“Justified: City Primeval” showrunners on Walton Goggins' return as Boyd and plans for future seasons

Warning: This article contains spoilers about the season finale of Justified: City Primeval.

Just when Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) thought he was out of the U.S. Marshal service, his original archnemesis pulls him back in. Or does he?

The season finale of Justified: City Primeval ended on a massive cliffhanger after career lawman Raylan decided to retire early from being a Marshal to spend more time with his daughter Willa (played by Timothy's real-life 20-year-old daughter, Vivian Olyphant). But as he's relaxing on his boat with Willa, he can't ignore a news alert about an unnamed inmate who's escaped from prison, just as he gets an urgent call from the Marshal's Office.

Viewers know exactly what the call is about, as earlier scenes revealed the shocking return of original Justified baddie Boyd (Walton Goggins), who faked an illness and seduced a guard to aid in his prison break. Now Boyd's out in the world again, and there's no way Raylan can let him run free. Or can he? Will Raylan even pick up the phone? And if he does, will he change his mind about early retirement to hunt down the man he always seems to come back to? And does this mean there's more Justified coming in the future?

So many questions! Below, EW got Justified: City Primeval showrunners Michael Dinner and Dave Andron to discuss all that and more.

FX Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder in 'Justified: City Primeval'

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Where did the idea come from to bring Walton back and have Boyd return in such a big way in the finale?

MICHAEL DINNER: It was Dave's idea. When we first sat down, he said, "We've got to bring back Walton." Our biggest concern and what we didn't want to do is the hackneyed approach, which would be halfway through the season, Raylan's having trouble with a dude, he goes to see Hannibal Lecter in prison, and Boyd would say, "Here's what you do." We didn't want to do that. Dave's pitch was, "Let's bring him in at the end and have fun with it." It wasn't like, "Let's set up a cliffhanger." It was really to amplify Raylan's complication: Is he going to pick up that phone or not? Is he going to really retire or not?

DAVE ANDRON: Walton was obviously such a huge part of the original [series] and to not see him at all felt like, that's a drag, and yet this was really a Raylan story. So how do you bring him back in a way where it also helps you put the real exclamation point on the Raylan story? It's just that Elmore Leonard nudge of him putting down his badge and gun and saying, "I think I'm done with this," the fun, cool, Elmore version is, "You're done? You think so? Well, now your arch nemesis is out of jail. What do you do now?" It's just the fun thing of the dance is going to keep going.

That was a big part of the discussion at the end of the original Justified — we tossed around everything, Raylan could have died, Boyd could have died, but at the end it was like, that's not Elmore. Elmore's stuff is the fun and the dance is going to keep going, so we made sure that dance keeps going.

DINNER: It is fun, and it is a character beat for him. Look, we didn't do Justified, we did a little long movie called City Primeval, and Raylan happens to be in it. Our first inclination was we're not going to bring anybody back from the original, unless it makes sense organically. And as we worked on it and had this ending, it felt good. It felt very much like if Elmore was still with us, I think he'd be smiling about it.

What were those initial conversations with Walton like about returning for the finale?

ANDRON: I just remember the initial call where we had the idea and pitched him. He was really excited from jump.

DINNER: And we sent him pages. Dave and I were writing the pilot for the first episode and sent him pages at the same time because we wanted to show him what we were thinking. We've said it before, we felt like we stuck the landing with the original show, and we wondered what would Walton say about it? Because he was done, he moved on — he's doing 27 projects at the same time. And what would Tim say about it? Those were the first two calls we made. And then once Walton loved the pages and Tim loved them, everybody at the same reaction. It was, "Let's do it for the right reasons."

How did you manage to keep it secret? I can't remember the last time a massive return like this wasn't spoiled or leaked in advance.

DINNER: Yeah, it was kind of amazing.

ANDRON: The emails FX was sending out with the press embargo were pretty aggressively worded. And look, poor Walton had to lie through his teeth. We had to do a little bit here and there, but because of the strike there wasn't as much press — we didn't have to stand on a red carpet and tell everybody [lies] about how it didn't feel right [to bring him back for City Primeval]. But Walton, at that point, the actors had not struck yet, and he was doing all this press for Gemstones, and he called us after two days of press and was like, "I just spent two days lying to every journalist on the face of the planet that 'it just wasn't the time.'" So a lot of credit to him for sticking to his guns.

