Spoilers ahead—don't read this interview if you haven't watched the series finale of Justified.

Whether capping off an enterprise that was limited or long running, series finales have become subjected to unreasonable scrutiny, to the point where writing one has nearly become a can't-win proposition for even the most seasoned auteur. That was the reality facing Graham Yost, the executive producer of FX's Justified, as he set about trying to devise a fitting way to end the many storylines in play, most importantly that of his protagonist, Raylan Givens, while also being mindful of how the late Elmore Leonard—whose Fire in the Hole novella inspired this whole can of worms—would have wanted to say goodbye to those deep, dark hills of Eastern Kentucky.

Now that the final credits have rolled, and Raylan and lifelong frenemy Boyd Crowder have made their peace through partitioned glass, and Ava's off picking pumpkins in Southwestern California, Yost can finally relax—assuming viewers don't raise too much of a fuss about how it all went down. Yost spoke to Esquire about the burden of closing up shop properly, the show's evolution from procedural to serialized saga, and working with the ever-opinionated Walton Goggins.

Are you anxious about fans' reaction to the finale, or at peace with your choices?

I'd say both. There was a lot of angst, because this is the last shot we get to take, so we want to make the most of it. But at the same time, we feel pretty good about the choices we made and how it was executed. The response to it is out of our hands now. Some people are going to like it, and some people are going to love it, and some people won't, and we hope there's more of the former than the latter.

One of the most polarizing choices might be Winona and Raylan winding up apart.

You know, that one—we're absolutely convinced that was the right choice. Raylan can't get everything. That's not life. You just don't. And they were adult about it when Winona came to Lexington and visited Raylan with little Willa. They give each other a 50-50 shot. They're not all rainbows and unicorns. And I think that's how it turned out. It was ultimately just too hard.

Two other important choices were not having a grandiose, two-hour finale and not killing the lead characters. Was that consistent with the show never getting too ponderous?

The whole tone of the series has always been a tug of war between shocking and violent and serious and funny. What we were shooting for is that Elmore Leonard mix, and Elmore's books are not depressing. They're not downers. Horrible things happen, and you can be terrified while you're reading them, but ultimately, the hero lives and the women usually get away with the money, or at least get away. And not all the bad guys die. It felt like we were in Elmore territory with the choices we made.

Besides being hilarious, was Raylan wearing a Miami Marlins shirt indicative that he'd start adapting more to new environments?

[Laughs] Yeah, it's also TV shorthand for, "Hey, if you're not gonna put a Chyron in saying that it's in Miami, we're going to have him wearing a Marlins shirt." It was a fine choice, and Raylan is a sports fan and a baseball player, so I believe that he's a Marlins fan.

Marlins shirt or no, did he ultimately need to tie up loose ends with Ava and Boyd before truly moving on?

Yeah. Listen, I wanted to know what was gonna happen to Ava. We like the twist of the kid, and it was just a simple little thing that that child saved her life. I believe that child saved her life in many ways, just as I believe Willa has saved Raylan's life in many ways. That part of the story felt important, so we wanted to check in and see where Boyd was and have a final scene between them.

Do you feel OK with the periods when this show got distance from Raylan and Boyd being its central relationship?

That's the reason we decided to end it after six years. If we'd spent any more time between Raylan and Boyd, we would have gotten tired of that. It was hard enough as it was to write scenes between them that felt fresh. We made the decision going into season four that Raylan and Boyd wouldn't see each other until the fifth episode, and that was a big break for us that helped us a lot, because then we could let their stories develop on parallel courses and have them intersect. And we stayed with that for the remainder of the series, so that was our halfway point.

When I spoke with Walton Goggins, he said the show sometimes walked into rooms that were hard to see a way out of. What rooms felt that way to you and the writers?



We saw it differently. I think Walton would feel that because sometimes I wasn't great at keeping [actors] up to date with where we were going story-wise. Joelle [Carter, who played Ava,] has since confessed that the first three seasons, she'd ready every script with trepidation not knowing if Ava was gonna live or die. But it was like, "Oh, honey, we could have told you. You're in it for the run." We knew where we were going, roughly. I think what Walton's referring to is the midpoint of season five, when he really felt like Boyd was beset on all sides, and he didn't even really like what Boyd was doing. And I can understand that, but I think it tracked well with who Boyd was and what he wanted, and it led to where he was gonna want to be in the final season.

