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Going in to this season I thought there was no way ‘Justified’ could possibly top its terrific sophomore season. There was no way anyone could top Margo Martindale’s Emmy-winning turn as the deliciously conniving and dynamic Mags Bennett.

As casting news broke in the months leading up to the third season premiere, I found myself questioning whether or not  the addition of Robert Quarles (Neal McDonough) and Ellstin Limehouse (Mykelti Williamson) as this season’s villains was going to work. I didn’t think that simply doubling the number of villains was the answer to the gaping Mags-shaped hole. But slowly, as the writers moved the characters around on the ‘Justified’ chessboard, it seemed the show might just pull a ‘Breaking Bad’ after all and prove that season two wasn’t a lark, that this show had the ability to churn out fantastic seasons one right after the other.

Reading the reviews from my favorite critics over the course of the season, I got the impression they weren’t so sure the show could pull it off either. A few of them admitted that writing about this season was more difficult than the last because this season lacked the clear overarching theme that season two had. But tonight’s season finale gave us the theme we were looking for. I just don’t think we expected the reveal to hurt as much as it did.

Arlo’s betrayal was a twist that I never saw coming. In hindsight, I should have suspected him from the start. Knowing what I know about Arlo Givens it’s not surprising – though it is definitely heartbreaking – to realize he put a bullet in Tom because he saw “a man with a hat” pointing a gun at his surrogate son, Boyd Crowder. While I don’t think most of the viewers were as slow on the uptake as Winona was in that final scene of the season, it was still a punch to the gut to realize this man hates his real son so much that he’d kill him in order to protect a man he’s not actually related to.

While many people ridiculously thought this finale would signal the end of Boyd Crowder, I knew better. A show that spends this much time on a character who was supposed to die in the series premiere but was brought back because of how charismatic and interesting he was, was not going to write him off in the third season. A character that earned his portrayer an Emmy nomination in the second season, was not going to be written off in the third. It’s simply common sense. But because I didn’t see the Arlo twist coming, I spent much of the hour trying to figure out how Boyd was going to escape this time. They had him. They knew he killed Devil, and I was convinced that next season we were going to see Boyd in prison, taking out his anger on Dickie yet again. But then we found out from a dying and gasping for breath Quarles that Arlo shot Tom and it all fell in to place. Arlo confessing to killing both Tom and Devil for the same reason – to protect Boyd – kept Boyd a free man. But at what cost to our protagonist?

We’ve always known that Raylan was a product of his environment. He became the man he is today as a direct result of who his father is. Growing up in Harlan county with Arlo Givens as a father meant that Raylan had to make a choice early on. He could either follow in the footsteps of his father and lead a life of crime, or he could choose to be a better man, a man who puts men like his father behind bars.

From the very start we knew Raylan didn’t much care for Arlo. That much is made clear when he doesn’t react to the news that Arlo’s been arrested early in the show’s first season. But I don’t think anyone was ready to see that Arlo cared so little for Raylan in return. Selling him out to Bo Crowder in the first season? Yeah, that seemed plausible and something his character would do. But attempting to kill his own flesh and blood? No, I don’t think so. His apology to Raylan early in the finale felt too little, too late, but it was still nice to see him at least acknowledge his less than stellar role as a father to Raylan. So finding out that it was Arlo who shot Tom thinking, even in his senility, that it was Raylan, is disarming to say the least.

Speaking of disarming, let’s step back from the emotional, character side of things and focus for a minute on the action part of the episode. The writers did a great job of balancing the action with the quieter pieces (similar to the season two finale), while still managing to give each of our villains either a pretty great send off, or a great setup for next season.

The episode opened with Raylan playing a little Harlan Roulette with Wynn Duffy inside the Wynn-abego, which resulted in some priceless reactions from Jere Burns. His “JESUS CHRIST!” right before the cut to the main title sequence had me laughing so hard I almost forgot I was supposed to be sad that this was the finale. Whether or not we’ll see Wynn Duffy again is uncertain, but I wouldn’t complain if he popped up again later just to be a thorn in Raylan’s side. Though I’m not sure how well the show could use him now. The show has the resident antihero role pretty well filled to capacity with Boyd and Ava. But Wynn’s such a great pain in the ass that as long as the writers can find a way that seems true to the character, I’d love to see him back.

While Wynn was thanking God for statistical probability, Quarles was busy kidnapping a loving Christian family who were camping in the woods (where exactly was that Christian music festival, by the way? Where was everyone else?). He forced them into their not at all conspicuous van and ordered the older boy to drive him … somewhere. Once on the road, with a gun pointed at the back of Shawn Ryan’s wife, Bobby calledEthan Zobelle Theo Tonin asking rather desperately what he had to do in order to come home. The price, it turns out, was a whopping $500,000. After also taking Raylan hostage (and secretly taking back the weapon he used to kill Gary without even realizing it), he rolled into Noble’s Hollow looking for the cash to make it home.

