Raylan's life is about to get a little less fun and a lot more complicated, thanks to the impending arrival of his first child with ex-wife Winona (Natalie Zea). "A funny thing happens to most people when they have a kid," Olyphant says. "They stop thinking about how their parents see them and start thinking about how their kid is going to see them." Having grown up in the shadow of his criminal father Arlo's failures, Raylan sees solving the season's main mystery the search for a presumed dead Dixie Mafia player named Drew Thompson as a way to finally become someone other than "The Guy Who Shot Tommy Bucks."
And if, in the service of that goal, a few legal corners have to be cut, so be it. "That's what's fun this season watching Raylan do things where you're like, 'God, he knows this is a bad idea,'" says Olyphant. Despite Raylan's many sins, including a kill count that would probably mean early retirement for most real marshals, his career is not yet in jeopardy, partially because of the good grace of Chief Deputy Art Mullen (Nick Searcy). Searcy says that leniency comes from Art having once been a bit of a Raylan himself, back in the day. "Art's learned from his mistakes," he adds. "Unlike Raylan, who's still in the middle of his mistakes."
