Sheriff County‘s midseason finale ended with Travis getting shot, but what does this mean for his reconciliation with Mickey — and a possible love triangle with Boone?
During the Friday, December 19, episode of the CBS series, Mickey (Morena Baccarin) and Travis (Christopher Gorham) hooked up, and one of them took it more seriously than the other. Travis was ready to give their relationship another chance — while Mickey thought it was a one-off.
“There’s something about Mickey and Travis that I find deeply romantic,” showrunner Matt Lopez exclusively told Us Weekly about deciding to reexplore Mickey and Travis as a couple. “There’s something about two people who pretty much grew up together, got pregnant at the age of 18, raised a kid together, have been through all these trials and tribulations, grown apart and got divorced.”
Lopez argued that people “can fall in and out of love with someone” over the years.
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“But when you’ve gone through those kinds of experiences with someone, I believe Mickey and Travis have such a deep affection and admiration for each other that you never fully fall out of love with someone like that,” he noted. “At the beginning of the season, Skye was implicated in her boyfriend’s murder and it threw Mickey and Travis back into each other’s orbit in a way that I don’t think they had been in a while.”
Lopez continued: “I think there’s also something unexpected to, ‘Oh, who is Mickey going to fall for?’ Well, probably the handsome partner who you know. But who is the last person you expect to fall for? Your ex. So it’s been a fun story to tell.”
While Mickey considered a future with Travis, her case resulted in her arresting the leader of a powerful local family following abuse allegations at their ranch. This resulted in an organized attack on the sheriff’s office, which Mickey being told that Travis got shot.
“His life hangs in the balance — and his relationship with Mickey and this precarious place where they’ve gotten to where they might have fallen back in love with each other,” Lopez noted. “He tells her he loves her and she doesn’t answer him. In the second half of the fall finale — which is a powder keg of an episode — what is going to blow audiences away is how emotional the episode is. All those questions will be answered and and with ripple effects that will last for the rest of the season.”
Fans rooting for Mickey and Travis will see their romance continue to play out when the show returns on February 27. But Mickey has other options — with other viewers rooting for her to find love with partner Boone (Matt Lauria).
“I’m not surprised because they’re such great characters, they are such charming actors and they are quite easy on the eyes. What I’ve enjoyed [though] is not going there — or at least not going there too quickly,” Lopez said. “They start out the season in a place of great conflict. It’s messy and it’s complicated. What you’re starting to see now is a return to the Mickey and Boone that existed before the series started when they were just partners and there wasn’t the weirdness of she got the top job and he got left behind.”
Season 1 will continue to explore that dynamic.
“They’re falling into that partnership again and it’s a really fun place to write to. I know the actors love playing that charm and so it’s very big sister little brother. Having said that, could it grow into something more? I think it could,” he continued. “Those relationships have an intimacy to them. Even if it’s not physical, there’s an intimacy that’s almost like a spouse. The door is open for Mickey and Boone.”
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After its premiere, CBS announced that Sheriff Country averaged 7.6 million viewers and is “consistently a time period winner” for Friday nights. The Fire Country spinoff has since been renewed for a second season.
“[Going into season 2], some of the struggles that Mickey will have will be continuations of the same character dynamics that exist in season 1. They will always be there for Mickey. She’s a person who puts up walls and it becomes hard for her to show vulnerability and trust. Sometimes she does and she gets burned,” Lopez teased. “The most courageous thing that as human beings we can do is make ourselves vulnerable, get crushed for it and then make ourselves vulnerable again. Because happiness and fulfillment lies on the other side — and heartbreak too. That will always be part of her character.”
Lopez promised “twists and turns” going forward, saying, “The audience doesn’t even know we’re laying pipe for it, but we are. There are Easter eggs being hidden in the shrubs right now that down the stretch of the season the story will come to roost in a tremendous way. It’s hard to talk about without being very vague or coy about it.”
He continued: “There are assumptions about Mickey and her life and her family and her how she became a deputy and why she became a deputy that we have had in place since the first half of the first episode that the audience will be forced to reexamine and reckon with in a completely different way. There are facts that Mickey doesn’t know about her own story that we will discover together with her.”
Sheriff Country returns to CBS on Friday, February 27, at 8 p.m. ET. New episodes will be streaming the next day on Paramount+.
