The New Justified Undoes a Perfect Ending. Is It Worth It?

What does it mean when a show that ends perfectly decides to come back? Ever since FX announced it was bringing back TV’s coolest lawman, Raylan Givens, for the Justified revival City Primeval, this question has nagged at me. It was the end of the story Justified set out to tell, a final look at the question of whether it was possible for the sons of Kentucky coal country to ever escape their origins—or whether, as Boyd put it, “the only way to get out of our town alive is to never’ve been born there.” Stories are meant to end, and that’s a good thing. Raylan is loaned out to a Motor City task force after an attempt on a judge’s life, and when Raylan protests—he’s supposed to take his 15-year-old daughter on a road trip back to Miami—the police chief shuts him down with “Sometimes it takes an angry white guy to catch an angry white guy.” It’s a ham-handed line, far too on the nose for Justified, but it also acknowledges the complexity of bringing back 2015’s Raylan in 2023. And while City Primeval still channels Justified’s distinct tone—after a Detroit detective boasts that they need just one guard dog now because this new breed “is like a German shepherd on steroids,” Raylan says, “What if you have three guys running in three different directions?”—there’s also a fish-out-of-water vibe.