Warning: major spoilers ahead.
“Justified: City Primeval” ended its eight-episode run with the shocking re-appearance of “Justified” antagonist Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins) within the closing minutes of the Aug. 29 episode.
Fans of the FX series relished the sight of the supposedly-born-again Crowder preaching the gospel to his fellow prison inmates in Kentucky — after which, shackled tightly, escaping from an armed escort with the assistance of his lover, a jail guard.
They launched into a joyride to Mexico while newly retired US Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) lolled on a ship in Miami together with his daughter, Willa — ignoring an alert about an escaped inmate in Kentucky while his cellphone rings with a call from the US Marshal’s office in Lexington.
“Justified: City Primeval” author/showrunner/executive producer Michael Dinner directed the finale — and said the plan, from the get-go, was to go away Boyd’s Big Reveal until the very end.
“[Showrunner] Dave Andron and I got together — we had done ‘Justified’ — and Dave actually pitched the thought of what if we brought Walton back?,” Dinner told The Post. “My instinct was [that] this wasn’t ‘Justified’; it felt like we stuck the landing and we weren’t going to bring back any of the unique characters unless it made sense, organically. We were going to catapult Raylan into this latest story.
“What Dave and I were most concerned about is that we didn’t wish to do that halfway through the eight episodes, like in Episode 5 Raylan’s having trouble with [psycho killer] Clement Mansell [Boyd Holbrook] and he goes to this prison and he talks to Boyd Crowder like, ‘I don’t understand this guy. Tell me what he’s as much as?’
“Dave’s point from the start was, look, it’s the 12,000 pound elephant within the room and individuals are going to say, ‘Where’s Boyd Crowder?,” Dinner said. “We figured, let’s do it for fun and convey him in at the tip.”
Dinner said they first had to examine with Olyphant to see if he was onboard with the plan, and, once he was (enthusiastically), ensuring each Goggins and FX gave the green light.
“We called Walton and said it’s not an enormous commitment but we’d wish to have some fun,” Dinner said. “He said, ‘Well, it seems like fun, yeah, it may very well be kinda cool.’ We said, ‘We’re writing the pilot without delay and we’re going to jot down a rough draft of [the scenes where Boyd reenters the picture] and what it might appear to be within the finale.’ He read it and called us just ecstatic and said, ‘I might like to do this; I’m very busy, but when we could work it right into a day, that will be awesome.’”
Dinner said those best-laid plans almost were shot to hell when, a week-and-a-half before Goggins was scheduled to shoot his scenes, the state of Illinois and the town of Chicago told Dinner he couldn’t shoot in any prisons there, which were understaffed resulting from COVID.
“In our case we pivoted really quickly,” he said. “I had shot in an empty prison in Pittsburgh a few years before and if we could go there it might be perfect, since I can write without having to scout it.” The Pittsburgh Film Office gave Dinner et al. the green light and in addition allowed them to film on a bridge-and road, utilized in the unique “Justified” pilot, that was scheduled to be demolished in 10 days.
The closing scenes of the “Justified: City Primeval” finale leaves the door wide open for one more season.
“The cynical side of somebody would say, ‘Oh, they did this [for that reason], but honest to God we did the entire thing to have time,” Dinner said. “We didn’t wish to reboot ‘Justified,’ we desired to reboot the sensation we had doing that show.
“It was really Walton who, after reading the pages, said, ‘You realize, fellas, there may be a possibility here [that] if everybody desired to we could go and do some more of this, couldn’t we?’
“It’s actually something that’s on the market and something we discussed with FX before the [SAG-AFTRA] strike,” Dinner said. “There have been no discussions because the strike began but we get reports every week of the [viewership] numbers and the way it’s doing and I believe … FX may be very joyful with it.
“There may very well be a 3rd chapter so long as everybody is keen about it and it felt prefer it wouldn’t diminish the ending of the unique series,” he said.
“The power to exit and do yet one more rodeo could be unbelievable.”
