Justified: City Primeval EP Breaks Down The Finale's Big Moments — Including Raylan's 'Complicated' Reunion With [Spoiler]
The following contains spoilers from the Justified: City Primeval season finale, which aired Aug. 29 on FX and streams on Hulu Aug. 30.
A lot happened as FX's Justified: City Primeval limited series came to a close on Tuesday night.
Detroit deviant Clement Mansell got his revenge on the Albanian mob and then set his sights on Carolyn Wilder, only to find visiting Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens laying in wait at the lawyer's home. Mansell unexpectedly got his "High Noon" moment with Givens when he reached for what turned out to be his demo tape; in return, the lawman instinctively peppered him with bullets. Arriving on the scene to find Raylan with a bleeding, gasping Mansell, Carolyn dialed not EMS... but the county morgue.
We then leaped forward six weeks in time, to a Miami retirement party for Chief Deputy U.S. Marshall Dan Grant (franchise vet Matt Craven). During a private tête-à-tête, Grant interrupted Raylan to assume that his Teflon padawan was ready for the "big chair" of chief; a bemused Raylan, though, finished his sentence to announce his own retirement, plopping his well-worn badge on the bar.
Next, we saw Raylan giving his Miami home a fresh coat of paint, as a montage reveals that Carolyn got her judgeship. A newly licensed Willa drove onto his lawn, with mom Winona (franchise vet Natalie Zea) in tow. Winona was, in a word, gobsmacked to learn that Raylan was retiring from law enforcement, teeing up a complicated but tender exchange between the exes.
Last... but far from least... we visited the Kentucky hoosegow where Boyd Crowder (franchise vet Walton Goggins) has been serving time, and now is about to be shuttled to a hospital to get diagnosed that which ails him. En route, it was revealed that the female guard is in cahoots with Boyd, and she helped facilitate an escape. Not long after Boyd and his moll paused for a quickie and then sped off in a getaway car, Raylan received alerts on his phone — just as he was enjoying a leisurely boat excursion with Willa. (Read all about Walton Goggins' surprise return.)
TVLine spoke with co-showrunner Michael Dinner, who co-wrote and directed the finale, about the finale's big moments, Raylan's future and more....
TVLINE | If I may quote the great Clement Mansell, "There are only two kinds of guys out on the street chasing bad guys your age — the ones who got passed over for the 'big chair,' and the ones who just love it so much they're going to have to be dragged off." Is the finale telling us that maybe Raylan doesn't "love it so much" anymore?
I mean, there are three acts to this guy's life. The first act was Justified, which was kind of the story about "you can't go home again." And with this, as we said during the [winter TCA] press tour, it's 10 years down the road and the road in front of him is a lot shorter than the road behind. He's in a position where mandatory retirement is lurking down that short road for him, and he's got a daughter who has a couple of years left before she's emancipated. He's kind of a walking anachronism when he puts down his badge at the end of this — and then the phone rings. [Laughs] So there you go.
TVLINE | Does Raylan feel like Mansell was a bad shooting?
Look, [Clement] didn't have a gun that he was pulling; he was pulling the [cassette] tape. So on the one hand, this is a guy who wreaked havoc in the world and you could make an argument that it was justified and he got what he deserved. But on the other hand, he didn't. So it's complicated. It's like a lot of Elmore Leonard's material — it's not black-and-white, it's in the gray zone. I think Raylan realized that, and he realizes what his position is in the world of this place, so he's done. Or at least that's what we think.
TVLINE | Raylan did save Mansell from dying in Skender's safe room. So maybe it's a wash...?
I think you could say that. That was his feeling with Carolyn, "This is not the way it was supposed to go down. I can't just walk away like this." And then of course he goes to the safe room and the guy already is out!
TVLINE | What did you like most about exploring Raylan's relationship with Carolyn, as opposed to previous romantic entanglements he has had?
I think that's a really interesting question because look, he was married before. We've seen him with other women before. But I just love the dynamic between the two of them. I mean, [Carolyn] is kind of a dynamo. I'm not sure she's like the other women he's been with, and that interests him. And in a way, these are two people who are trying to figure out how to keep going within the system, so that links them together. But I just think it's an interesting dynamic, the fact that she and Sweety represent Detroit, a world that he's not that familiar with. And look, she's black and he's white. And what does that mean? But I think that from first time he saw her, when she dismantled him on the stand, he saw someone who was really formidable and in some ways is like him to an extent.
TVLINE | Talk about shooting Chicago for Detroit....
We shot Chicago for Detroit because there's no tax incentive in Michigan anymore, and I've shot a lot in Chicago, so I have a crew there. And in some ways, architecturally there's a kinship to Detroit, even though it's not Detroit. Our original intention was to shoot Chicago, go and shoot Detroit for three or four days, and then go to Miami. But you probably are aware that we had some problems — there was a [real-life] shooting — and that shut us down for three or four days. And when that happened, our schedule got thrown out the window and we were really scrambling. So in Detroit, we only got there to shoot some interstitial material without actors; everything else was shot in Chicago. And the Miami stuff of course was shot in Miami, in the Everglades, because we'd always planned to go down there.
TVLINE | Turning to one of the codas: When Winona learns that Raylan has retired, Natalie Zea's expression conveyed so much without saying anything. I felt like she was surprised, like she was frankly impressed with him, and I felt she was a bit irked that didn't happen during their time together....
That's their tragedy in a sense; sometimes you meet people in your life and it's the wrong time or the wrong circumstances. The look in her eyes, I think it is complicated. She's saying to him, "Why didn't you do this 20 years ago, or 15 years ago? Our story would have been different." But you can't turn back the clock. I love that scene. I love where he is at this place, where she is, and the fact that they were two ships who passed in the night and it just didn't work.
TVLINE | The way he watches her drive away tells me that her reaction did not go unnoticed.
Right. Right. Life has a funny way of working out. Sometimes things work out for the best and sometimes they don't. You can debate whether their not being together was for the best or not, but certainly it's a pretty emotional and powerful moment, that now, at this time, he decides to put down his badge.
TVLINE | Do you have any favorite scenes from City Primeval?
So many things. I really like the actors in this, and we had a really great time doing it.
In the second episode, there's the scene where Raylan walks into the restaurant in the hotel and Mansell is sitting with Willa. On the page, I thought it was a good scene, but I didn't quite see the depth of the emotion. But Tim, his performance is great. When he says to her, "For once in your life, just say, 'Yes, dad'"? That's just killer, man.
There's a lot of stuff with Aunjanue Ellis and Vondie Curtis-Hall (Sweety) that is awesome.
The moment in the last episode between Aunjanue and Tim, when she's in the bathtub, is pretty powerful. When she says that "this house was my ex-husband's dream," that was pretty honest.
And just the whole ending. As you said, the scene with Winona, and then seeing Boyd break loose.... In every episode there was something for me to latch on to emotionally or for me to feel a shot of adrenaline or whatever. We did this not to reboot Justified. We did it because we wanted to reboot the feeling that we had working with each other — whether it was me working with Tim, or David and myself and the other writers, what we felt in the writers room. That's how it started and that's how we ended. We were lucky to have great actors and do this little story, dropping Raylan in the middle of it.
TVLINE | Well, it was a real treat to have to watch this summer, and you could definitely feel the love coming through from you guys.
Oh, thank you. Like I said, it was nice to have Raylan back. And we'll see what happens. It's up to FX, what they want to do — if they want to tell another chapter, great. If they don't, you know, it was good to do this and we feel really good about where we ended.
What did you think of City Primeval and how it ended? Sound off below!