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[Pictured: Justified star Timothy Olyphant and showrunner Graham Yost.]
This Tuesday, after six seasons, 78 episodes, and more ludicrous plot twists, colorful characters and murderous mayhem than you can shake a stick at, FX’s Justified will air its final episode. It hasn’t been a bad run for a show that was originally inspired by a single Elmore Leonard short story, “Fire in the Hole.” Yes, there are also a couple Leonard novels featuring the character of Raylan Givens, an unflappable U.S. marshal with a controversial way of enforcing the law, but Justified’s original pilot, which aired back in March of 2010, was an almost note-for-note screen adaptation of “Fire in the Hole,” in which Givens is reassigned to his hometown of Harlan, Kentucky after his unsanctioned shooting of a mob hitman in Miami. And it’s to those early roots it shall return, or so said creator and showrunner Graham Yost.
Speaking to a packed house at a Paley Center for Media panel event on Wednesday, Yost explained that there’s a “circular motion” to this final season, and that “we’re bringing us back to where we started.” Not that Raylan will literally leave Harlan and return to Miami from whence he came (though anything’s possible at this point) but that the show will continue turning the focus back to the core three characters who started it all, Raylan, Boyd and Ava, and that however its ending manifests, that trio will be at the crux of it. It’s not hard to imagine a final scenario that somehow mirrors the pilot’s original jaw-dropping climax, in which a taut stand-off involving all three characters lead to Raylan shooting Boyd in the chest. All three survived that encounter six years ago, but one assumes they may not all be so lucky this time around.
The fact that even now, nearly 80 episodes in, it’s impossible to predict what will happen next on Justified, is a testament to the show’s unwavering commitment to its singular brand of storytelling. And that brand, said Yost, can be summed up in two words: “Elmore Leonard.” Though a novelist short story writer by trade, Leonard’s involvement with Justified extended far beyond being its inspiration. He was an executive producer on the series until his death in 2013, and his singular ability to craft memorable characters, dialogue and story in a singularly gritty style informed the writer’s room every step of the way. Yost said the Justified writers even had an Elmore Leonard trophy that was awarded to the scribe who best embodied his unique talent (as of this writing, the trophy had yet to be awarded despite the series being wrapped.)
“It can sound like I’m saying the same thing over and over again,” said Yost, “but it really comes back to Elmore. He would write these great little characters and we would pay attention to that.” And of how he hoped the show would be remembered, Yost said for its ability to channel Leonard’s “funny, scary, sexy, crazy twists… that people will say, ‘yeah, we did that well.”
Other panelists echoed Yost’s sentiment, including Joelle Carter, who plays Ava on the show. She told the crowd that Justified’s knack for female characters with “lots of vulnerability and strength… is an Elmore Leonard thing,” and that she noticed his touch from day one, when she realized “you got Ava’s full history in one scene.” And Jacob Pitts, who plays Deputy Marshal Tim Gutterson, said that “It’s a show that constantly sets up the most stereotypical situation and then subverts it.”
Raylan Givens portrayer Timothy Olyphant was also in attendance at the event. A cool customer with a swaggering charm, he seemed the living embodiment of his character, and even told the crowd that his first goal in every scene was “to get across how cool I am and then after that, if there’s some subtext – great.” When one fan in the audience asked if he worried about being typecast following starring roles in two TV westerns, Justified and HBO’s Deadwood, he said with a hint of sarcasm, “Am I concerned about being typecast as a badass…? That would be awful wouldn’t it?”
Whatever happens next for the cast and crew of Justified, it’s doubtful they’ll have trouble finding work, though Yost warned that the likelihood of finding the chemistry the show enjoyed on subsequent projects is not high. Professing to sobbing his eyes out prior to wrapping the series finale, he said “You can’t think this will happen again. There have been very few showrunners who have gotten another show going with as much impact as their favorite one, and this was my favorite one. I’ll probably continue to work but whether it will be anything as good as this, that’s really tough to predict.”
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