The Pitch: A famous filmmaker once said, “Films are never completed; they’re only abandoned.” (George Lucas often gets credit for the quote, but he attributes it to another famous filmmaker.) Doesn’t matter who originated it because those words carry a very different meaning in our current Hollywood landscape.
Stories are rarely if ever, finished these days, because there’s always a reason for more once the curtains close. Maybe these stories resurrect for creative reasons. More often than not, the motivation starts and ends with someone’s bank account, but sometimes it’s both. Either way, we live in a world where no one dares utter the phrase “And then they lived happily ever after…” because there’s a good chance that beloved piece of pop culture will find its way back into our lives sooner rather than later.
Enter Justified: City Primeval, the next chapter to FX’s Justified, which ended its six-season run in 2015. Starring Timothy Olyphant as U.S. Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens, City Primeval has the unenviable task of carrying that acclaimed show’s weight on its shoulders and adding more chapters to a story that stuck the landing with aplomb eight years ago. Not only that, the eight-episode limited series features an older Raylan in Detroit and not in Kentucky, which strips the show of a familiar setting and characters that fans came to adore like a warm blanket: New city, new characters, and none of the trappings that made Justified, well, Justified.
And yet, against all those odds, Justified: City Primeval exceeds even the highest expectations. Rather than recreate what came before, this series finds its footing by keeping true to the world — and rules — author Elmore Leonard created, while still finding new challenges for the U.S. Deputy Marshal who rocks the Stetson and treats every situation like he’s Gary Cooper in High Noon.
The City: The Justified writing staff wore rubber bands with “WWED” (What Would Elmore Do?) etched as a reminder. City Primeval, created by two of those writers, succeeds because they carried that mantra forward. Full stop. The events in the series unfold for the same reasons they did in the 2010 series: greed, ego, stupidity, recklessness, and, of course, luck. The show’s criminals, most notably Clement Mansell (Boyd Holbrook), often find themselves on the wrong end of the barrel thanks to stupid actions at the wrong place at increasingly wrong times.
The show underlines this point by establishing a petty inciting incident that gets Raylan from Florida to Detroit. And the only reason the sociopathic Mansell gets on Raylan’s radar is that a set of proverbial dominos just happened to fall in the Marshal’s direction.
Justified: City Primeval (FX)
Keeping with the spirit of the series that came before, the author who created this character, and the book on which this series is based, City Primeval makes its plotting seem so effortless that only on a rewatch does the work really show itself. Every conversation, even the seemingly innocuous ones, carries weight. The dialogue sings the way Justified fans expect. While character movements and shots from earlier in the season reveal more profound meaning later. Like the best seasons of Justified, this 2023 model evolves as the story progresses and its characterizations deepen.
The People: Like Kentucky, Detroit has its own flavor, and that’s illustrated to significant effect through the people surrounding Raylan this time around. It goes without saying that Detroit represents more racial diversity than the rural holler that is Harlan County, and the show sticks to that reality.
But it’s more than just dropping Raylan into a melting pot, giving him a Black partner, and commenting that he sticks out like a green hat with an orange bill in an upper-class Black neighborhood. City Primeval explores its Black characters’ inner lives and sometimes even juxtaposes their lived experience with his, mainly through Carolyn Wilder (Aunjanue Ellis), Mansell’s ambitious lawyer — why is this intelligent woman with her own legal practice defending the psychopath?
That’s part of the show’s charm, and it answers it throughout several episodes while exploring Detroit’s socio-politics. Her background and motivation give her scenes with Raylan an underlying complexity that challenges both characters. The fact that Olyphant and Ellis have more chemistry than the periodic table pushes those scenes further. Wilder continues the Justified tradition of fully realized, beautifully written women who unexpectedly expose Raylan to a different perspective.
But no woman in the series does that more than Willa Givens (Vivian Olyphant) — Raylan’s baby girl from the original series finale is now a full-blown teenager. Knowing Olyphant’s actual daughter plays Willa, no doubt informs the relationship. However, the series is more interested in what fatherhood means for a man who still refuses a desk job even after all this time.
It’s clear from the jump that things are strained between the two, and without going into detail, that conflict comes with a surprising resolution, but fatherhood mellows Raylan to a degree. That notorious anger bubbling beneath his calm exterior only surfaces a few times during the series, but it’s certainly present. It’s fun watching Olyphant play Raylan as a man with something to lose now, as opposed to years ago when he practically avoided laying down roots or establishing any connections that might take him away from that badge.
Justified: City Primeval (FX)
The Bad Guy: Justified: City Primeval puts Raylan through his paces through a daughter, a foreign city, and a fascinating defense attorney. But like any good story about a good guy – especially one with a cowboy hat, it all comes down to the bad guy. This review already referred to Mansell as being sociopathic and psychotic, but note that he’s also scary — his fear factor comes from his unpredictability.
In Justified or elsewhere, the best stories use their antagonists to examine something in the protagonists while embodying an obstacle. Mansell, though an Oklahoman, embodies Detroit for Raylan and the audience. Like the city, Mansell represents something unfamiliar to our hero and often acts out of pure instinct rather than calculation, like Raylan’s former nemesis, Boyd Crowder. Like Crowder, Mansell’s strength lies in his connections, but unlike Crowder, those connections go well above petty crooks and hustlers.
Just as it does through Wilder, City Primeval comments on American institutions through Mansell without ever exceeding its grasp or making a big deal about it. If you know, you know, and those who do will find the series much more rewarding.
As an aside, props to Holbrook for walking into a pair of massive boots and making them his own. On this or any other Earth, there’s no way he escapes comparisons to what Walton Goggins did with Crowder. (To say nothing of the fact the man’s first name is actually Boyd.) He doesn’t imitate Goggins at all and makes Mansell his own character, who becomes enamored with Raylan for different reasons than Crowder or any other Harlan criminal. Holbrook then takes that twisted affection and plays it like a man who simultaneously relishes tangoing with Raylan and wants to impress him with his particular brand of criminality.
The problem for the audience, and Raylan, is never knowing which mode Mansell chooses — since his mood depends on which side of the bed he wakes. He’s unhinged and controlled all at once, but like Boyd, it’s hard determining if he’s full of crap, telling the truth, or some weird combination of both.
The Verdict (a.k.a. the Justification): The one word that summarizes Justified: City Primeval is “satisfied.” Showrunners David Andron, Michael Dinner, and many others from the original Justified team did the impossible — they continued their hit show without betraying its legacy and, more importantly, told a compelling story that felt necessary for the characters and the audience.
Suppose this is the last time we see U.S. Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens and his Stetson. In that case, it’s a fitting conclusion to a story that started a decade ago. But the truth is we all know this isn’t. Whether it’s one year from now or 10, someone will find a way to give us at least one more Raylan story.
The only hope is that it’s as fulfilling as this chapter.
Where to Watch: Justified: City Primeval hats up beginning July 18th, 2023 at 10:00 pm ET/PT on FX, and available the next day on Hulu.
Trailer:
