What’s up with Justified‘s Winona? Is Patton Oswalt sticking around? And do Raylan and Boyd even like each other?
During a panel at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour in Pasadena on Wednesday, the FX series’ cast — including Timothy Olyphant, Walton Goggins and Joelle Carter — and creator Graham Yost dished all about what’s to come on the drama’s just-launched Season 4.
BUSTED BROMANCE | Estranged pals (?) Raylan and Boyd may finally, officially become foes by Season 4′s end. “There’s one line, that Boyd has never said in the previous three seasons, that he says this season. It’s really interesting to me and an indication to where they’ve come in the relationship,” Goggins recalled. “He looks at Raylan at one point and says, ‘Raylan, I don’t like you.’ It’s the first time he’s ever really said it that way.” Adds the actor: “Over the course of their relationship, Boyd has seen their friendship one way and Raylan has seen it as something else, and by the end of this season they may see it the same way: That is that they don’t like each other.”
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WINONA’S WHEREABOUTS | Natalie Zea — who at the end of last season landed a co-starring role on Fox’s buzzy new series The Following — will first reprise her role as Raylan’s baby mama in Episode 5, as well as in two or three other Season 4 installments. That said, Yost shared that Winona’s MIA status this season isn’t only because of her portrayer’s new gig. “We just couldn’t imagine why Winona was still hanging by Raylan if his life was this dangerous and [that's] not what she wanted,” he explained. “It also gave us a chance to make Raylan a ladies’ man.”
ABSENT ENEMY | As you no doubt gleaned from last night’s premiere, there’s no real baddie this season. Instead, Raylan & Co. will be faced with various challenges throughout the year, starting with Arlo’s mysterious bag. “We thought that would be a fun thing to try this year instead of just another Big Bad,” Yost said. “We start parsing out bits of mystery in the first four episodes, and by the fifth episode everything is pretty much focused on that… The mystery actually gets solved in the ninth episode, but then there are problems that come [from solving it] and that plays out for the rest of the season.”
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SAME FACES, NEW STORIES | “In the fourth season, the stories have opened up to us a little bit more,” the EP mused, revealing that we’ll finally delve deeper into the lives of longtime recurring players Tim and Rachel. “To give them their own stories is something we’re doing for the first time this season. It’s time to do it. We know the audience wants it, so we found room for it.”
PATTON NOT PENDING | So long as Justified newbie Patton Oswalt ‘is willing to play,’ he’ll be “a part of our world,” Yost gushed.
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