True Detective: Night Country Fulfills One Of Season 1's Biggest Promises
This post contains spoilers for "True Detective" season 1 and episode 1 of "True Detective: Night Country."
Since it aired back in 2014, the inaugural season of "True Detective" has become well-established as one of the finest seasons of TV ever created. Nic Pizzolatto's haunting crime thriller captivated audiences upon its arrival, and ten years later, despite being gifted two further seasons, fans still can't get over that first run of episodes. Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey delivered standout performances as detectives Marty Hart and Rustin Cohle, with McConaughey writing a 450-page character analysis in preparation. But the show also drew in audiences with its enchantingly bleak tone and a mystery so layered even Harrelson and McConaughey's detectives couldn't fully solve it.
But there was one crucial element to season one's lasting appeal and fans' desire to revisit the mystery at its core: cosmic horror. Throughout season 1, the show made expert use of cosmic horror and weird fiction elements, specifically taking cues from Robert Chambers' 1895 book of short stories "The King in Yellow" to superimpose a dark mythos over Hart and Cohle's investigation. As the season went on, the detective duo uncovered evidence of a child abuse cult that worshipped a "Yellow King" and something called Carcosa — both references to elements of Chambers' short story collection.
Following the season 1 finale, however, some fans were upset that Pizzolatto chose not to go full cosmic horror, as if they were expecting Lovecraftian Elder Gods to emerge from the swamps of Louisiana and bring the supernatural undertone to the forefront. Now, season 4 of the show entitled "Night Country" has arrived and seems as if it might finally follow through on that promise — a move that could both delight and divide fans of the original season.
Nic Pizzolatto was concerned with 'supernatural thought'
Rather than using overt supernatural and paranormal elements in season one of "True Detective," Nic Pizzolatto chose to include oblique hints at some sort of unearthly force behind the goings on in Erath, Louisiana. Often the show would veer into pure horror territory, such as when Marty and Rust visit Miss Dolores, a former housekeeper for the powerful Tuttle family who, when asked if she recognizes any of the cult symbols, seems to slip into some sort of demonic trance and begins talking about Carcosa and "him who eats time."
Cohle himself often had otherworldly visions, too, hinting at some sort of paranormal netherworld beyond the veil of human perception. There's plenty of occult symbolism throughout, too — especially the now infamous spiral symbol first found on the body of murder victim Dora Lange, and which appears throughout the "Night Country" trailer. But there's never any overt confirmation that any of this stuff is actually evidence of the supernatural. As Nic Pizzolatto told Uproxx:
"The show was never concerned with the supernatural, but it was concerned with supernatural thought, and it was concerned with supernatural thinking to the degree that it was concerned with storytelling."
But that wasn't quite cutting it for a lot of fans, who felt the season, and especially its finale, were somewhat of a letdown after the episodes seemingly primed us all for some big supernatural revelation. Now, after ten years, those who felt slighted by Pizzolatto's grounded finale might finally be getting what they craved.
Issa Lopez goes full cosmic horror?
"True Detective: Night Country" sees new showrunner Issa Lopez take over from Nic Pizzolatto, who's busy working on his Michael Fassbender western. Lopez, whose magical realist/crime horror film "Tigers Are Not Afraid" caused a stir when it debuted at 2017's Fantastic Fest, wrote and directed "Night Country," shifting the focus to the fictional Ennis, Alaska, where Jodie Foster's Police Chief Liz Danvers is tasked with investigating the disappearance of an Arctic research team.
After seasons 2 and 3 of the series abandoned the oblique supernatural references in favor of more grounded narratives, Lopez brings her own horror sensibility to "Night Country," restoring much of what fans loved about the original season. Speaking to "The Movies That Made Me" podcast, Lopez recalled getting a call from HBO and being asked "what she would do with 'True Detective'." The writer/director continued, "I had many ideas. The first one is I would bring back that element of the supernatural that I really loved in that first season and I missed in the other two." But not only has Lopez brought back the supernatural element, it's more prevalent than ever in episode 1 of the season, suggesting we might be getting a truly paranormal version of "True Detective."
