'Justified' Season 6 Spoilers: Did Timothy Olyphant, Walton Goggins Have Finale Deaths?

Based on the crime novels by the late author Elmore Leonard, the Season 6 finale of Justified continues to earn critical praise. In an alternate ending, were Timothy Olyphant (Raylan Givens), Joelle Carter (Ava Crowder), and Walton Goggins (Boyd Crowder) all meant to have character deaths?

In our finale recap, Boyd threw dynamite to escape the marshals as he blasted his way through Avery Markham (Sam Elliott) to get to Ava. Though Raylan was tempted to pull his gun and fire, he decided to arrest Boyd instead. After a terrifying shootout with Boon (Jonathan Tucker) left him wounded, Raylan was unable to prevent Ava from escaping.

In the four year jump, Raylan is a happily divorced father taking care of his daughter. Knowing Ava is raising Boyd's son, Raylan promised to keep her secret and falsified her death. In prison, Boyd and Raylan realized they are still best friends, ever since they dug coal together.

With the Emmys coming up, we all know Justified was robbed of a nomination, but that doesn't mean it didn't have a satisfying conclusion. As Mad Men, and Sons of Anarchy also came to an end, Justified was voted the Most Satisfying Series Finale in the inaugural reader-voted Yahooies.

According to Yahoo TV, Justified creator/showrunner Graham Yost, who also serves as executive producer of The Americans, reveals how he came up with the ending, "Right from the end of Season 5, we knew our final season would return us to where we began, focused down on Raylan, Boyd and Ava. The big question then was which of them, if any, would get out of Harlan alive. There were various times in the writers room when they each had a day marked for death. In the end we came back to the question that had guided us from the beginning: what would Elmore do?"

Yost continues, "Would he kill Raylan? Nah. His heroes always end up among the living. Ava? Nope - his women are usually still breathing at the end, sometimes in the wind with the money, too. So, then Boyd. Would Elmore have had him bite it? Well, as his researcher and dear friend for 30 years Gregg Sutter put it, 'Elmore already tried that and it didn't stick.' Besides, if Raylan killed Boyd, what would that say about our hero of six years? So that was the call - they would all live. We like to think Elmore would've gotten a kick out of that. And we are all so very grateful that you fans got a kick out of it, too.

Check out our 5 reasons why we're still missing Justified.

Readers, what did you think Justified's ending?