Over six seasons, deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens made a lot of enemies. Some of them popped up for a single episode of Justified and were scattered to the wind. Others stuck around and wove themselves into the fabric of the show.
With Timothy Olyphant set to make his return in Justified: City Primeval, it’s as good a time as any to reflect on that lineup of villains who operated beneath Givens’ standard of the law and, for the most part, wound up shot. Justified evolved from a potential weekly procedural into an overarching story that took years to tell. And on the way, no shortage of brutes and scofflaws — both complex and one-dimensional — vied to control the criminal element of Harlan County, Kentucky.
So let’s talk about the bad guys.
This is an effort to rank the most memorable villains across six seasons of Justified. In order to qualify for the list, antagonists had to be both a threat to Givens and have an arc that spanned multiple episodes. Sorry, fedora/ice-pick guy, you’re out.
Characters are ranked by their overall threat to Givens with a large emphasis on how compelling they were to watch each Wednesday night. Nicky Augustine may have had access to Givens’ family, for example, but I doubt anyone was that consumed by a former Nickelodeon host as a crime lord.
Keep in mind the baseline here is pretty high. Almost everyone made for a great multiple-episode foil to Raylan Givens.
Except for Michael Rapaport, the world’s least convincing Floridian.
15
The Crowes
Season: 5
Justified took a big swing and asked a famously New York actor (Michael Rapaport) and a famously New England one (Alicia Witt) to adopt the patois of Florida swamp people. It went poorly, managing to sully the good name of Dewey Crowe in the process (Dewey, by virtue of never being a threat to anyone but himself, did not qualify for these rankings. Rest in power, sweet simple prince).
14
Gio Reyes/the Miami cartel
Season: 1
Season one of Justified thread Givens’ overarching story through the framework of a CSI-type narrative, focusing on a handful of antagonists who’d show up for a single episode just to be arrested (or, more likely, gunned down) by the behatted marshall. But simmering in the background were the Crowders and the cartel.
One was much more compelling than the other. Miami put a price on Givens’ head, only to wind up intertwined in the neverending rat’s nest of illegal trade in the county and wind up worse off as a result. Givens and Miami come to an agreement by the end of the season, and no one winds up all that threatened in the process.
13
Nicky Augustine
Season: 3
Augustine was a brief threat, easily outmanuevered and dispatched by Givens. And it turns out the host of Nickelodeon’s Guts can’t really sell menacing.
12
Boon
Season: 6
Boon was intimidating thanks to his penchant for open carrying, confrontational nature and … hatred of hipsters? Like any good villain his primary quality was that you wanted to see him get shot. Unfortunately, that wasn’t in a compelling, “love to hate him” way. Mostly you just wanted him and his disgusting mustache off the screen.
11
Colt Rhodes
Season: 4
Rhodes brought pathos as a bumbling veteran searching for meaning, drawn to Boyd Crowder like a sad teen to emo music. He vacillated between heinous and humble, showcasing sides of humanity whittled down by addiction. He was as close to a conscience as you’d find among Crowder henchmen, even if he was fine murdering Oxy dealers and, if given the chance, poor Ellen Mae.
10
Avery Markham/Katherine Hale
Season: 6
“Attractive rich old folks” was the backdrop to season six, where Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen played veteran moguls translating their illicit skills to a world of soon-to-be-legal marijuana. Simultaneously lovers and kinda/sorta enemies, their plan to buy up farmable land in Harlan to create a local, legal weed empire takes a backseat to the Crowders’ drama to close out the season.
As scenery, they filled an entertaining role and allowed a series-long arc to unfold without getting exhausting. It wasn’t a heavy lift, but Elliott and Steenburgen did fine with it.
9
Bo Crowder
Season: 1
Drop M.C. Gainey anywhere and you know you’re in for a ride — and he’s straight-up ruthless here. The Crowder patriarch shows us why everyone in Harlan sharing that surname is horribly warped, waging war against his own son in order to control the local illicit trades and going as far as to murder, then string up, Boyd’s followers. Bo didn’t stick around for long — he dies an ignominous death in the season one finale — but he left a mark.
8
Ty Walker, Seabass and Choo-Choo
Season: 6
This trio of armed forces veterans were equal parts menacing and stupid. Garret Dillahunt’s Ty is a proper charming psychopath and Choo-Choo helped humanize the group (Seabass, uh, certainly was there too!). By this point in the series you knew exactly what their fates would be, but they it was mostly entertaining to watch their plot unfold — even if they were ultimately just Markham’s henchmen.
