Justified - Episode 3.03 - Harlan Roulette - Interview with Graham Yost

The story Raylan told Wade about why he won’t go into someone’s house uninvited — that goes back to the pilot, when he met Dewey Crowe at Ava’s.
GRAHAM YOST: That goes back to the pilot, and the short story, and it might even have been mentioned in one of the books, too. One of the themes of the season is crossing the line. So here we have a scene where Raylan says this is why he doesn’t cross this line, why he won’t go into someone’s house uninvited. When Wade comes out and he can’t find the gun and Raylan’s got it, it’s like, “I thought you wasn’t gonna go inside?” “We all got lines we gotta cross, Wade.” It’s just exploring that notion. And, it’s a fun story to tell.

I’m so happy that Wade Messer lived. Why do incompetent guys like he and Dewey survive for so long in this world? Because they’re comic relief?
You know, a lot of it has to do with just us seeing the performance. We had so much fun with Damon Herriman playing Dewey on the pilot. We just thought it’d be cool to bring him back. We always want to make sure when we use him that we remind ourselves and the audience that he’s a bad guy capable of bad stuff, but at the same time, not lose sight of the Elmore Leonard humor that’s involved with a character like that. We just sort of feel that Raylan has an odd affection for them. He would never say that. His affection for Wade is a little more apparent and pronounced since he knew him from growing up, but there’s just something about Dewey that he kind of gets a kick out of, you know, even though he’s a dope. With Wade, we got a call last year that James LeGros liked the show and said, “Listen guys, if there’s anything for me, count me in.” When we came up with the character of Wade Messer, we knew we needed someone in the last episode [of season 2] to play a pivotal role. We approached him and he said, “Great.” Then you see the scene between him and Raylan [in LeGros' delivery] “Hey Raylan, how are ya?” It was just wonderful. And so when we were kickin’ around ideas for this season, we thought, well, maybe Wade’s still in the wind and he’s a fugitive, and what he’s doing could pull us into this story and take us deeper into this Oxy subculture.

Will we see Wade again this season?
No, he’s in custody. We have to figure how bad the charges are against him. He helped Raylan out in this situation, so in the Justified world, we could see him out in jail in season 4 — if James still wants to play.

Source: Full interview @ Entertainment Weekly