‘Justified’ season 6, episode 12 preview: ‘Collateral’ damage

“Justified” now is starting to see the sun set, and with the Western motifs that we’ve always attached to this series, it only makes a little bit of sense that we would be nearing one of the series’ final showdowns.

What makes this so exciting to us? It’s the melting pot that consists of both the expected and the shocking. Going into this season, we very easily felt as though we were going to get a showdown between Boyd and Raylan in the closing minutes. Nothing else made sense. From the moment Graham Yost decided not to send Walton Goggins away after the pilot, this was the direction that we were heading. What we did not expect for some time was Ava being right there with them in the showdown, metaphorically with one gun pointing at another pointing at another. That’s why last week’s installment in particular was such a game-changer, and it is what makes “Collateral” next week all the more interesting. With Ava deciding to live for herself, she loses the tie of having to think or plan her moves based on the actions of someone else. Sovereignty is a dangerous weapon in this world.

FX, in case you curious, did release a synopsis for this episode, though we do not find it particularly useful: “Raylan and Boyd look for Ava in the mountains; Markham enlists an unlikely ally.”

Given that the network has already disclosed it, we do not feel the need to hide that all three of our aforementioned fighters in this duel make it to the series finale. Therefore, there is no need to wait for the shoe to drop in “Collateral.” It will simply spend more of its time lifting that shoe further into the air to make the point of impact all the more devastating.