City Primeval (Justified: City Primeval)

In March 2023, FX announced that the first episode of the series would be titled "City Primeval", and was to be written by series developers Dave Andron and Michael Dinner and directed by Dinner.[1]

Michael Dinner explained that it was pivotal to show character growth in Raylan, explaining "He's such an Elmore character. They don't make huge leaps; they move incrementally, and I think that's what happens in the new series. He gave up the ghost of his past in the first series. He's moving another couple inches forward now, and there's a third chapter."[2]

Dave Andron described Clement Mansell as "He's one of the great bad guys that Elmore created. Crazy or unpredictable is a good description. And the great thing about Elmore's bad guys is that sometimes they're redeemable or embraceable, and sometimes they're just so interesting, and I find this guy interesting. I don't know what he's gonna do next. That's what makes him scary. The question for Raylan is, existentially, has he slowed down?"[3]

For the scene where Raylan arrives at the crime scene, Dinner wanted to diffentiate it from the previous scenes by making an unbroken take. He explained, "As a director, you have to find a rhythm, and if you've been in a sequence that's coverage heavy with no shot lasting longer than a second, it gives you permission to do something different in the next scene. You don't want to get lulled into a pace that's the same from scene to scene."[4]

In its original American broadcast, "City Primeval" was seen by an estimated 0.493 million household viewers and gained a 0.05 ratings share among adults aged 18–49, according to Nielsen Media Research. This means that 0.05 percent of all households with televisions watched the episode.[5] This was a 78% decrease in viewership from the original series finale, which was watched by 2.24 million viewers with a 0.7 in the 18-49 demographics.[6]

"City Primeval" received mostly positive reviews from critics. Ben Travers of IndieWire wrote, "Justified: City Primeval wastes little time throwing Raylan back into the thick of things, which is about the same amount of time it spends pretending all that much has changed. Sure, he's based in Florida, which is where he was first based when Justified started. But even as it brings us up to speed on Raylan's life, the opening scene predominantly speaks to the lingering demons our favorite U.S. Marshal has yet to quell."[7]

Roxana Hadadi of Vulture gave the episode a 4 star rating out of 5 and wrote, "Fifteen years after the pre-time-jump events of the Justified series finale 'The Promise,' Raylan still has that inquiring mind and that chip on his shoulder, and he still won't let himself be intimidated or pushed around... at least not by criminals. His 15-year-old daughter, Willa, though? Or lawyer Carolyn Wilder or judge Alvin Guy? They have Raylan's number either emotionally or legally, and by the end of premiere City Primeval, their prickly, contentious relationships with Raylan lay down some narrative avenues for where this series will go. Giddyup!"[8]

Cameron Crain of TV Obsessive wrote, "The chaos of that setup makes Episode 1 of Justified: City Primeval feel more like Justified than anything else."[9] Diana Keng of TV Fanatic gave the episode a 3.5 star rating out of 5 and wrote, "Clement is a villain fashioned after Batman's Joker. A capable criminal who understands how to leverage information and has no qualms about utilizing extreme brutality to expedite his goals, he is a creature of mercurial moods and motivations. The issue with chaotic evil like that is the unpredictability of his actions gets tedious. The savagery is shocking and the sadism disturbing, but it's a one-note type of discord."[10]