Denim Richards and executive producer/director Christina Voros have touched on Colby’s death in post-mortem interviews, emphasizing the “simple” yet dangerous nature of the cowboy lifestyle. While both of them don’t explicitly state why Colby was chosen as the victim of Taylor Sheridan’s deadly Season 5 story, as there are plenty of other cowboys on the ranch, they call attention to the significance of the stark differences between Colby’s death and John’s death:
Denim Richards (via Entertainment Weekly ): “I feel like this season, [creator] Taylor [Sheridan] is really emphasizing the realities of cowboy life… These things do happen, so I do think that there’s that element where I think it is about really wanting to emphasize that this is a reality.”
Christina Voros (via The Hollywood Reporter ): “In a season where there are all these twists and turns and dark forces and giant narrative swings, Colby’s death is so powerful because it’s so simple… It has a very different impact, I think, then the murder of John Dutton, because it happened because he was doing what he’s meant to be doing. It didn’t happen because someone was out to get him or because he did anything wrong. He was trying to protect Carter and did what he thought was the right thing, and it was a freak accident.”
Richards was informed back in May that he was going to be killed off the show, meaning that it wasn’t his decision to leave. Colby was simply killed to remind audiences and other characters that the cowboy profession isn’t a safe one by nature. It doesn’t take assassination attempts and shootouts to end a person’s life — there are other factors that could mean death in just a split-second. Although it may seem undeserving for Colby to be the martyr to deliver this message, his grounded death is a refreshing change of pace from the exaggerated schemes that have murdered other characters in newer episodes of Yellowstone.