Before tonight’s season finale of Justified on FX, check out this Q&A with Executive Producer Graham Yost from a press call we took part in last week!
We’ve seen Raylan struggle between wanting revenge on those who have hurt the people he cares about and doing what’s right, especially when it comes to Art. What is it that has kind of kept him on a more “just” path?
Something happened in the 11th episode, after Art was shot and Raylan is talking to Tim, and Tim is basically saying ‘do you want to go out and just find Daryl and kill him?’ and Raylan says, “I don’t think that’s what Art would want.”
Raylan has the struggle in him of the guy who wants to get revenge but also wants to try and do things in a way that Art would respect. We’ve always seen Art as his good father and he’s, obviously, incredibly disappointed Art this season in a way that he never has before, so that’s the struggle.
During the fifth season, we’ve seen the characters move to an “every man for himself” mentality. Will we see the results of this shift, and how will this affect both the season finale and the story next season?
You’ll see a big shift in the finale. You’ll see what happens to the resolve of Ava this season, the resolve of the Crowes and also the Boyd story. There is a big reset that happens in the finale. The whole sort of point of this season was to strip away everyone from everyone: Ava is alone in prison, Boyd is alone on the outside, and Raylan is alone.
[In] “Starvation,” one of the points of that episode was when Boyd publicly confronts Raylan with the accusation — the truth — that Raylan, was implicated or involved in the death of Nicky Augustine at the end of last season, and he says it in front of Rachel and Tim. Rachel and Tim have Raylan’s back. And so that is sort of the beginning of them coming together and I will say that is one thing we’re headed towards in the final season.
Family has always been a prevalent theme throughout the series, and Raylan’s U.S. Marshal family took a hit this season. Can you share a bit about the importance of family to the series, and how it plays into both this season and going forward.
It’s been a big part of the show, obviously, and I think that part of it comes from the region. I think family is important everywhere in the world and I think that is one thing to always keep in mind that no region has a particular ownership of that story. That said, the notion of family and clan is very important in Appalachia. And that’s something that we gravitated to, especially in the second season and the notion of a feud between Raylan’s family and the Bennett family. But then that also sort of brought up the notion of Raylan’s family and Boyd’s family and that there was a bond and a rivalry in that kind of thing.
Then, yes, [there is the] notion that Art has, from the beginning, [been] Raylan’s good father and that his true family, his family of choice has been the Marshal service. So that’s the one that we could really see the fractures in and the problems of what it means to be Raylan and what it means to work with someone like Raylan.
That will be a big part of the final season, and I think you see things in these last episodes of this season about Raylan and his Marshall family sort of coming together after the great fracture that happened in the middle of the season.
The way the story is shaping up, it looks like Boyd is poised to be the “big bad” during the final season. What are the challenges around having Boyd be the antagonist although he is a character that many fans root for?
That’s been part of the DNA of the show, right from the beginning. Boyd has always been the big bad. He’s always been essentially the white whale for Raylan. I think Raylan has looked the other way because Boyd has served his purpose at times, but as we see toward the end of this season, Raylan’s frustration with that and where Boyd’s life has taken him and brought him to do things that Raylan is just agog at.
Also, [there is] the effect it’s had on Ava and I think that that’s one of the things we were going for in the penultimate episode [of the current season]. So, it’s not going to be easy. Raylan is not just going to go shoot Boyd in the first episode of the final season. We have to figure a story. And that’s one of the reasons we brought Mary Steenburgen in, to create and bring in another world and another thing that Boyd can be involved with for the final season.
At what point did you realize that Ava was going to be such an integral part of the series, and that she was going to endure so many terrible things?
We decided very early on that she would be a part of the series. We just loved what Joelle [Carter] was doing. We thought the character of Ava was really fun and interesting and so, we started off with her as Raylan’s girlfriend. And then we though, you know what, let’s play with that. Let’s have that break apart and then the question became how does Ava stay a part of the show? And we went for the idea of her linking up with Boyd. And that then gave her a position for the rest of the series. But a lot of that was just predicated on loving Joelle and just wanting her to be part of the show.
As much as we love Joelle, we also like to torment her. The whole decision to cut her hair was a big deal to see and we went back and forth on that a lot and she was just such a game player and said, yeah, let’s do it. But the goal of this season was to see Ava on her own and how she would survive. And she does survive.
Next season is the last for Justified. Why do you think this is a good point to end this series?
I think that’s one of the reasons why we want to end it after six seasons is we want to make sure we don’t overstay our welcome. We don’t want to run out of story. We don’t want to be treading water. We’ve already done a few things that to our mind are dangerously close to repeating ourselves, and sometimes we’ve repeated ourselves without knowing it. The big thing is we want to leave the party on a high note.
Watch the Season 5 finale of Justified, “Restitution,” tonight at 10pm on FX.
Photo Courtesy of FX