Another thing that probably helped us was we wrote it early just to make sure Walton would be on board and excited, but then we also had to shoot it about halfway through filming because of his schedule. For a long list of reasons, we ended up using a prison in Pittsburgh even though we were shooting in Chicago, so we took this little splinter unit over there and we shot it in a day and a half. It wasn't even two full days of filming. That probably helped us — it wasn't like we were in the city and people spotted him and our whole big crew. It was this small unit in this prison 30 miles outside of Pittsburgh, so it made it easier to keep it quiet.

What was it like having Walton back on set as Boyd after all these years?

ANDRON: It was pretty great. Our director/producer, Mr. Michael Dinner, got COVID and was not able to be there, which was a massive drag, but I went out and it was amazing. The first time he walked onto that set with the full Boyd Crowder hair and the whole vibe, unsurprisingly it took him no time at all to drop right back in. It was a real treat to get to see him be back in it. And then I haven't really talked about this, but I got my wife, whose name is Ahna O'Reilly, to play the female prison guard because I needed somebody really good who would do it, and who wouldn't blow it. We didn't want someone who was completely recognizable because then you'd see her and you'd see the twist coming.

She agreed to do it, which was such a blast for me. The last step was the stuff on the road, we were losing the light and it was this really hectic moment. And then I realized after that first take that I was about to watch Walton kiss my wife. I was like, "Oh ... right. I really forgot that I was going to watch my wife make out with Walton Goggins today." But I have to say, if it were any actor in the world, I felt okay about it being Walton.

DINNER: And I actually was looking forward to seeing Walton Goggins kiss your wife, but I had to work long distance. Long story short, we lost the ability to shoot in any prison in the state of Illinois because COVID was running rampant and they didn't have the personnel to cover, and this happened about a week and a half before we're supposed to shoot. And we had to pivot really quickly because Walton had only a short window to shoot. The irony was the roadwork and the bridge in that sequence was in the original pilot of Justified. And they were about ready to shut down this bridge in about a week or two and demolish it, so it was kismet to be able to go back to the place where we started and shoot that escape on that road, and on that bridge. The stars aligned, which is part of the theme of Elmore's stuff.

ANDRON: There was a moment early in the original, where Elmore came in to watch the pilot, and regarding Walton as Boyd, he said something to the effect of, "I don't believe a word that comes out of his mouth, but I love to hear him say it." We wanted to keep that the spirit of that alive where it's like, "Has he changed? Could he? Maybe he did. Oh no. No, no, it's the same Boyd."

FX Timothy Olympant as Raylan Givens in 'Justified: City Primeval'

We never see Boyd and Raylan together onscreen in the finale, which felt like way too big of a tease if we never see that come to fruition. Was there ever a version of the finale where they did come face-to-face?

ANDRON: No, what you see is what we had very early, and it didn't really change. It was always about him getting out, and then Raylan being on the boat with his daughter and feeling at peace with having moved on, and then the phone call. We didn't really even do it thinking we'd do more of this. It really just felt like, if this is all we ever do, that feels fun. And for the fans, It doesn't necessarily feel like it just ends in that way, so if we don't do anymore, everybody can have some fun thinking about, "Does Raylan pick up that phone? Does he go after him? Does he ever end up chasing Boyd down again?" It just felt fun for the fans to have that.

But since the final moments leave everything so open-ended, does this mean there's more Justified coming?

DINNER: Everybody would like to, but it's up to the network. Because it's not about City Primeval, we would only want to do it if it advanced where we were in the original show. I think we could do that, but it's up to the network. Walton's interested, and Tim's interested, and we think there's another chapter in Raylan's life, but what are the needs of FX?

If we do get to see another season, would the main focus be another Raylan vs. Boyd showdown? What does that final chapter look like for Raylan?

ANDRON: Boyd's out in the world, Raylan is "retired," Ava's out in the world, Boyd doesn't know where she is, and he has a son that he doesn't know about. But if he escaped from prison, everybody'd be after him. So certainly there's stuff there, it's kind of a classic Western. It would really be the story of where it began: Two guys who mined coal together when they were 18. There is a final chapter, if we decide to go down that road, but on the other hand, to leave it open-ended — did he pick up the phone or not — is pretty cool.

For me, it's always been the story of these two guys. As lovely as that final scene in the original was between Raylan and Boyd, it was a scene that was about a lie: Raylan saying Ava's dead to protect her and keep the child safe. And that is epic story fodder for Boyd to find that out. So how has Raylan and how has Boyd evolved in the last 10 years and what is it like when they come together now? How different is it? How has fatherhood changed both of these men and changed their relationships?

DINNER: These are two guys cut from the same cloth. Both have father issues themselves, both are fathers, and are they good fathers? Boyd doesn't even know that he has a son out there, but how does their story end? It really does center around the two of them.

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