‘Justified’ Recap (Season 3, Episode 9): “Loose Ends”

Raylan takes a more proactive stance against Quarles in FX’s Justified

“Loose Ends” is the calm before the storm. After last week’s thrilling hour, this episode slows things down a bit and shifts the pieces around in set-up for the final showdown – and even though there’s still four episodes left this season, it looks like Raylan and Quarles are going to resort to fisticuffs as early as next week if the preview is any indication.

Raylan, who is becoming obsessed with Quarles and has nothing else to do, decides to visit Boyd in jail (again) after Ava visits him at a bar and tells him he might know something about a certain someone (Quarles). Boyd sets Raylan on the path of Quarles’ point man, Tanner, who is the one really responsible for blowing up Sheriff Napier’s vehicle. Raylan visits Tanner’s mother and Napier before tracking down Tanner at the home of a local man who builds explosives: it turns out Tanner’s only gone and stepped on a landmine that’s ready to go off at any moment.

How did he end up in this stupid situation? Well, after Raylan visited Tanner’s mama, she called her son to warn him and he decided he was going to go on the run. Limehouse realizes there are loose ends and sends Tanner and one of his guys to get the money they paid for the explosives from the bomb guy. After Tanner steps on the mine, Limehouse’s guy kills the bomb guy, takes the money and escapes, leaving Tanner in a rather disastrous situation. He blows up, obviously, because Raylan and the explosives expert can’t deactivate the mine in time but Raylan manages to figure out that there’s a connection between Limehouse and Quarles and warns Limehouse that he’s going to either put Quarles in prison or in the ground – and Limehouse will be joining him if he doesn’t help.

While Raylan goes on his crusade, Ava takes one of Delroy’s (Ethan from Lost) prostitutes, who are the only survivor of a failed robbery. Ava uses her as bait to lure Delroy out – she gets him to bring her $2,000 and then shoots and kills him. Later on she tells Boyd that she intends to take Delroy’s place. For a while it seemed like Ava was merely in the background of Boyd’s storyline (much like Winona with Raylan) but with this nice piece of development, it seems like she’s going to play a more important part in the time to come.

And, because of what went down with Raylan and Tanner, Boyd’s name is cleared just in time for him to attend the town hall debate concerning the elections for sheriff. Quarles and Limehouse have paid for the guy running the debate to side with Napier but they didn’t count on Boyd’s sudden arrival and passionate speech, which turns the audience against Napier in support of his candidate, Shelby.

Despite being a slow episode compared to last week’s, “Loose Ends” was still a jam-packed episode of Justified, full of great interactions and character development. There are so many pieces in play at the moment it’s hard to keep track of them but Justified does a good job balancing all of the characters and subplots and gives a nice amount of exposure to each.

I have no idea how the last four episodes are going to go down but I can’t wait; as Raylan tells Limehouse in the final scene, this is no longer a showdown but a “war” and who’s actually going to win it Is anyone’s guess. There are at least three or four factions currently trying to outsmart each other and by the end of this season, I’m guessing only one or two of them are still going to be around. But… Quarles is anything but predictable. And… he still knows about Winona. Shit is going to go down… big time.

Image credit: FX

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