SPOILER WARNING: This post will appear following a new episode of Justified. It is intended to be read after seeing the show’s latest installment as a source of recap and analysis. As such, all aspects of the series up to and including the episode discussed are fair game.

I criticized last week’s episode of Justified because it didn’t seem to bring us much closer to solving the season’s big mystery. It gave Raylan an unrelated one (alright, two) off storyline while Boyd inched towards finding Drew Thompson. Well, “Outlaw,” appears to be the writers’ forcing a collective foot in my mouth. It all but came out and said that the hard-working and dedicated Sheriff of Harlan County, Shelby Parlow, is in fact the man we’ve been looking for all along. And there he was, right under our noses.

For those that didn’t catch the hints, they came mostly during Shelby’s conversation with Ellen May about reinventing one’s self, starting over. He came home to find her digging through his ex-wife’s things, namely a necklace depicting St. Christopher, “patron saint of travelers, sailors, pilots, and bachelors.” Pilots, folks. Ellen May also happened to be wearing that ex-wife’s clothes, and remarked that they made her feel like a different person while also reminding her who she truly is. Shelby’s response? “Must’ve been a year after I first joined the sheriff’s department that I could put on my uniform without feeling like I was wearing a costume.” Now who would feel more like a fraud in a police uniform than an ex-criminal? He also says that “if you pretend to be something long enough, it’s not pretending.” In other words, at this point, he really is Shelby Parlow.

Only there’s a reason they did all that without coming out and saying it. And maybe that’s because the writers just want us to think that Shelby is Drew, just so they can pull the rug out from under us later on. Nobody greeted Shelby by saying “Hello, Drew.” I’m sure there will be a scene like that next week, whether or not it’ll be Shelby standing there when the camera flips around and fades to black remains to be seen. A couple things are holding me back from being positive Shelby’s our man. First of all, his would-be ex-wife, Eve Munro, tells Raylan she hasn’t seen Drew in 30 years, while Shelby tells Ellen May his wife left him 25 years ago. Secondly, look at all these people working so hard to protect Drew from being found out: They’re giving up deals to be moved to cushy prisons, not to mention risking (and often losing) their lives. At this point, if Shelby is Drew, what kind of power does he hold that people are willing to do so much for him? It’s not a dealbreaker, but it’s the last remaining piece of the puzzle.

Yet despite what I said last week about the downsides of the show dragging its feet with the main storyline, with all the other stuff that happened this week, the theoretical revelation of Drew Thompson’s identity almost seems like a sidenote. Because “Outlaw” gave us some great stuff.First of all, someone died. Not just some meaningless character who arrived on screen just in time to leave it, which is the style of most of the deaths in Justified. No, this was a real, major character: Arlo Givens. One of this season’s big themes has been Raylan’s preparations for fatherhood. Of course, Raylan’s relationship with his own father plays a large part in what he believes it means to be a father. If nothing else, Raylan’s got one play in his book: do the opposite of what Arlo did. But in spite of what a mean son-of-a-bitch Arlo was, fathers and sons are fathers and sons, so our badass marshal actually shed a tear! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The episode picked up where last week’s left off, with Raylan at the local penitentiary. Arlo rebuffed the deal to live out his days in a country club prison, so now Raylan’s moving on to another man who supposedly knows who Drew is, former Harlan County Sheriff Hunter Mosley. Mosley shoots the deal down as well, and presses Raylan as to why he even gives a shit about the case. Raylan says that finding Drew would mean he could “write his own ticket,” to which Hunter responds “bullshit, you never cared about rank.” To that, Raylan simply says “priorities change,” another reference to his impending fatherhood. Later, we get the scene where Hunter stabs Arlo, although the tough old bastard puts up a hell of a fight. Director John Dahl handled Raylan finding out about the fight in expert fashion: We’re left out in the hallway with Tim, Rachel, and Eve to hear Art whisper that Arlo took a shiv in the chest and see Raylan bury his emotion before he turns around.

So “Outlaw” ends in a similar fashion to “Money Trap,” with Raylan visiting Arlo in prison, but under very different circumstances. Raylan pleads with Arlo to tell him who Drew Thompson is, not for his son but for his grandkids, so their father can tell them grandpa was something besides a mean old bastard. But that’s exactly what Arlo is, whispering “don’t go” when Raylan gets up and then “closer.” Raylan bends down to hear his father’s last words: “Kiss my ass.” Even for Arlo Givens, that’s ice fucking cold.

Meanwhile, Boyd shows the rich pricks in Clover Hill that he is not a man to be trifled with, because although they may be criminals “I am the outlaw, and this is my world.” He hands Wynn Duffy his “enemies list” and has a Tonin button man who’s “killed more people than malaria” eliminate both Browning and Sam Keener. Then he makes a deal with Nick Augustine to become their man in Kentucky, asking if he’d rather be in business with Duffy, “the man who got took,” or “the man who took him.” So the Detroit folks do him a favor so he can get the Clover Hillers off his back, not to mention pay him a hundred grand a piece and set him up with a Dairy Queen franchise (because “it’s like California real estate, the value might dip every now and then but it always goes back up in the summertime”). The only hitch, as Augustine reminds him, is that the Tonins don’t do “favors,” every boon they offer “is a debt, which we will expect you to repay.” The prospect of it all has Ava worried, but Boyd assures her it’s “nothing he can’t handle.” But as of yet there is no one bigger than Theo Tonin in the world of Justified, so what’s Boyd going to do when repaying that debt means being asked to do something he’s not ready for—like, say, killing Raylan Givens?

A Few More Things:

-Don’t feel too bad for Wynn Duffy. He and Johnny have been planning to double cross Boyd this whole time anyway. Boyd taking the “initiative” just means they’ll kickstart that plan into motion.

-Another of Johnny’s scams led to Colton murdering the drug dealer and Tim’s friend Mark. That means Tim is about to enter the fray in Harlan. Recall what Art had to say about him early in the season: He’s probably an alcoholic with PTSD and is “always looking to shoot someone.” So now we get to look forward to a big Colt/Tim standoff to match the inevitable Boyd/Raylan one.

Check out the preview for next week’s episode below and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.