In a feature published in The New York Times a week before this season’s premiere, Elmore Leonard, Timothy Olyphant et al. took the opportunity to remind us why we watch Justified. Of all its sharp quotes, one stuck with me. Walton Goggins delivered a very Boyd Crowder line on Raylan Givens: “Tim’s hat is never entirely white.”
Nor is anyone’s, really. But the hat means so much more than good or evil to Justified. In this third season’s finale, “Slaughterhouse,” Justified proved it is more than just a ticking timebomb, a season-long buildup to a Wild West good-versus-evil showdown. The violence isn’t the end in and of itself. When the axe falls in this finale, as opposed to the previous two, it isn’t for a character’s death or to tie up the storyline. It’s thematic, and the show is elevated to new heights yet again for it.
When the pieces do finally come to rest, all we get to hear about is Raylan’s goddamned cowboy hat. To Raylan, it’s hard to say exactly what it means. But to Arlo, it ties him into the lawmen he spent his life fighting. And that’s where the axe fell. “Your old man!” says Quarles gleefully. That’s who killed Tom Bergen.
Fatherhood has always been important to Justified, though like Limehouse’s money, it’s been hiding in plain sight for awhile now. Even the show’s ties to baseball, going all the way back to season one, tie into the same theme. Quarles’ father drove him to sexual assault, and his adoptive father drove him to madness. Raylan's father represents a turn not taken down the wrong path. Sure enough, Arlo’s a good fit for Boyd’s adoptive father figure, the dark mirror image of Raylan himself. “He’s not my crew, he’s my family,” Boyd says. So Raylan’s words about Arlo in the final scene tonight carry a lot of weight. “He just saw a man in a hat pointing at Boyd.” Trooper Tom missed a Little League game to go and get shot, and how can we infer he’s dead? His hat on the road; the episode’s cold open. Whether it’s the right choice or not, Raylan has plenty of reasons to want to distance himself from his new family. He knows as well as anyone the damage a father can do.
And at the same time, Raylan was as badass as ever tonight—all without killing a single person. He doesn’t flinch at Quarles’ over-foreshadowed gun rig: “That’s cute.” He balances a salt shaker while Errol and Limehouse shake him down in the bar. He is at once a passive and active character, limited much of the episode at gunpoint but still good enough to get the job done. Did he pocket the bullet like Glen Fogle did, playing Russian Roulette with Wynn Duffy? It’s easy to believe he didn’t. But it doesn’t really matter. It was as terrifying as any interrogation scene he’s pulled off, and Duffy’s “Jesus Christ” before the intro was perfect. It might be the best scene Jere Burns has done all series. Thankfully, he should be back next season.
And the climax! It was gritty, raw and flat-out cool. Errol shoots; Quarles shoots Errol. Raylan holds Quarles’ gun rig and then some; Limehouse butchers the arm off. Insanity. Showrunner Graham Yost, in a season post-mortem with Alan Sepinwall published immediately after its airing, said they didn’t want to go the way the audience thought it would. Instead of a man vs. machine showdown between Raylan and Quarles’ gun rig (which never did jam, by the way), we get something much better, more real and more satisfying.
Already, I’m looking forward to next season. Dickie is still out there. Duffy, Boyd, Ava, Johnny, Limehouse—they’re all out there, too. Arlo isn’t; not in the same sense. Though to Raylan, he probably always will be.