background and doesn’t even survive half a season) his salt-and-pepper combo here helps him stand out.
9. Kayce Dutton — Yellowstone
Played by: Luke Grimes
Mustache Style: Chevron/Walrus
Luke Grimes’ mustache is filled with incredible untapped potential but, like the character he plays, is too often overshadowed, becoming all but invisible. In from a follicular perspective, the culprit is a wild tangle of beard that frequently matches the mustache in length. Without any difference in coloration, like with Badge Dale, it all just becomes one patchy beard. The overall effect is certainly pleasing to the eye but we can’t see the trees for the forest, or the mustache for the beard, as it were.
The same is true for Kayce Dutton, he has spent multiple seasons trying to figure out who he wants to be and where he wants to commit his talents and his passions, his love and his loyalty. The last time we saw him, he was taking over the ranch as Rip and many of the other hands depart for Texas. Maybe we’ll see him break out an Excelsior in the second-half of season 5, signaling that he is finally at piece with his identity and role within in the family.
8. Jim Courtright — 1883
Billy Bob Thornton has done some exceptional mustache work throughout his career and he certainly brings the heat to his brief appearance in 1883 as Sheriff Jim Courtright. His mustache here is accompanied by a beard but the heft, volume and distinct styling render it an independent entity worthy of recognition.
Due to his prolific acting credits, Thornton is almost instantly recognizable in any role. But here, the mustache is interesting enough and unique enough (for him) that allows him to blend into the role and not be distracting as a cameo.
7. Zane Davis — 1923
Brian Geraghty, the actor who plays ranch foreman Zane Davis, has one of Hollywood’s most underrated baby faces. He’s 48 but looks almost exactly the same as he did 17 years ago in We Are Marshall when he, at 31, easily passed for a college underclassman. His ineffable youth could have made him an enormous casting risk, especially in a role as a rough, capable and experienced ranch hand. But his trim mustache does a lot of work in aging him believably, setting up one of the most compelling supporting performances in 1923.
6. Spencer Dutton — 1923
One of the biggest challenges in 1923 is dirtying up actor Brandon Sklenar. He belongs in a Christian Dior ad, but Sheridan and his crew have to sell us on him as a tortured war veteran, living a life on the fringes of civilization as a big game hunter in Africa. Putting a clean-shaven, or even a strictly bearded Sklenar, into this setting and asking us to buy it would have been impossible. Here, the mustache makes the man.
Spencer Dutton is rarely shaven and so some scruff always accompanies the mustache, although care seems to be given to maintaining a differential in length so that the mustache never fades into a beard. And in every close-up we get of him squinting out over a hostile horizon, that gritty, sweaty snot mop reminds us that the danger of his surroundings is matched only by the danger of the violence lurking just below his surface.
5. William McDowell — 1923
For many of us, the image of Robert Patrick as T-1000 in Terminator 2, is burned into our brains. That introductory role as an evil android who could become fluid at any moment has left an image of Patrick as smooth and sleek, one that has only been emphasized by a career full of roles with slick-backed hair and a smoothly shaven face.
That’s why his massive, Wilfred Brimley-esque Painter’s Brush in 1923 is so striking. It’s a massive, hulking behemoth of a mustache, existing in three dimensions in a way almost no other facial hair in the YCU can claim to. It is not fluid. It is not smooth. It is rough and bristly, filled with nooks and crannies, holding a sheen of maple syrup from his morning pancakes before the shoot. It makes Robert Patrick into something entirely new and helps sell him into this essential supporting role.
4. Thomas — 1883
Played by: Lamonica Garrett
Mustache Style: A little pepper to go with that salt
The mustache that Lamonica Garrett’s Thomas sports in 1883 is, technically, of the same style as James Badge Dale’s John Dutton Sr — a mustache dark enough to distinguish itself from a silver beard. But a closer examination of the nuance and details reveal them to be worlds apart.
As Thomas, Garrett is stunning in his stoicism, his broken-hearted quest for space, for peace that is met at every turn by the responsibility he didn’t ask for but can’t turn his back on. The rough, unkempt, uneven state of his facial hair tells and sells his backstory, it gives us the broad strokes of the ugly things he’s seen in his life, without making us carry the specifics the way he so obviously has to. It is a remarkable performance, by both man and mouthbrow.
3. Young John Dutton Jr. — Yellowstone
Played by: Josh Lucas
Mustache Style: Chevron/Walrus
Josh Lucas appears intermittently throughout Yellowstone, appearing in flashbacks as a young John Dutton Jr. (Kevin Costner). He does a credible job of emulating Costner’s steely belligerence, suppressing his own rakish charm thanks to the help of a splendid Chevron/Walrus hybrid.
Because he appears in so many disconnected scenes, the mustache takes a lot of different forms — sometimes accompanied by a scruffy beard, sometimes lighter and thinner than others. But it’s a reliable constant and one of the more remarkable props and visual cues in the entire YCU. Even though Costner doesn’t sport a mustache playing the same character in the present, the mustache on Lucas helps him disappear into the role and makes him infinitely more believable as not just a young Costner but a younger version of this particular Costner character.
The show doesn’t work without these flashbacks and Josh Lucas doesn’t work in these flashbacks without the mustache. End of story.
2. Lloyd Pierce — Yellowstone
Played by: Forrie J. Smith
Mustache Style: Horseshoe
Lloyd Pierce is an outlier in the Yellowstone bunkhouse, an old-timer, a cowboy from another era, with the energy to (mostly) keep up with the younger hands and the experience and institutional knowledge to (mostly) steer them out of trouble. He is a bow-legged rider with a boot in two different worlds, speaking up for the value of tradition while doing whatever it takes to help the ranch adapt and meet each new threat.
The salt-and-pepper horseshoe of actor Forrie J. Smith is a perfect accouterment for the role, a facial hair style that hasn’t evolved since the early ’70s. It, quite literally, marks Pierce as someone who begrudgingly accepts change but prefers things to stay the way they’ve always been.
1. Shea Brennan — 1883
Played by: Sam Elliott
Mustache Style: Chevron/Walrus
Sam Elliott is already on the American Mustache Mt. Rushmore and he lent the gravitas of his prodigious pushbroom to 1883. Elliott’s mustache is really a work of art — bringing authenticity and both physical and psychological heft — to the character of Shea Brennan. Its bulk and volume stood in sharp contrast to his willow-thin frame and, wrapped around that playful, crooked smile, were a visual reminder that for all the loss, hardship and suffering Brennan had endured in his life, something essential still endured.
It was a pantheon performance by a pantheon mustache.