Sheriff Country Boss Explains Boone's 'Heroic, Selfless' Choice In Season 2 Premiere — Plus, When Will Ben McKenzie Return? (Grade It!)

The first season finale of "Sheriff Country" left fans on a doozy of a cliffhanger, revealing Eva to be Mickey's birth mother. But rather than resuming with that jaw-dropping moment, Friday's Season 2 premiere flashes forward several hours — and more than several drinks — later.

"We pick up the action 18 to 24 hours after that bombshell, and we see Mickey like we've never seen her before," showrunner Matt Lopez tells TVLine. "This woman who's usually so tightly controlled is now three sheets to the wind and saying things that a sober, more reflective Mickey would not say... but might be more emotionally true."

One of those "things" is a potentially game-changing confession to Boone, who picks Mickey up from the drunk tank in Drake County at the behest of Sheriff Jim Wade (played by Morena Baccarin's real-life husband Ben McKenzie). "I messed up," Mickey tells Boone. "You told me how you felt, and I made the wrong choice."

In a perfect world, this would finally bring Mickey and Boone together. But Mickey's world is far from perfect at the moment, and Boone is well aware of this, hence his decision to pretend he never heard Mickey's drunken confession. And just like that, the waiting game resumes again.

"He makes a noble and selfless choice in that moment, one that might be in denial of his own feelings and happiness," Lopez says. "He realizes Mickey is taking it from all sides. Her mom has come back, which is a bombshell, and she still has this huge betrayal to deal with with her father. There's also an unprecedented threat to Edgewater. So Boone becomes the figure who's like, 'I need to be there for Mickey.' It's heroic and selfless, but we'll see that there's a cost — a psychological cost, an emotional, and a physical cost — to Boone."

The good news? All of this drama is leading to something good. "It builds into an emotionally tense, explosive moment between Mickey and Boone in an upcoming episode that features, for my money, the best work Matt Lauria and Morena Baccaran have done on this series. I think it's going to take people's breath away."

Read on for more of Lopez's insights on the "Fire Country" Season 2 premiere (and beyond):

As previously reported, Ben McKenzie is recurring on "Sheriff Country" this season as Jim Wade, the sheriff of Edgewater's neighboring Drake County. In addition to McKenzie being Morena Baccarin's real-life husband, the couple has previously shared the screen on Fox's "Gotham," so it's no surprise that there's instant chemistry between Mickey and Jim.

We don't learn much about Sheriff Wade in the premiere, aside from he and Mickey having a long history. She says she's had his back a time or two, but he makes it very clear after her little bender, they're "not even close" to being even now.

McKenzie will return for "multiple episodes" this season, and Matt Lopez says we'll discover that Jim and Mickey are "roughly the same" in many ways. "They were at the academy together, so they came up together, Jim has been sheriff of Drake County for much longer than Mickey has been sheriff of Edgewater. So he becomes sort of a resource for her. When she's dealing with something and needs to talk to someone who has dealt with it before, she can go to Jim."

More proof of Jim and Mickey's long friendship: he's Skye's godfather! Travis even refers to Jim as Skye's "savior" because "he was the first one who came to Mickey and said her daughter has a problem," Lopez reveals. "Mickey did not want to hear that, and it put their relationship under great strain, but it was ultimately what saved Skye's life. So there's a real bond of friendship and comradeship between them."

Mickey still isn't ready to welcome her mother back into her life with open arms by the end of the "Sheriff Country" Season 2 premiere, but viewers might feel differently about the situation.

As she explains in her own words, Eva (fka "Maria") was sent to Oakland to take down "the green giant" (aka Wes), but she fell in love with him and had his baby instead. So while she didn't technically call the feds on the day of his arrest, she was partially responsible for them showing up. In exchange for a lighter sentence for Wes, Eva agreed to disappear to Bogota for 10 years, with the DEA officially declaring her dead.

Looking to find the sympathy in Eva's situation, Matt Lopez challenged the show's writers "to dimensionalize her choice as much as possible," he tells TVLine. "Let's face it, a woman abandoning a child is a taboo. I mean, a man abandoning a child is bad enough, but in a way that is frankly sexist, a woman abandoning a child... it's just this thing."

And whether you agree or disagree that Eva is the villain Mickey paints her out to be, Lopez says you're free to question her however you see fit.

"As Eva herself tells Skye, 'You can question what I did. I've done that every day for the last 40 years.' But she's not really apologizing for it," Lopez says. "She believes the heartbreaking choice she made was the one she had to make, and she believed she was doing the right thing. She wants some kind of relationship desperately with Mickey, and it's a very open question whether Mickey can grant that to her."

Whether she likes it or not, however, Mickey eventually commits to teaming up with Wes and Eva to take down a dangerous cartel that has apparently infiltrated Edgewater, bringing with it a new synthetic opioid that's more dangerous than fentanyl.

"It's a terrific dynamic, and the three performers — as you'll see in the episodes that are upcoming — just take the ball and run with it. They lean into this almost Shakespearean setup of a very dysfunctional family thrown together on a journey. They don't want to face all of the emotions that are inevitably going to be stirred up by doing it, but to protect and save the town they love, they're going to have to. And there's a reckoning coming for the three of them."

And the only thing more explosive than their investigation will be their interactions with one another along the way.

"There are delicious ties in every direction," Lopez says. "You've got Mickey, who feels abandoned by this woman, and classic Mickey Fox puts up a firewall and compartmentalizes. She tells her sister Sharon [in Episode 2], 'She can't hurt me, she's a stranger to me,' and what we'll see is that is not the case. At the same time, you have Wes' relationship with Eva. He also feels like he was betrayed. And make no mistake, that was the great love of his life. If you go back to last season, we were planting Easter eggs early and often, like in the crossover episode with his second wife Ruby, Sharon's mother. She said she could never compete with Mickey's mother, and we didn't know Maria yet, much less that she was going to arrive in the form of Eva Santos."

OK, let's talk: What did you think of the "Sheriff Country" Season 2 premiere? Are you frustrated that Boone and Mickey have hit yet another roadblock? And did you enjoy Ben McKenzie's first appearance as Jim? Grade the episode in our poll below, then drop a comment with your full review.