Plot

Marshal Givens returns home and is assigned a case involving an old friend from his coal mining days who has become a white supremacist and blew up an African American church.

Gunslinging U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens faces off against his oldest friend in Harlan, KY. -- a 21st century Wild West.—FX Publicity

Miami, Florida

U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens strolls down a boardwalk and joins a con at a table. Raylan informs him he has two minutes. The con recounts the story of how Raylan pulled a gun on him yesterday and told him he had 24 hours to get out of town or he'd shoot him on sight.

The con doesn't believe him and doesn't want to go. He doesn't think Givens will shoot an unarmed man, as he claims to be.

Givens tells him he's got 30 seconds. He counts down. Time runs out. The con pulls a gun. Givens beats him to the draw and shoots him dead.

Later, Givens's boss checks to make sure that Givens knows they're not actually allowed to shoot people on sight anymore.

At another date and time, Givens and his boss meet with the Department of Justice about the shooting. Givens reiterates that "he pulled first, I shot him."

In the parking garage, Givens's boss tells him he's being reassigned to the Eastern district of Kentucky. Givens grew up in Kentucky, he doesn't want to go there but has no choice.

Lexington, Kentucky:

Givens reports to work. His new boss is Chief Deputy Art Mullen, an old friend, who suggests they start with a drink.

He has a "Tombstone" poster on his office wall.

Givens did fugitive work before, but in Kentucky he'll be doing that, plus witness relocation, asset forfeitures and prisoner transport.

He tells Givens that his ex-wife Winona is still in town, working at the courthouse.

He tells him about a case the U.S. Attorney is trying to put together on someone from his hometown named Boyd Crowder. Givens knows him. They dug coal together when they were 19.

Cut to Boyd with a dude named Jarrett, checking out a federal building under construction and saying it's not a good target for their rocket launcher.

Boyd has a huge swastika on his shoulder. This perhaps explains why he then gets out of his car and aims it at a black church. He shouts "fire in the hole" and blasts it.

In a bar, Givens tells Mullen a story about coal digging, which involves shouting "fire in the hole" before a charge blows. Mullen catches Givens up to speed on Boyd, who got into domestic terrorist type activities after a stint in the army. Now he comes into towns, blows up a car and uses the distraction to rob a bank. Raylan notes that he saw that once in a Steve McQueen movie.

Boyd pitches his rocket launcher into a river. He asks Jarrett why he didn't want to blow up the church, and why he suggested a half-built building. He suspects Jarrett is FBI and that's the kind of innocuous target they'd be willing to sacrifice to get someone into the movement. Boyd's in the backseat as Jared protests that he's not a snitch and to check with his people in Oklahoma. "We'll see," Boyd says as he shoots Jared through the back of the head.

Boyd calls into a trailer full of neo-Nazis. He reports on the evening and his crony tells him, by the way, Jared checked out in Oklahoma. Oh.

The next day, Givens goes to the courthouse to watch court reporter Winona. He gets a call and leaves.

He arrives on the scene of Jarrett's murder, where Mullens tells him they think it was Boyd. The car and gun have been wiped clean. They found the cap of a rocket launcher.

Givens goes to the church bombing site. One of the witnesses heard someone shout "fire in the hole."

The church is Jamaican (the kind that believes marijuana is a way to spirituality, Mullens explains) and Givens gets the preacher to cooperate with a well-timed Peter Tosh reference.

Back at the neo-Nazi trailer, one of the brothers gives Boyd the news that his brother has been shot.

"What, where?" Boyd says.

"At his house."

"No, dumba---, where on his body?"

"I don't know."

"Well, is it serious?"

"Oh yea, he's dead."

Back at the office, Givens learns that Bowman Crowder was shot by his wife Ava, who said she got tired of him getting drunk and beating her. She's already been arraigned and released without bond.

Raylan pays her a visit. They say an awkward hello and she kisses him full on the mouth. She confesses to having a crush on him since she was 12.

She tells him she told Bowman she wanted a divorce and he told her her body would never be found. She tells him about Bowman's plans to get into the NFL never materializing and him blaming her for her miscarriage after he beat her with a belt. The last time he beat her it was because she called his brother Boyd creepy to his face. She calmly tells Raylan how he knocked her into the stove and she knew it would be the last time he beat her. So the next night she fixed his favorite dinner, waited until he was shoveling it in and then blew him away with a .30'06 deer rifle. There's still a blood stain on the floor.

Raylan waits as she gets in the shower.

Boyd's flunky walks in the front door. Raylan sizes him up and asks to see the guy's swastika tattoo. From the guy's gator necklace, which he boasts he made himself, Raylan puts him as being from Florida. Belle Glade, he confirms. The guy is Dewey Crow.

Raylan remembers sending away a Crow away in Florida.

He says he's there to take Ava some place. Raylan sends him outside to knock on the front door properly. Instead, Dewey goes to his trunk and grabs a shotgun.

Raylan coolly sets down his drink and walks outside as Dewey points the scatter gun in his face. Raylan warns him he only draws his "sidearm" if he's shooting to kill. Dewey thinks he's got him already, but Raylan asks if he'll be able to rack a load before he shoots him dead. Dewey pauses to think.

