Two weeks after being found dead in the “Yellowstone, Season 5 Part 2 premiere, patriarch John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner, managed a grisly return Sunday.

The latest episode features a flashback to the Montana governor’s brutally efficient assassination. Three balaclava-clad professionals grab the sleeping Dutton (played by Costner’s stunt double), carry him to the bathroom, force a gun into his hand and kill him, making it look like a suicide.

The death is “a gross violation of everything John Dutton’s character was and stands for,” director Christina Voros tells USA TODAY. “It is brutal. It is heartbreaking. Here is a strong, iconic character who has stood up against various forces of evil and adversaries. To be taken down unsuspectingly in his sleep, in his own home, is a terribly violent act.”

Yet viewers need to witness Dutton’s death, Voros says. “It’s such a militaristic operation that no amount of exposition would make it work. You have to see it to understand what happened,” she says.

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The post-Dutton death trauma continues when the governor’s corpse is thoroughly examined in the morgue. Voros answers burning questions from Sunday’s episode:

John Dutton returns to ‘Yellowstone’And this major character is killed: What happened in Episode 11.

Why was it important to show John Dutton’s body in the morgue?

Loyal son Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) pushes the coroner for a second look at the governor as he questions the initial suicide ruling. Kayce even insists on going into the morgue to watch the re-examination of his father, much of which is shown in the episode.

Kayce represents every viewer who doesn’t want to look at the gruesome remains of a heroic character but wants answers.

“Unless Kayce looks at the body, he will not get the answers he seeks,” says Voros. “We are looking through Kayce’s gaze. It’s not death for death’s sake. It’s this bruise here, this laceration. The answers that could bring us to justice lie in that body. It’s the key to unlocking the truth and ensuring the right people are held accountable.”

Does John Dutton’s TV treatment reflect the Costner-Sheridan disagreement?

Dutton has had a brutal time in these new episodes, written by co-creator and executive producer Taylor Sheridan following an extended battle with Costner, who officially announced he wouldn’t return in June.

Is Dutton’s treatment a parting salvo or steeped in the feud between the show’s only writer and its former star?

“I can’t speak for Taylor,” says Voros. “What I do know is that he always had a version of the (“Yellowstone”) end in mind long before any offscreen drama. With generational dramas going all the way back to Shakespeare and the Greeks, the death of the king is archetypal. Avoiding that was never in the cards. My sense is that was always where we were going.”

Still, the specifics of the death, and perhaps even the morgue scene, would have changed if Costner had been part of what was previously billed as the end of “Yellowstone,” and still could be.

“Whether we would have gotten here this way, in a different universe. I can’t answer that,” says Voros. “Only Kevin (Costner) can talk to his decision to be or not be a part of this last season. And I am not in the rooms where such things are decided. But it’s a really interesting puzzle for storytellers to tell a story of the death of the king without the king. You have to see something.”

Were viewers denied a final Beth Dutton and Sarah Atwood showdown?

It seemed likely that Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) and lawyer Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri) were headed to a “Yellowstone” showdown. Beth knew the lawyer schemed with her boyfriend Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley) to kill his father. The formidable characters have faced off toe-to-toe in the past.

Yet in Sunday’s episode, it’s the secret assassin corporation that strikes Sarah before Beth does. Sarah had hired the nefarious group to kill Governor Dutton. She even visited their secret office lair. Sarah was the one loose end as police reopened the Dutton case as a possible homicide.

Sarah is murdered in her Range Rover by a couple posing as lost minivan drivers. Voros says sudden deaths like Sarah Atwood’s and John Dutton’s are part of Sheridan’s surprise master plan.

“Whether it’s John Dutton dying in the first episode or Sarah dying now, there are certain conclusions that feel like inevitable standoffs,” she says. “But if you hit every single one of those marks, there’s no surprise left. So places where (Sheridan) chooses to withhold a final showdown, for example, work. It keeps us on our toes as an audience.”