Limehouse reluctantly agreed to part with the cash if it meant he never had to see Bobby Quarles again. Finding out he kept the money in the bellies of those hogs, and Quarles’ giddy reaction to them being literal piggy banks, was another great moment in an episode full of great moments. While the younger boy he’d kidnapped attempted to gather up the cash, Quarles told Raylan he was not the man who killed Tom. In the split second it took for the news to soak in, Errol, who’d been told to take a hike earlier in the episode by Limehouse, showed up and popped off a few rounds. As Quarles tried to return fire with his sleeve gun, Limehouse saw his opportunity to finally put Chekhov’s meat cleaver to use and severed the arm, which Raylan was left holding, rather comedically, in yet another great moment.

I, like most people I imagine, thought the gun would jam and that would be Quarles downfall, but I also spent thirteen episodes wondering when the hell Limehouse was going to get to put that cleaver of his to use. So it was nice to see those two things come together in the climax of the finale. But I didn’t have long to enjoy that moment as Quarles chose that time to inform Raylan of Arlo’s betrayal. It was never specifically stated whether or not Quarles lived following the wrist chop, but I think it’s safe to assume we’ve seen the last of Neal McDonough and his big stupid baby head. The same cannot be said about Limehouse though. I do believe we’ll see Mykelti Williamson back next season, especially since he’s in cahoots with Johnny Crowder, who we find out was actually the person to tip Limehouse off to the location of Devil’s body.

I have to admit that I didn’t exactly see Johnny’s betrayal coming either; I must be slipping in my old age. But I’d rather liked the idea of the Crowder Trio running things in Harlan, so I never gave it much thought. I actually thought it was Arlo in all his senility that tipped off Limehouse (and I imagine that was the writers’ objective). So it will be interesting to see how Boyd and Ava square off against Johnny and Limehouse next season.

Speaking of Ava, she’s definitely taken a turn for the complete bitch side of the road. I’ve always liked Ava and admired her for not taking shit from the men in her life. She was dealt a pretty shitty hand in reality, and even in her dalliances into the criminal way of life following her relationship with Boyd, I never really thought of her as a bad person. Even when she took a frying pan to Dewey’s face, I cheered her on. But tonight she showed us that she’s not really any better than Delroy, as she beat Ellen May for suspecting that she in some way was responsible for what had happened to Boyd. She’s definitely a violent woman, also a product of her environment, but I never really thought I’d see her go down this path.

This was a great season finale. Did it surpass the tragic finale of season two? Probably not. But I think it’s at least on par. And I cannot wait to see what the writers have planned for season four.

Go write in and tell them who you’d like to see in the contest/bracket. My list was reaaaaaaaalllllllllly long. http://tvline.com/2012/04/06/tv-best-bad-boys/

I have a lot of feelings regarding FX’s ‘Justified.’ Granted, most of the time they’re about Walton Goggins’ hair or where I can buy the clothes the show’s wardrobe designers dress Winona in, but every once in awhile I let a serious thought pop in to this crazy head of mine.

But unlike the serious thoughts that plague me when I’m watching, say, ‘Breaking Bad’, the thoughts about ‘Justified’ are often more along the lines of, “I can’t believe I only just started watching this show last October.” Because this show has it all: humor, anger, people hitting other people in the face with frying pans – which sounds cartoonish and funny on paper, but was actually a pretty bad ass moment for a beloved character – and characters you love, even if you’re not supposed to.

Last night’s episode, titled “Loose Ends,” didn’t do much in the way of tying up any ends. And it shouldn’t; the episode is only the ninth of a 13-episode season. The finale won’t air until April 10. The loose ends which the title is referring to can be several different characters.

The most obvious loose end is Ellen May (Abby Miller), who after dumping the body of her friend and fellow whore, Crystal, into a slurry pond (which according to series creator Graham Yost is polluted with chemicals from coal mining), watches as Delroy, her pimp, shoots her other accomplice in order to tie up the loose ends their knowledge of the situation makes them. Ellen May flees and finds refuge in the arms of her future madam, Ava Crowder.

