Wait, that was the season finale? We were having such a great time hanging out, we kind of forgot Duster was actually driving toward something. That’s not a slight! It’s the mark of a well-executed series that its first season was so fun, and invited such deep-pile immersion into its idealized 1970s genre trappings, that we weren’t even concerned about the result. Instead we rolled the windows down, slapped in a tape, and went for a nighttime drive into the world Duster built, where everybody has a signature vehicle, the car chases are many, crime has violent consequences but is also kinda cartoonish, and federal agents solve cases with the power of their personality as much as the force of their office.  

As for a Duster Season 2, the CB radio at Decider HQ isn’t currently squawking with anything definite. At least to us, it felt like Max didn’t promote this series or its talented cast nearly enough – maybe they were too busy trying to remember their own name – and who knows what renewal decisions lurk in streamers’ weird hearts, anyway. But given what plays out in the Duster season finale, we really want to take this thing for another spin. So let’s join Jim Ellis at another pay phone, where his shot at damage control is already in progress. 

Upon returning Luna to Izzy after their Las Vegas adventure, Jim found out from Iz’s doctor boyfriend Dave that Groomes woke up and started to blab. But he’s not trying to run or hide. Instead, Jim rolls the Duster right up to the abandoned industrial facility where Billy’s got Agent Hayes chained to a pipe. Saxton’s there, too, and Jim doesn’t obfuscate. He says it was the last thing he wanted to be true, when Nina’s information about Joey Ellis’s death seemed to implicate Sax. But pretty soon the wheelman and the federal agent are both chained to pipes. 

With a flashback to her youth in 1950s Philadelphia, and how her father’s defiance of Sax led to his murder, Duster strengthened Nina’s resolve. (Nina to Sax, while still chained to a pipe: “You’re gonna rot in prison for what’s left of your sorry fucking life.”) But it also delved further into what’s rooted the series all along: the nature of what is owed between fathers and their children. Whether contrasting Saxton’s frustrated encouragement of Royce as his successor with his loving but distant relationship with Genesis, finding heart in the scenes between Wade Ellis and Jim – Jim, who could never live up to the reputation of his universally revered brother – or building on Jim’s quiet chemistry with Luna, his secret daughter, Duster injected paternalism and pathos into the places between all its power-sliding cars, politically-connected conspiracies, and grandstanding henchmen.    

So Saxton was probably thinking about his experiences as a father, and his experiences with Jim and Joey Ellis and their own father Wade, when he shot Greek Sal in the face instead of trading Jim for the absconded Nixon tape.

It’s a wild shootout, and the reel-to-reel Sal’s goons stole from Howard Hughes’s guys at the end of last episode doesn’t even find its way back to Sax’s side. Instead, Billy is shot and killed, Nina ends up shooting Sal’s henchmen instead of Sax – and this is after he turned her over to Grant to be killed, only for Hayes to escape with an assist from Awan – and Saxton leaps in front of a bullet that was meant for Royce. Is Ezra Saxton dead? It sure seems like it. But then again, anything can happen when it’s The ’70s: On TV.

Anything! Including the introduction of a serious plot twist for a potential Duster Season 2. As Nina’s FBI bosses reveal, and as she in turn reveals to Jim, the always unseen “Xavier” is actually his brother. Joey Ellis didn’t die in that exploding van. Saxton didn’t kill him. Instead, Sax helped Joey fake his own death and disappear.

Agent Nina Hayes will be running point on a federal investigation to finally nab Joey Ellis/Xavier for good. We know the CIA’s involved, and men in cowboy hats who operate above any structure of law – the tendrils she’ll be pulling on run deep. Which means she might need to run them over a few times, or even ram them with some quality 70s muscle car oomph. “I can’t do this without you,” Nina says to Jim of her new assignment, as they survey a gorgeous Arizona sunset. He’s still processing the idea that Joey is alive. But that doesn’t mean this wheelman isn’t ready to put the pedal down and rock on. 

This summer, if you fall by our place for a barbecue, you’ll hear a playlist featuring many of the tracks tapped for the first season of Duster. We just can’t say enough about the sounds that helped define this series, credited to a group including music supervisor Bobby Gottlieb and Elliot Easton, founding guitarist of The Cars, as music designer. 

Consider the nuance of the songs included just in this entertaining season finale. Billie Holiday’s version of “How Deep is the Ocean?” doesn’t just set the scene of Nina’s South Philly neighborhood in 1954 – the song was recorded that year, and like Nina, Holiday was herself a daughter of Philadelphia. Marvin Gaye with “Trouble Man”? It’s a soulful way to reference the blaxploitation films, like 1972’s Trouble Man, that are a big influence on Duster. And George Harrison wrote “Isn’t It a Pity,” from his 1970 opus All Things Must Pass, about his bff breakup with the other Beatles. But as Jim and Nina observe a desert vista to Harrison’s windy slide guitar, the lyrics could just as easily apply to the revelation of the Ellis brothers’ broken bond. Isn’t it a pity how we break each other’s hearts, and cause each other pain?          

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.