‘Justified’ Spoilers: Timothy Olyphant Knows Raylan’s Fate, And Will He Hookup With Rachel?

While Justified showrunner Graham Yost has been telling the media that Raylan Givens’ fate has yet to be written on the final season, it seems star Timothy Olyphant knows something Yost doesn’t. Or perhaps the final episode of Justified has been sealed recently, along with Givens’ final fate.

Olyphant confirmed to The Daily Beast that he knows what will happen to his iconic character at the end of Justified. As you can imagine, he isn’t telling (and you really wouldn’t want to know point-blank would you?) But Olyphant and Yost have given us a few crumbs to build some theories, and Olyphant also hinted that Raylan may engage in a little interoffice romance before all is said and done, as well.

Unless he’s just playing with us.

The obvious outcome would be Raylan gets his man, Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), and heads to Miami to reunite with his ex-wife Winona (Natalie Zea) and their infant daughter. But that would mean Raylan giving up his life as a U.S. Marshal and settling down, and if there is anything we have learned from over five seasons of Justified, Raylan isn’t a settling down kind of guy. Olyphant confirmed this difficulty to The Daily Beast.

“I don’t know that Raylan can ever completely leave Harlan County. His family and friends are buried there, and one way or another, it’s always going to be with him. But last year he told Winona he would give it all up—the Marshals’ Service, everything—for her. He would do that for her. I think he meant it, but knowing Raylan as well as I do, I just don’t know if he can do that.”

On the other hand, killing off Raylan Givens rules out any possibility of a movie, which is an idea Yost has confirmed is on the table, or was last season at least. But from a writers’ perspective, would be full of irony, especially given the warning Art (Nick Searcy) gave Raylan in the season premiere of Justified that someday he may not walk away unscathed and the bullet may find him.

Foreshadowing or misdirection?

Either way, Yost told TV Line he doesn’t want to wrap things up too neatly which both of the above scenarios would do. So that leaves a lot of room still for how Justified will end, but he says it will go out with a bang.

“That’s the goal. Action, emotion, everything. And we don’t want it to be too neat, and we don’t want to leave too many ends dangling when it comes down to the central relationships.”

In The Daily Beast interview, Olyphant also touched on the hope by some Justified fans that the good ol’ boy from Harlan would break a serious taboo of his hometown by engaging in a little interracial romance with his co-worker Rachel (Erica Tazel), who is now his boss. Have we been detecting some sexual tension between the two over the last five seasons?

“Well, these characters were created by Elmore Leonard, so there should be… Remember last season Rachel told Raylan that one reason she put up with his bullshit was because he was ‘easy on the eyes.'”

And let’s not forget when Raylan was talking about the “whore’s panties” he saw, Rachel told him she had a pair just like them. She’s into him.

And who isn’t? Tune into Justified Tuesday nights on FX.

[Photo courtesy FX media, Byron Cohen/FX]