7
Elstin Limehouse
Season: 3
Limehouse is a great presence; a local leader happy to profit from the chaos around him in order to keep his holler … well, not prosperous, but at least keeping on. But after a relatively menacing introduction, the barbeque maestro offers a limited threat to Givens and our main characters.
He’s mostly used as a safe haven and plot device, satisfied to stash Harlan’s most wanted (and their ill-gotten gains) until it’s time to collect. As a result, he drops down the rankings despite doing a lot of much-needed work throughout the series.
6
Wynn Duffy
Seasons: 1-6
A wonderfully fleshed out and inherently unsettling character who got weirder as the show rolled on, Jere Burns’ Duffy is a memorable and vital piece of the Justified canon. But he’s rarely a primary problem for Givens, understanding that direct threats to the gunslinging marshall generally end poorly for (re-watches series) … everyone.
Duffy loves women’s tennis, an unseasonable full-body tan and being a different brand of creepy than the villains around him. He’s wonderful.
5
Ava Crowder
Seasons: 1-6
Ava was a complex character, a woman in search of her own power but lacking the means to come by it honestly. Like her once brother-in-law, then crime partner, then fiancee Boyd, her journey was tumultuous as she evolved in accordance to her surroundings. She saw a better life for the taking and proved capable of killing — just not turning over her entire soul in service of an ill-gotten empire. She’s not a full-on antagonist for Raylan, but she’s also not innocent.
4
Arlo Givens
Seasons: 1-4
Arlo paints over whatever slivers of redemption surface on his facade, underscoring the feeling of betrayal that his son left Harlan — and the family’s criminal enterprises — behind for life as a lawman.
His support instead falls to Boyd Crowder, the side of the coin left unflipped when it came to Raylan’s life. Givens spends the series pulling off a number of high-risk, low reward schemes in hopes of creating a future he’d be in no way, shape or form capable of enjoying. He dies in service of his principles, turning down the opportunity for transfer to a cushier prison to keep his secret about Drew Thompson’s identity. His final words to his son? “Kiss my ass.”
3
Robert Quarles
Season: 3
Quarles’ corporate creepiness and complexion of a man made entirely of ivory made him a proper departure from the Bennetts. He’s a man who is spiraling out when he arrives in Kentucky and only gets more volatile from there, covering a deep well of chaos behind his professional sheen. Neal McDonough does a great job sweating and smiling above that barely contained turmoil. It’s a shame he only lasted one season.
2
The Bennetts
Season: 2
Mags Bennett was matriarch to an entire holler, a beloved figure capable of heartbreaking deceit and betrayal. Her strong family values sell out a community and lead to multiple deaths, all underneath the friendly sheen of Southern hospitality and down-home values. Margo Martindale thoroughly sold this performance, creating a monster with a great reach and tragically shorter grasp. Everything she did came with justification, but the sum of those parts consumed any good trying to escape from her.
Sons Coover and Doyle also played key parts in the operation, but neither was as memorable (or volatile) as Jeremy Davies’ Dickie. A man who owed his distinct limp to Raylan, he was a menacing, unpredictable force and the family’s only surviving member. This led to some absolutely stellar guest appearances down the line — and an Emmy for outstanding guest actor in a drama in 2012.
1
Boyd Crowder
Seasons: 1-6
There could be no doubt. Boyd transformed from a Neo-Nazi to a multi-faceted anti-hero, evolving to something approaching redeemability despite starting at a place of abject ignorance and hate. He was charismatic and captivating, showcasing the charm needed to lure followers — or, more accurately, henchmen — into his fold. His schemes were perpetually doomed to fail but he threaded his way through each step to make it seem like a series of steps that each held a single-digit chance of success was legitimately possible.
Credit Walton Goggins, who turned a one-off character into one of the most compelling figures on television in the 2010s. Boyd Crowder was a monster, a hate-filled murderer who strived to make everyone in Harlan County’s lives worse. But he was polite and magnetic and somehow won you over to his side in spite of everything inside his heart.
It’s his connection with Givens that drives the entire series. It’s his final line — “We dug coal together” — that makes the finale damn near perfect.