The horror of True Detective: Night Country
From the outset, "Night Country" — which might just be the best season since the first — establishes itself as full-on horror fest, first by signaling that we're about to see the return of cosmic horror to the "True Detective" universe. The show opens with a quote: "For we do not know what beasts the night dreams when its hours grow too long for even God to be awake." Ominous enough by itself. But the quote is attributed to Hildred Castaigne, the central character in "The Repairer of Reputations," one of the short stories in Robert Chambers' "The King in Yellow." From the off, then, there's a sense we're heading back into similar cosmic horror territory to the first season, but Lopez immediately ramps things up from there.
After an opening scene that sees elk jump off a cliff having seemingly been spooked by some primeval energy shift, we jump to the Tsalal research station. A quick look into that name, Tsalal, reveals that not only is it a Hebrew phrase meaning "to go dark," it has plenty of cosmic horror history attached to it, having been used as the name of an island in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket." That story was continued in Jules Verne's "An Antarctic Mystery," but the name itself forms the title of "The Tsalal," a novella by Thomas Ligotti, whom Nic Pizzolatto frequently cited as a big influence on season 1.
If there was any doubt about "Night Country" bringing the horror at this point, the next scene does away with it. In a sequence that feels like something straight out of "The Thing," one Tsalal worker starts shaking violently before delivering the ominous line, "She's awake."
Episode one is basically a horror movie
The first episode of "Night Country" goes on to deliver exactly what you'd expect from a "True Detective" installment, with plenty of gruesome murder victims and a one-eyed polar bear that may or may not have been a hallucination in the mind of Kali Reis' State Trooper Evangeline Navarro (remind you of another hard-headed cop prone to hallucinations?). Navarro isn't the only one who seems to hallucinate, either, as Rose Aguineau (Fiona Shaw) is later seen being led out onto the tundra by an ethereal figure that almost certainly isn't real. That eerie occurrence leads to what might be the most horrifying moment in the entire episode, when Rose happens upon the research workers' bodies sunken into the ice, suspended in mid-scream.
This abominable tableau is one of the most striking and upsetting images to appear in all of "True Detective" history. It recalls the tragic and terrifying flesh monster from "The Witcher" season 3, which was similarly made up of human bodies. Though Rose's icy discovery isn't exactly a "monster" per se, it certainly elicits the same kind of fear and feels very much like one gruesome being made up of frozen bodies. But if that wasn't enough for you, the episode hints that we will, in fact, be encountering some sort of actual monster as the mystery unfolds.
The monster at the end of the story
I think it's safe to say at this point that the horror element from season 1 is most definitely back, and there's a specific link to the cosmic horror influences that propelled it. But there's a feeling here that Issa Lopez is willing to push things further — that there may actually be a supernatural force at play. We'll obviously have to wait and see what Jodie Foster's Danvers uncovers as she spirals into the icy heart of darkness, but it certainly feels like we're headed in a more overtly supernatural direction, and that's exciting considering Lopez's talent for that sort of thing. That said, in my opinion, Nic Pizzolatto struck the perfect balance between gritty realism and suggested supernatural forces, so tipping the balance may not work in the show's favor. We'll have to judge this one on its own merits as it continues.
A good example of season one setting up something paranormal-sounding without following through on it is the "spaghetti monster." In the season, a girl claims she was chased by a "Green-Eared Spaghetti Monster." Rust and Cohle are then given a sketch of the so-called monster who is ultimately revealed to be Errol Childress, a house painter with facial scarring who got paint on his ears the day he chased the girl.
"Night Country" similarly provides us with a disquieting sketch when Officer Peter Prior (Finn Bennett)'s infant son, Darwin shows his dad a drawing of a monstrous figure with blood dripping from its fists. I'm sure the resolutely rational Danvers will discover some grounded explanation, but maybe those who felt let down by season 1's lack of a supernatural revelation will finally — to use Rust Cohle's words — get a real "monster at the end of the story."