criterionforum.org

So, as expected, a great finale. I actually watched it live for the first time ever and I think I woke up the house with my vocal response to the surreal insanity of the Quarles rail-gun runner meeting Limehouse's cleaver. Fucking genius. Raylan pulling the arm away from Quarles is maybe the most badass thing he's done yet. And our man Wynn Duffy lived to see another season! It's nice to see Ava going down the rabbit hole, and with fewer and fewer characters left, it looks like she'll play an even bigger role in Season Four. And as suspected, Limehouse is around to stay as the primary adversary for Boyd. And I thought for sure Arlo was going to bite it, but his storyline was even more devastating. Curious about whether they'll bring in yet another new villain for next season or just work with what we've got-- I'd hate for the show to devolve into Villain of the Season each time!

EDIT: Nope, Yost's apparently going after the fat guy from Modern Family to be the next villain!

As several recaps have noted, the finale did a fantastic job of restoring some of the thematic heft that had been missing from season 3, which even Yost admitted to in this postmortem with Alan Sepinwall. There were just a ton of characters and storylines revolving around fathers and sons and coming home -- Arlo and Raylan, of course, but also Arlo and Boyd, Quarles wanting to go home to Detroit to his adopted dad, and even Errol being banished from his home by Limehouse, his father figure, only to come back and essentially sacrifice himself to save Limehouse. And then the final scene, with Raylan wanting to come home to Winona and his unborn child, only to realize yet again he doesn't belong there, either, exiting with the line about Arlo saying he was just shooting at someone wearing a hat. Great stuff.

Throw in Quarles being disarmed and Wynn Duffy yelling "JESUS CHRIST!" right before the credits, and you've got one of the show's best episodes.

And domino, I think you can rest easy about Stonestreet from Modern Family. According to this, it looks like Yost just wants him as a bad guy, not the bad guy. In other words, probably a max of like three episodes. I kind of like the idea that Yost talked about in the Sepinwall interview about maybe doing three shorter arcs instead of one big one in season 4 -- that could help avoid the whole "Big Bad" thing getting done to death.

Can't add much to everything that's been said except, after spending all season watching Limehouse menace people with cleavers and other chopping instruments, it was nice to finally see him deliver!

Plus I liked how subtly they handled Raylan planting back on Quarles the gun Quarles had tried to frame him with. I didn't even realize that had happened until hours later when I was mulling over the episode.

he was in a lot of season two and hasn't been killed off yet.

Last part I saw was the Reverend talking and the pull-in to Ellie May in the audience. Then cut to the guy sweeping up at the jail, the one who gave Raylan a dirty look earlier in the episode. Recording ended here, what happened next?

Sweeping guy takes his library cart to Arlo, asks about the bag and the driver's license and says it could be worth a lot of money. Arlo asks the guy to get him a book so he'll turn around and then slashes his throat with a toothbrush that had been fashioned into a shiv. The implication of course being that Arlo hates library carts.

Duffy, Limehouse, Dickie, &c