U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens might have left Harlan alive by the end of Justified, but it looks like Harlan might not quite be done with him yet.
Everyone’s favorite Kentucky-born lawman got a jolt at the end of Justified: City Primeval, this summer’s FX limited series that saw Timothy Olyphant return as Givens and plopped right into a Detroit-set crime thriller based on Elmore Leonard’s City Primeval novel.
While (spoiler alert) Givens lived to tell another tale by dispatching his latest foe Clement “The Oklahoma Wildman” Mansell up in Detroit and returned to Miami for a seemingly serene retirement, the series’ epilogue hinted that Givens’ Marshall days might not be over.
More: Ranking Raylan Givens’ top Justified villains ahead of City Primeval premiere
Out of nowhere, the show cuts to a Kentucky penitentiary where none other than original series lead Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), Givens’ ultimate rival, has broken out of prison with the help of a romantically invested guard (Ahna O’Reilly).
Yes, Crowder is officially on the run and is apparently heading to Mexico, and the last shot we see is Givens weighing whether or not to answer a call from the Lexington, Kentucky, U.S. Marshall’s office about Crowder’s escape.
The end of one limited series begs the question of a returning one: will we get another season of Justified with Givens intermingling himself in Crowder’s jaunt to Mexico? Could we really see an actual Justified revival?
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Olyphan said that he wanted to make sure the big reveal would work because you just can’t bring Boyd Crowder back haphazardly.
“You don’t want the audience to feel [cheated], that they wanted to watch a whole season of that: ‘You put us through seven episodes to get to five minutes of Boyd?’” Olyphant told THR. “That was my one cautionary take. If we’re going to do this, we have to put more of ourselves into the rest of the show. We have to feel like the ending of this chapter would have been satisfying.”
How about that reunion between Raylan and Boyd? Olyphant sounds like he’s more than game to return and bring along some of the Justified: City Primeval characters with him.
“I can only tell you from my point of view, that if we are so lucky to get to do more, I feel like we could bring any cast member back from either incarnation of the show,” Olyphant said. “The world expanded. The writers deserve a tremendous amount of credit for taking this big swing.”
While nothing is set in stone, it does seem very possible that the old Justified crew might be getting the band back together for a new adventure somewhere down the road. It just depends on if FX is willing to greenlight more.
