This post contains spoilers for Justified: City Primeval Season 1. If you're not caught up yet check out our spoiler-free review.
Justified: City Primeval is one of the best shows of the summer. It’s as clever as its predecessor, the six-season run of Justified that aired from 2010 to 2015, and about twice as thoughtful in its portrayal of the lawman at its core. The added contemplativeness makes sense. Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) is older now, both more focused on fatherhood and – as he finds himself in Detroit this season in a story adapted from Elmore Leonard’s back catalog – more conscious than ever of the corrupting power of a gun and badge.
The eight-episode first season of Justified: City Primeval was as confident a return to form as ever, yet its country mouse in the city plotline didn’t fly with many fans of the original. Lucky for the naysayers, Justified: City Primeval had an ace up its sleeve all along – one that’s set to take Raylan back to Harlan County, Kentucky if the not-so-limited-series gets a second season pickup.
With 10 minutes left in its runtime, “The Question” appeared to have wrapped up its main plotline entirely. After shooting an unarmed man – albeit a sadistic, murderous one who’d been evading capture all season – Raylan retired, seemingly bothered by his ability to pull on someone without justification and get away with it. His family and coworkers didn’t understand it, but audiences will recognize this moment as a belated answer to the question he asked his ex Winona (Natalie Zea) in the show’s very first episode: Who would he be if he killed someone without so much as a veneer of self-defense?
Though Raylan is too quiet a character to say it and Justified too subtle a show to give voice to his inner monologue, the answer has always seemed to be that he feels he’d be no better than a killer – a criminal like his old friend Boyd (Walton Goggins). It’s fitting that Boyd be on his mind now; as the Bible-thumping bad guy himself might say, speak of the devil and he shall appear.
With Detroit behind him, Raylan decides to kick off his shoes and go boating with his daughter Willa (Vivian Olyphant) in a moment that seems poised to fade peacefully to black. Instead, the action picks back up in an additional scene with a shot of an orange jumpsuit-clad figure, coolly framed by the camera in a way that’s so far been reserved largely for the show’s swaggering hero. The word “KENTUCKY” flashes on the screen, and we see Boyd Crowder make his way through a state penitentiary to a crowded room, where he gives a sermon about love triumphing over hate. Has the man who’s always been Raylan’s villainous other half finally changed his ways? Nope. After he tells the gathered audience of inmates he’s in poor health and due to be transferred to a hospital, he makes a giddy escape with the help of his prison guard lover.
By episode’s end, Boyd is a free man with a new suit, a new car, a new girlfriend, and a course plotted to Mexico. Raylan, on the other hand, is biting his cheek trying to ignore his phone, which is blowing up incessantly with alerts about an escapee from a Kentucky penitentiary. The episode cuts to credits while Willa prompts him to explain why he quit his job, and instead of answering her question, he glances back at his phone once more. It’s not just an exhilarating end cap to an excellent season, but also a brilliant thematic full-circle moment for the original series’ two main characters. Though Boyd’s name isn’t mentioned all season, the killer Raylan faced down, Boyd Holbrook’s Clement Mansell, has often felt like a pale echo of the man, and Raylan has treated him as such. Boyd’s return feels not just right, but fated.\
Why did Raylan quit? One true answer would be that he saw for the first time how broken the criminal justice system is, and how easy it would be to break himself to fit into it. Yet we can see that answer change in real time as he itches to answer his phone like an addict looking for a fix. Maybe Raylan quit because for him, the thrill of the chase began and ended with his old friend, the man he could never shoot to kill no matter how hard he tried.
It seems likely that Justified: City Primeval won’t just be a one-off as expected. In a TV landscape that’s overflowing with self-styled “limited series” that don’t stop at one season, this is one show that’s more than worthy of a continuation. The finale might be titled “The Question,” but there’s no real question here: if Boyd is back, Raylan will have to face him – even if it kills him.
Plus, City Primeval detractors will get their way, as the final moments position the show’s action firmly back in Kentucky. Earlier this season, Willa expressed a desire to see Raylan’s hometown, and it looks like she might get the chance. Raylan’s made it clear that he’s done with Harlan, Kentucky, but as the riveting cliffhanger ending of Justified: City Primeval demonstrates, it’s clearly not done with him.
