Over the course of the last six seasons on The Shield we have seen Dectective Shane Vendrell turn from a loudmouth Detective with a reckless streak to a criminal. In the final season of The Sheild the Strike team is still feeling the effects of the disastrous robbery of the Armenian Mob and the murder of Detective Curtis Lemanski by Shane Vendrell. We recently caught up with Walton Goggins to get his take on his character. 

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CraveOnline:  With your character (Shane Vendrell) going from being a major player on the show to being the focus of the whole second half of the season, how has it been for you to go from being part of this team player to just really the whole season, everything after episode eight looks like it’s really about you?  How has that been for you?

Walton Goggins: That’s a very nice thing to say.  I do believe that this is a true ensemble, for sure, and we have a deep bench.  You could throw the ball to any one of these players.  God knows, to be involved with the show is enough, and then to be thrown that ball in the fourth quarter is a big deal in the second half, man. 

I think what you guys are going to see, and there are many threads in this story, but the thread of this friendship between Vic Mackey and Shane Vendrell and the disintegration of that friendship and what it has done to these two men that were inexorably tied to the original sin of the this show; and that has been there from the beginning.  I think that’s one thing that you’re going to get to see from episode nine going forward.  To be in the center of that storm, what greater honor could a person have?  Honestly, I just believe in this show so much, and I’m very thankful and humbled by this opportunity—full of gratitude, honestly.

CraveOnline: Shane Vendrell has had an arc that has really run from the beginning to the end of the show.  What was it like to play a full story of one character?

Walton Goggins: You’re right.  It’s a very good point.  I never knew it, because we never knew what was going to happen.  I knew by being with Vic Mackey, by Shane being with Vic Mackey, and killing Terry in episode one, that the ramifications of that violent act would reverberate, hopefully throughout the whole show, unless I got killed, man.  I never knew from episode to episode if I was going to take a bullet. 

Honestly, there was one episode in particular where I did take a bullet, and I just went, “Oh, my God.”  Then I read the next page, but I had my bulletproof vest on.  “Thank you, God.  Thank you, God.”  To answer your question, I never knew what was going to happen, and it was only during the middle of last season when Shane had the opportunity to tell Maura what he did, and then the subsequent conservation that he had with Vic, that this whole journey really started making sense for me from the beginning.  I was able to kind of calibrate it going forward based on five years of prior history.  I think that the ending of this show and my participation in that is so befitting of this seven-year journey that I have been on as Shane.  I think that it will be an exclamation point that will be satisfying for everybody.

The Shield returns for its seventh and final season on Tuesday, September 2nd.