No matter how Justified diehards felt about Justified: City Primeval as a whole, the final few moments of the first season were universally adored. Boyd Crowder surfaced and escaped prison to flee with his warden girlfriend, and everything might have fallen apart for Raylan Givens’ plans for a relaxing retirement.
Is that the end of Justified? Surely, it cannot be. Fanfiction will be written if FX doesn’t renew, and let’s casually mull over what we know about a reprisal and whether Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins are down for more.
Plot
The suggestion in the first season finale was that Raylan both wanted to answer that phone and dreaded the possibility of doing so. Should he choose to do so, daughter Willa would be awfully bummed out, but can Raylan resist? He is not a man of leisure. I think we can all envision Willa tossing the phone into the ocean, but assuming that didn’t happen, the dude almost certainly threw on his favorite hat and got the ball rolling to find Boyd.
Let’s also look at Exhibit A:
Walton Goggins submitted proof that he and “Raylan Givens” met up while they were both in Thailand to shoot different series. Goggins was onboard for HBO’s third season of The White Lotus, and Olyphant’s hair was preparing to dodge FX’s Xenomorphs for Noah Hawley’s upcoming Alien series. Surely, they bid each other hello due to being friends, but you know they had to discuss the second-season thing. That subject could not be avoided.
“Look at this beautiful Thailand surprise… got to meet up with Raylan Givens for lunch today,” Goggins wrote on Instagram. “Talk about comforts from home…Just what I needed. What a good man. The road we’ve walked.”
Yup.
And now for Exhibit B:
Walton Goggins also had too much fun dropping hints to my colleague, Jason Tabrys, about how important it was to watch the first City Primeval season “all the way to the bitter end.” Does that mean anything? Not in a concrete way, but let’s pretend that it does.
Goggins has since admitted that everyone involved with Justified: City Primeval wants to do more, and it’s a matter of lining up timing, and co-showrunner Michael Dinner agreed while stressing that the decision is in the hands of FX. Keep your fingers crossed.
With that said, Harlan County seems too — for lack of a better term — fraught with memories to take Raylan and Boyd back to that setting without getting the whole gang together. Additionally, Ava (Joelle Carter) has been (unbeknownst to Boyd) in the wind, and surely she would prefer to stay that way. There probably isn’t any chance of Boyd ever going legit enough to achieve his Dairy Queen dream, and let’s get real. He left the U.S. as soon as possible, and Raylan will need to follow him. Maybe they go to Aruba. What matters most is that they end up in the same room again, but we’ll have to hang tight for confirmation of more.
Cast
Not much else counts as long as Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins return as Raylan and Boyd to antagonize and begrudgingly respect each other. I wouldn’t be mad if fellow Deputy U.S. Marshals Rachel Brooks (Erica Tazel) and/or Tim Gutterson (Jacob Pitts) surfaced, but if this show goes international in setting, that seems unlikely.
Release Date
2025? That seems possible if a call is made soon. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the leading duo kept a confirmation a secret until the last possible moment, simply because they are squirrelly like that.
Trailer
Silly rabbit, no trailer exists yet. However, this old clip of a fight in the U.S. Marshal’s office is always worth another watch.