How did you manage respecting the cast's closeness to their characters while reinforcing that the buck stopped with you and the writers?

It's a balancing act. All of us writers needed to respect their opinions and ideas and involve them in the whole process, and I think over the course of the series, they got more involved. But at the same time, we've got our ideas and we have to stand by them or back down if they don't gain traction. But it was a very collaborative show. My snarky line is it took a village to raise this idiot. The saving grace to all of that was we were all pulling in the same direction, and that was Elmore. Everybody was on board with doing a show that was in his world.

And how much was Elmore on your mind while writing the finale?

It wasn't something we were thinking of consciously all the time, but when we decided our three main characters would live, we sort of checked it out with Elmore's world in his books. The hero always lives, the woman gets away, but the bad guy doesn't always die, so that made us feel we were on the right track. We discussed it with Gregg Sutter, his researcher of 30 years, and Greg sent me an e-mail saying, "You can't kill Raylan, and you can't kill Ava, and Elmore already tried to kill Boyd and that didn't take. What are you gonna do?" I've since heard from him that he feels Elmore would be happy with how we closed it out.

And Boyd may not have died, but he's in a pretty hellish situation, back to grasping at faith and being dismissed as a bigot.

I remember talking to Walton about it, and he said, "Well, Raylan and Ava get what they want, and I'm in prison." I said, "Yeah, but you're not dead. Boyd is a criminal, and he's not dead. That's a win." And Raylan and Ava don't get everything they want. Raylan doesn't get Winona, and Ava doesn't get full peace of mind. I don't think she'll ever be able to sleep that well. I think she'll always be haunted by her past, even though Raylan has done this great thing by convincing Boyd she's dead.

Do you wish you could have given other supporting characters like Tim and Rachel broader backstories?

We talked about it, and we wanted to do it. It's just we only had so much screen time. We had Boyd's story, we had Raylan's story, we had Ava's story, and we had other criminals. The best way to have Tim and Rachel and even Art to an extent involved in a story was to have them part of Raylan's story, and we couldn't do that all the time. That was one of the hardest things to do in the show, because we love Jacob [Pitts] and Erica [Tazel], and they were doing fantastic stuff, and man it would be great to just go deep in that bench and let them play some more, but we only had so much time.

In terms of the show's format, was there also a conscious decision made to shift from its early, procedural motif to more of an ongoing narrative?

Right from the beginning, the decision was made that the first chunk of the [first] season would be standalone episodes, so we could not throw off people sampling. And then the more seasonal, serialized arc would develop out of that and take us to the end of the season. By the time we got to season four, we were focused on the serialized aspect, but there would still be a standalone episode or two, and that held true with season five. When we went into season six, we realized there would be no more standalone episodes, that we just couldn't afford the time. By this point, we had the audience we were gonna get, so let's make it for them.

Was there any point where you held back for fear of offending the people of Harlan?

There were times, early on, when we'd write about a corrupt official or something, we'd go, "Oh man, how are they going to take this?" And then we'd read in the Harlan paper about this law-enforcement official being caught doing something bad, and it was like, OK, that's a part of their world, just as it's the same thing in New York politics or Chicago politics. It happens everywhere. There's bad guys everywhere. We're doing a crime show, so of course we're gonna show a lot of criminals in Harlan, but we tried to treat them with the respect Elmore always gave his bad guys. Most of them aren't stupid, and then you get some that are really stupid, like Dewey Crowe. That was a hard call, by the way, killing him off.

Including Dewey, there are so many supporting characters that get a scene in this finale season. Are there any more you wish you had time for?

Yeah, I think we all would have loved to see the one-armed man, Robert Quarles. Neal [McDonough] is such a charismatic and interesting performer, and Quarles was a fun character to write, but we just couldn't come up with an organic entrance for him, so we had to let that go.

All told, do you feel Justified achieved that desired balance of smarts, seriousness and humor?

I hope we did. I hope we walked that tightrope. That was our intent, and we walked it as best we could. By no means is it an easy tightrope to walk, but it was really fun to do that, and it comes back to that we got a shot for six years to write like Elmore Leonard.

And would you prefer your next series be fewer than six seasons?

I'll take whatever they give me. We'll just see what happens.

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