Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for the Duster finale.
When we first meet Jim Ellis (Josh Holloway) in HBO Max’s Duster, he seems like a pretty carefree guy. Sure, he works for a ruthless crime boss named Ezra Saxton (Keith David) and is constantly getting into perilous situations that he has to get out of, but he’s also pretty slick with the ladies and is the best driver around. However, there’s still a part of Jim’s life that creates a lot of sorrow for him, and it surrounds the death of his brother, Joey. At the beginning of the first season of Duster, Jim begrudgingly becomes an informant for the FBI — after some convincing from Agent Nina Hayes (Rachel Hilson) — because he’s determined to find out if Joey’s death was an accident or was actually murder. What’s revealed to Jim in the Season 1 finale provides a shocking twist that we’ll never learn the outcome of, now that the show has been cancelled.
Xavier Was a Mysterious Figure Throughout ‘Duster’
There were many interesting villains during the first season of Duster, but one who, up until the finale, was a complete mystery. We get introduced to a faceless character named Xavier several times. He has dealings with Saxton, and even the Russian mobsters know who Xavier is, proving that he plays a pivotal role in Saxton’s operation. In Episode 4, Nina finds a recording of Agent Leland Breen (Michael Bryan French) saying, “expose Xavier and his network, and, until then, trust no one.” This is the first clue that maybe Xavier has just as much (if not more) power than Saxton himself in this world of crime.
In subsequent episodes, we meet the Cowboy (J.R. Yenque), who also seems to be taking orders from Xavier. The two have several phone calls, where, once again, we never see Xavier’s face, but it’s clear he’s pulling the strings. Xavier has his hands in all kinds of business dealings, including the ones with Howard Hughes’ car and with the infamous Watergate recordings that Richard Nixon is trying to get back. No one is safe from Xavier, especially Nina, who finds herself in danger after Agent Chad Grant (Dan Tracy) gets the order from the Cowboy to take her out. All of this just works to build up an enigmatic bad guy who seems impossible to take down.
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The series stars Josh Holloway and Rachel Hilson.
The ‘Duster’ Finale Reveals Xavier’s True Identity, but Now We’ll Never Find Out More
In the Season 1 finale, Nina survives Grant trying to kill her thanks to help from her partner Awan (Asivak Koostachin), and tries to resign her post as an FBI agent after Saxton is killed during a shootout with Greek Sal (Jack Topalian) and his men. Because the man who ordered the hit on her father has now been taken out, she sees no other reason to continue holding a badge. However, her boss at the agency, Nathan Abbott (Greg Grunberg), tells her that she can’t quit now. The conspiracy she was chasing surrounding Saxton’s operation is actually real, and he needs her to continue working the case. Nina heads to Jim, telling him that she’ll be sticking around Phoenix. And then she reveals a shocking twist that no one else knows about: Xavier’s real identity is Joey Ellis, Jim’s supposedly dead brother.
Jim had believed that Joey had been blown up in a van explosion several years prior; he had also vacillated between thinking it was an accident, a hit ordered by Saxton, or a hit ordered by someone else. He even had a hard time believing that Saxton, who loved Joey like a son, could have had him killed, although Saxton tells Jim straight out that he did not kill Joey. Now it seems that he was telling the truth, and Joey has faked his death and taken on the persona of Xavier. But what were his intentions behind assuming this alias, and how could he let his family believe that he’d been dead all this time? Jim and his father, Wade (Corbin Bernsen), were clearly devastated to lose this important member of their family. Was he in danger and needed to go undercover, or is Xavier/Joey truly the bad guy we think he is? Although finally knowing who Xavier is provides some satisfaction, this surprising twist just raises more questions.
What Does This Twist Mean for the Future ‘Duster’?
Unfortunately, with confirmation that Duster has not been renewed for Season 2, Jim won’t be able to pursue a more risky path now that he knows Joey is alive. He would have had to chase down his brother to get answers, which definitely wouldn’t have been easy for someone who has made themselves a ghost in more ways than one. We’re still lingering on all of the unanswered questions that the now-series finale didn’t resolve. What does a reveal like this do to Jim’s state of mind, especially now that he’s just learned that Izzy (Camille Guaty) has cancer?
Even though Joey being alive is life-changing news for Jim, this storytelling twist would have also likely affected Nina in a major way. She had planned to wash her hands of the FBI once she took down Saxton. Now that he’s no longer in the picture, and the show is ending on this cliffhanger, would Nina still have had the same fire within her to be an effective agent? She also had some serious brushes with danger (after that waterboarding incident in the finale and nearly getting killed by Grant), so would Nina have been able to continue her work after experiencing these traumas? Saxton also gave her information about her own family that she didn’t know before, mainly that her father was actually an FBI informant.
It’s a shame that Duster wasn’t renewed for a second season, because the series finale provided a brand-new, compelling twist to keep Nina working for the FBI with Jim at her side. The best part of a potential second season would have been seeing who is cast in the role of Xavier/Joey, as well as how all of these characters interact with each other in future episodes — but now, we’ll never know the answers to all of these questions for sure.
Duster is available to stream on HBO Max in the U.S.