The other loose end, the one I think the title truly refers to, is Tanner Dodd (Brendan McCarthy), the man who attacked Raylan in the mobile clinic and who Raylan now believes is his best connection to Quarles. Upon finding out that Raylan has been sniffing around Dodd’s mother’s place looking for Dodd, Limehouse’s (Mykelti Williamson) lackey Errol (Demetrius Grosse) reports that Dodd is thinking about running. Limehouse asks Errol if Dodd has any unfinished business that could, pardon my ‘Sons of Anarchy’ jargon, blow back on them and Noble’s Hollow. He does, of course, have unfinished business with Limehouse, as he’d just agreed last week or so to spy on Quarles’ camp for Limehouse. He’s the only outside person with information linking Quarles to Limehouse, and he knows quite a bit of information should he end up handcuffed and interrogated by Raylan or some other form of law enforcement officer.

By episode’s end Dodd is dead though, having messed with the wrong arms dealer and thus ended up standing on a stool armed with a modified Bouncing Betty land mine. Errol, upon seeing Dodd accidentally arm the landmine, raises his gun to him, planning on taking out his loose end, but in the end chooses instead to take the money Dodd was looking for in the first place and give it to Dodd’s mother. After Errol leaves Dodd calls the police for help.

Hoping to get some information out of Dodd while he is trapped and unable to move for fear of blowing himself up, Raylan tries to get information about Quarles while an ATF agent works to diffuse the land mine. But Tanner’s been standing on that stool an awful long time and he’s nervous and is hands are sweaty. Having already been told that any minor weight change could detonate the land mine, Tanner is afraid to move, and thus his sweaty palms cause him to drop the gun and detonate the land mind. Raylan and the ATF agent escape just in time, but Limehouse’s loose end is now taken care of, and Raylan once again has no way of getting to Quarles.

Or so he thinks. Raylan, proving that he really is a great guy despite his penchant for killing people he deems deserving, went back to Dodd’s mother’s house to set up her new TV so she could watch her stories. While there he witnesses Errol dropping off the money as Dodd had requested. This tips Raylan off to a connection between Limehouse and Quarles, but when he confronts Limehouse, it’s clear the man is not ready to sever ties with the carpet-bagger and gives up nothing.

Meanwhile, back in Harlan, Boyd is released from prison with Raylan’s unwitting help, something Boyd seems to get a lot simply by pointing out where his and Raylan’s interests overlap (he’s the one who tips Raylan off about Dodd). He shows up to the sheriffs debate and gives a disrupting mirror performance of the speech Mags Bennett gave at the Black Pike meeting last season, and he ultimately wins Shelby the debate. This is not a surprise, however, as we have seen Boyd sermonizing like this before. Remember his religious arc in the first season? Boyd seems to be a born orator and he has the ability to use his rhetoric to sway public opinion – a talent which he could put to good use if he wasn’t selfish and a professional miscreant.

Meanwhile, Boyd’s better half is up to her own mischief, as she takes in the terrified-for-her-life Ellen May and gives her clean clothes and a place to sleep. After Johnny reminds Ava that Delroy pays them for protection, he tells her she has to turn Ellen May over to Delroy. Johnny basically accuses Ava of being a soft woman with a big heart. I think he’s forgetting that she shot his cousin Bowman in the chest with a shotgun as he was eating dinner, and that she also took a frying pan to Dewey Crowe’s face earlier this season. Ava calls Delroy and tells him to come get Ellen May, but when he shows up she hauls out her trusty shotgun and shoots Delroy much the same way she shot her husband, right in the chest. This is Ava’s first on screen kill, and she doesn’t seem to regret this one either, just takes the $2,000 Delroy brought as payment for her returning Ellen May. Throwing out her “no whores” condition, Ava decides it’s time she quit cutting hair and got a real job… as a madam. Which seems to make Boyd proud and also slightly amused. Because that’s the kind of man he is: he’s proud of his girlfriend for killing someone and making money from it.

While this recap might make it seem like a lot of stuff happened in this episode, nothing climactic actually happened. This was yet another episode in which Yost and his writers move the pieces around the chessboard to set up for what I’m sure is going to be an explosive season finale come April 10. Right now Limehouse doesn’t seem to have much to do other than play Chekov’s gun with that knife of his and brag about his bar-b-que-ing skills. I hope this changes soon, because I don’t think this season will be able to top the last if it doesn’t. And because it will be a huge let down if we don’t get to see Limehouse make good on some of his threats.

And the same could probably be said for Boyd and Ava. With two villains this season it’s been a little hard to give the power couple of Harlan adequate screen time (ditto Winona, but that obviously was solved when she decided to leave Raylan for the second time). I’m assuming Yost and Company have planned it this way on purpose and have meticulously planned out the final episodes to somehow bring Boyd in to the action, if only because Walton Goggins has a screen presence that just begs to be heard, and because the previews for the third season showed Raylan and Boyd working together, something we haven’t really seen yet this season.

(Source: kaitlinthomas.com)

And while those are expressive exclamations, they don’t really tell you much else.