Keith David Reveals ‘Duster’ Character’s Fate & What Would’ve Happened in Season 2

If you’re still bummed about HBO Max’s decision not to greenlight a second season of its ’70s-set crime drama Duster, well, this news might make you even more so.

TV Insider caught up with actor Keith David while he was promoting the upcoming release of the Civil War drama The Gray House on Prime Video, and we just had to ask him about the big cliffhanger involving his character, Ezra Saxton, who was shot in the chest in the Season 1 finale, with his fate still unknown.

“Well, he died,” David confirmed. However, the actor also revealed that he was still planning to return to the series in some key flashbacks involving another character who’d been alluded to, but not shown, in the events of the first season.

“I think we would have seen more of him in flashback because we would have had to tell the story of the brother and what happened, how he came to his end, and what was that plan, which Ezra executed. So you would have had to see how Saxton wove that tale,” he explained.

The brother he’s referring to is, of course, the mysterious Joey, the brother of Jim Ellis (Josh Holloway), whose death Saxton helped to fake. The finale revealed that Joey was actually still alive and that he was also the one being referred to as Xavier, a perceived national security threat.

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'Duster' Canceled After One Season at HBO Max

Xavier had been involved in high-level operations, including with Russian mobsters, and even had ties to Richard Nixon‘s beleaguered White House in the storyline, which also included parts of the Watergate tapes scandal as a revisionist history premise.

In other words, David felt certain that if the series, which was cocreated by J.J. Abrams and LaToya Morgan, had returned, we would’ve seen a lot more of his character — at least, in the past — and finally gotten some answers on what Joey a.k.a. Xavier was really up to. Alas!

For now, fans can next catch Keith David in The Gray House in a key role as the series explores the true history of some of the unsung heroes of the Civil War. And stay tuned for more from the cast of Gray House before its premiere on February 26.

Duster, HBO Max