Good piece of insight in an interview with the EP Graham Yost - After Cassie came into the bar looking for Ellen May, who’d tried to reach out to her, Ava and Boyd weren’t sure if Ellen May was alive or if Cassie was trying to shake them down. Colt went to see Cassie, and Gutterson, who’d been following Colt because he suspected Colt was involved in the deaths of his friend Mark and the drug dealer, saved Cassie. Boyd, having heard about Colt from Johnny, convinced Gutterson to let Colt leave with him. Boyd took Colt back to the bar to question him. Why didn’t Boyd kill him?
The big reason was Devil betrayed Boyd and was going to kill him; Colt screwed up and didn’t tell him. There was nothing malicious about it. He wasn’t trying to hurt Boyd. He wasn’t betraying him the way Johnny is with Duffy. So that was critical. I think he feels for Colt, being a vet himself, and he can see that Colt is struggling and he made a miscalculation by bringing him on, but there was no ill will. Walton loved that scene on the page, and then he got to the stage and had second thoughts about certain things, and they sat with him and ran it through, and it ended up coming back to pretty much the way it was written. The whole giving Colt the gun and making him show Boyd where he shot Ellen May, when I read that, I just thought that’s fantastic. By that point, Boyd knows what’s going on, so we know the gun’s not loaded. But Boyd was wondering if he was gonna hear a click. Was Colt gonna try [to shoot him]? In which case, Boyd would’ve killed him. But he didn’t.