Justified: City Primeval ended in the most satisfying manner possible: with an appearance from Boyd Crowder. Yep, Walton Goggins had (deliciously) lied to my colleague, Jason Tabrys, by playing dumb about that escape-from-prison cameo. “[I]t was not the time” was how he described the prospect of Boyd appearing, but he also teased, “I’ll be watching it all the way to the bitter end. How about yourself? Will you be watching it to the end?”
That ornery Walton Goggins.
The finale also saw Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant, obv) finish what he started by killing Clement Mansell (Boyd Holbrook and his tighty whities), and then Raylan thought he was retiring. Actually, he did retire, except that he spent the final moments of the season staring at that ringing phone and presumably wondering if he should answer. Raylan knew, in his heart, that he would be pulled back into “one last job” if he did that deed, and then the season was over.
Is that the end of Justified? Maybe not.
Plot
Since that time, we have received teases from co-showrunner Michael Dinner, who admitted that “everybody [on the team] would like” more Justified, yet it wouldn’t be called City Primeval but would take place in a Raylan-and-Boyd centered space. That’s a major “if,” of course, but Dinner further declared, “It’s up to the network. Walton’s interested, and Tim’s interested, and we think there’s another chapter in Raylan’s life, but what are the needs of FX?”
Ideally, FX will decide that the people need to know what happens after Boyd Crowder was smooching a lady prison guard and having concocted a medical ruse to leave prison. That guard, by the way, was portrayed by Ahna O’Reilly, the wife of co-showrunner Dave Andron, who remarked upon how strange it was to “watch Walton kiss my wife.”
To further emphasize how exciting that another Boyd return would be, I’d like to refer to this emphatic plot prediction from my colleague, Brian Grubb:
We have a “one last job” situation on our hands, people.
God, I’m so ready.
Give me Raylan chasing Boyd through Mexico and maybe even South America.
Send them to Brazil.
Please.
For me.
PLEASE.
BRAZIL.
THINK ABOUT IT.
YES.
You heard him. Do they have any Dairy Queens in Brazil?
However, we cannot emphasize enough that these are all dreams right now except for the part where both Olyphant and Goggins declared that they are definitely “interested” in getting the love-hate relationship back together. And this would be great, you know it. Do you remember the “I’m gonna bet my life on you being the only friend I have left in this world” scene? Not to mention the “we dug coal together”? Yup. We need more of that.
Besides, I believe that Goggins might feel obliged after this Michael Dinner revelation about hiding his cameo from the world:
[P]oor Walton had to lie through his teeth… he was doing all this press for Gemstones, and he called us after two days of press and was like, ‘I just spent two days lying to every journalist on the face of the planet that “‘it just wasn’t the time.'” So a lot of credit to him for sticking to his guns.
This situation can be remedied. :)
Cast
As long as we receive Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins staring each other down as Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder, nothing else matters. Would I like to see how Deputy U.S. Marshal Tim Gutterson (Jacob Pitts) is doing, too? Sure would.
Release Date
Given how well Goggins kept his City Primeval cameo a secret, I honestly would not be surprised if that squirrelly fellow and the rest of the cast and crew decided to get together without announcing as much (to surprise everyone). In other words, if we do see a second season, it could conceivably happen sooner than we think. 2024? 2025? Fingers crossed.
Trailer
We can only dream of that type of crystal ball. For now, let’s travel back to the time of Dairy Queen-dreaming Boyd declaring, “I am the outlaw, and this is my world, and my world has a high cost of living.”
