ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When I was on set in November for a piece in EW, I asked Timothy Olyphant about it being a violent season ahead, and he joked that the show had too many characters so people were going to have to go down. Is this episode setting the tone for the remainder of the season, or just an extraordinarily active episode?
GRAHAM YOST: It’s an extraordinarily active episode. The next few episodes regroup, in a way. Stuff moves forward, but the big thing, especially in the next episode, is the aftermath of this one: the effect it has on Boyd to have Ava whisked away to a worser house of incarceration and then on Raylan for having stepped up and admitted to Art, in the best way he could, what Art already kinda knew. We had this idea that we wanted all three stories to reach a peak where everything is going great for everyone, and then it all falls apart in the matter of one act.
EW: That shootout between Elias, Raylan, and Art was at an airport hangar?
It was supposed to be a shipping service, a courier company. There was a scene that we had shot where you see the guy who runs that company, and he’s obviously implicated in the whole thing, and the episode was just running long. We felt like we could just jump into it. It would’ve added a little more clarity. One thing that I threw in was, “Let’s make it special. Let’s give Elias an automatic shotgun,” which is a very bizarre weapon that can fire like a machine gun only it’s shooting out shotgun shells. It’s fun for Wray Nerely to have over his shoulder and plugging away.
Read more at EW
