Considering the finality that Justified had when it wrapped up back in 2015, news of a revival came as a big surprise to fans. The upcoming show, Justified: City Primeval, will be markedly different from the first six seasons of the Primetime Emmy-winning series in a few ways. Viewers will immediately notice the big one, the series doesn’t take place in Kentucky anymore, but moves to the mean streets of Detroit, a staple of Elmore Leonard’s work. In fact the new series is based on one of Leonard’s other book that didn’t even feature Deputy U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens. As such, and considering it’s planned as a one-season revival, nothing is off the table for Raylan’s fate.
“If you’re bringing Raylan back, you put him up against a really, really bad guy who doesn’t have any problem killing people, because Raylan could die,” co-showrunner Dave Andron revealed to Entertainment Weekly. “This is a limited [series] and Raylan could very well not make it out of this. Every season we ended the show with ‘You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive,’ but then he does. Right up until the end of the show, you know Raylan’s not going to die, and obviously he did not at the end. But I think, at this point, all bets are off.”
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The bad guy that he’s teasing is none other than Clement Mansell, Logan‘s Boyd Holbrook, a character known as “The Oklahoma Wildman” in the original text. “This character is one of the best bad guys Elmore ever created,” co-showrunner Michael Dinner added. “He’s just a really dangerous, cool, bad motherf—er. Now, Boyd was those things too, but Boyd and Raylan were cut from the same cloth. Clement, he’s really unpredictable.”
The ensemble cast for Justified: City Primeval also includes Vondie Curtis Hall as Sweetie, Adelaide Clemens as Sandy, Marin Ireland as Maureen, Aunjanue Ellis as Carolyn, Norbert Leo Butz as Norbert, Ravi Patel as Rick Newley, Victor Williams as Wendell and Timothy Olyphant’s actual daughter, Vivian Olyphant, as Willa. The series is described as follows:
“Having left the hollers of Kentucky eight years ago, Raylan Givens now lives in Miami, a walking anachronism balancing his life as a U.S. Marshal and part-time father of a 14-year-old girl. His hair is grayer, his hat is dirtier, and the road in front of him is suddenly a lot shorter than the road behind. A chance encounter on a desolate Florida highway sends him to Detroit. There he crosses paths with Clement Mansell, aka The Oklahoma Wildman, a violent, sociopathic desperado who’s already slipped through the fingers of Detroit’s finest once and aims to do so again. Mansell’s lawyer, formidable Motor City native Carolyn Wilder, has every intention of representing her client, even as she finds herself caught in between cop and criminal, with her own game afoot as well. These three characters set out on a collision course in classic Elmore Leonard fashion, to see who makes it out of the City Primeval alive.”
Justified: City Primeval doesn’t yet have a premiere date
