Boyd Crowder is not an easy person to describe in a few words because of how he is constantly changing, a slippery, manipulative man who is always two steps ahead. He’s a white supremist, a Nazi, a preacher, a killer, a miner, a bar owner, a lover, a friend, a criminal, an enemy.
He’s introduced as a white supremist bank robber who shoots a rocket launcher with a gleeful “fire in the hole!” His eyes gleam with chaotic joy. His nonchalance with killing Jared Hale on the bridge just because he suspected he might be a spy and his lack of guilt even after finding out that he was innocent show a truly reckless man. The Boyd Crowder we first meet doesn’t show half of the depth that we see by the end. The very first Boyd is wild and unrestrained in a way the later, post-chest wound Boyd isn’t.
Boyd is rough and slightly vicious, he’s certainly far more bold and has less fear or respect for the law. He threatens Raylan in the courthouse. He’s more flexible with his morals. He pushes and pushes until it all comes for a head in Ava’s dining room. For the second time in a week a Crowder is shot at the table. You can see Boyd’s shock when Raylan shoots him, he thinks Raylan is a different person that he actually is. He thinks Raylan is a Marshal but forgets that he’s also a Harlan man.
I feel that Boyd has been pretending for so long that he’s lost touch with who he really is. He needs Raylan to remind him of the real Boyd who’s buried beneath the son Bo Crowder wants. Boyd has spent so long pleasing his father and his peers, drowning in hatred, that he’s lost touch with the boy who dug coal. Raylan gives him a second chance, it really is a gift of a second chance at life, an honest chance.
The thing with Boyd is that he feels so deeply. He cares for his father and craves his respect and admiration. He holds on to Raylan with his dying breath. He loves Ava in a fairy-tale manner. He mourns his men who he was trying to protect, to help, and finds himself lost. Rayan is the only true person who knows Boyd inside and out, even after twenty years. Or maybe because of the twenty years. Raylan only ever knew Boyd himself and not the twisted imitation he became.
Raylan and Boyd are flip sides of the same coin; yin and yang. One cannot survive without the other. That dependence based on the remnants of a boys’ friendship creates more problems than it helps yet they can’t let it go. They are fighting and clinging right to the end. When Raylan tries to let go Boyd holds tighter and when Boyd tries to drop him, Raylan is constantly there. Right from Raylan’s visit to Boyd’s church to Raylan’s visit to Boyd’s prison, they are clutching. Boyd waits because he knows Raylan will come, in his own time.
Ava and Boyd meanwhile are the sort of reverse to Raylan and Winona, cursed to fail but by God will they try. Raylan and Winona know the don’t work but love each other just enough to try again and again and hope that this time it’ll stick (it doesn’t). Boyd and Ava however are a perfect match and so in love that they think they will make it. They think they can have their happy ever after and the criminal empire but they’re freewheeling down the hill heading straight towards the law. Maybe outside Harlan they could have had a pretty house and a happy marriage but then again, maybe not. Harlan lives deep inside them both.
I just love Boyd’s gentlemaness and the respect he has for Ava, even of it’s not what he wants. Ava is his lady and he will treat her as such. If she wants to do something then she can and no one is permitted to disrespect her in his presence. He trusts her so much and doesn’t want her to get hurt by his law breaking but Ava insists. Ava has had enough of being told what to do.
It’s funny when you think that Boyd is shot in the chest by the two people he loves the most. But that’s why he’s shot, because they have no other choice. Boyd pulls on Raylan, and Ava has their baby to think of. She knows that Boyd would love the baby with everything he has but that’s why she had to go. Boyd’s love can be destructive, and Ava doesn’t want that for the child. She doesn’t want Harlan for her child.
Boyd is constantly changing, constantly moving and that makes it difficult to tell what is actually Boyd and what is him playing to his audience. And that is why he needs Raylan, because Raylan is the only one who can tell even if Boyd himself can’t. As thenightlaw-blog put it: “Raylan has the greatest bullshit detector of all time. He knows Boyd believes in the things he does, but he also knows that Boyd doesn’t know how full of shit he is.”
Boyd is a highly complicated character but that’s what makes him so fascinating. He has a strong moral code yet is an out and out criminal. He’s highly intelligent yet doesn’t nurture that intellect and instead uses it to run rings around drug dealers. He is part of the very essence of Justified because he is an integral part of Raylan Givens’ character.
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