Raylan walks right up to him and takes the gun out of his hands.

"Man, I don't understand you," Dewey whines.

Raylan tells Dewey to tell Boyd he's back in town. He empties Dewey's gun and gives it back to him. Back in his car, Dewey starts to talk tough and Raylan bounces Dewey's face off the steering wheel.

Boyd and one of his guys wait in a truck outside a bank as fire engines race past to a fire. Boyd explains he won't kill Ava, she didn't have a choice. But he intends to take care of her. Suddenly two overweight neo-Nazis run out of the bank with masks on and hop in the getaway truck. Boyd drives off.

Back at Ava's, Raylan explains that they want to catch Boyd in the act.

Cut to Raylan driving up to Boyd in a former church. They greet each other like old friends, hugs and all.

Boyd sends his guy for a jar of 'shine and two glasses.

They share the moonshine and Boyd asks if Raylan has seen his dad yet. He remembers a scheme the father used to run stealing machinery and selling to the Colombians and getting paid in cocaine.

Boyd is soon telling Raylan his theory that Jewish people run the world. This leads into more unevolved racist theories he links to the Bible. Raylan tells him he thinks he's just using the Bible to justify what he likes: money and blowing s--- up.

He knows about Boyd's pal's dope record and thinks that, and not racism, is why he blew up the black church -- because they didn't like the Jamaicans getting a free pass for drugs from the police.

He thinks Boyd isn't dumb enough to believe his racist talk.

Boyd asks him if when he shot the con in Miami, he saw his father's face.

Raylan bristles, but tells him to come down for a police line-up tomorrow.

As he's leaving, Boyd asks Raylan if he'd shoot him if he had the chance. If he makes him draw, Raylan says, he'll put him down.

At the line up, the preacher won't make an ID.

After, Boyd brings up the 24 hours Raylan gave the con to get out of Miami. Boyd offers Raylan the same deal.

Raylan runs into Ava in the courthouse. She says if she pleads to manslaughter she won't have to go to prison. She offers to cook Raylan dinner. He says as a Marshal he's not allowed to socialize with witnesses. She says she's cooking anyway.

Outside, Boyd's lackies watch the two of them.

Raylan tells Mullen about Boyd's 24 hour threat. Mullen says that makes him bait.

Boyd's guys follow Raylan to a motel and watch him with other marshals.

There's a knock at Ava's door. It's Boyd.

She calls Raylan and tells him dinner's almost ready. Raylan knows Boyd is there.

Raylan, Mullen and a few other deputies leave in separate cars. Boyd's guys cut off Mullen's truck and open a hail of fire. He calls Raylan and tells him to keep going. Another car follows him.

Back in front of the motel, Mullen and his deputies engage in a good old fashioned shoot out. Mullen gives the order to just wing them. The neo-Nazis are soon wounded but ready to keep shooting until a black female deputy gets the drop on them.

Out on the way to Ava's, Raylan is clearly being followed. He stops and when his pursuers stop, stealthily approaches Boyd's guys. He gets Dewey's back seat. He fires a shot through their car roof with the scatter gun and cuffs them.

Raylan pulls up to Ava's carrying the shotgun. Boyd greets him with a gun pointed at him. Raylan drops the shotgun and Boyd puts his on the table and goes back to eating Ava's food after sending her in the other room.

He's chatty, asking about the shooting in Miami. Raylan tells him his gun was holstered. They're sitting at opposite ends of the table, just like in Miami. Boyd says Raylan's time is up.

With his gun on the table, Boyd is amping up to draw, but Ava comes around the corner with her late husband's deer rifle. She aims it at Boyd as she tells him about shooting his brother.

Boyd goes for his gun, but in a flash Raylan grabs his from his holster and shoots Boyd clean through the gut and out of his chair. Raylan stands over Boyd. "You did it, you really did," Boyd gasps.

"I'm sorry. You called it," Raylan tells him.

Flash to them in the mines during a cave in. He tells Ava they dug coal together.

Later, an ambulance takes Boyd away. Mullen wonders why he didn't aim for the heart.

In a cul de sac house, a man gets out of bed in the middle of the night. He finds Raylan sitting in his living room, drinking beer. The former Mrs. Givens comes downstairs.

They talk outside. He tells her about tracking a money launderer to Nicaragua, where the cartel's gun thug Tommy was looking for him, too. Tommy got the drop on him and put him in a car with another man. At a plantation Tommy tied the man to a palm tree and asked Raylan where the money launderer was. He told him what he knew, but Tommy must not have believed him because he stuck a stick of dynamite in the man's mouth and lit the fuse.

The next time Raylan saw Tommy was Miami. He told him he had 24 hours to get out of town or he was going to kill him.

"He pulled first, so I was justified," Raylan says.

What troubles him, though, is what if Tommy hadn't drawn and he'd killed him anyway. He never thought of himself as an angry man.

Kindly, Winona tells him: "Honestly, you're the angriest man I have ever known."