We Need To Talk About The Mysterious Laundry Lady In True Detective: Night Country Episode 5
Spoilers follow.
Well, we're five episodes into "True Detective: Night Country" and the mystery just keeps getting more... mysterious. What caused a group of research scientists to perish in apparent anguish on the Alaskan tundra? How is that linked to the murder of Annie Kowtok, an Indigenous woman whose body was found dumped in the small town of Ennis some years before the discovery of the scientist's bodies? And how does the spiral from season 1 fit into all of this?
At this point, there's all sorts of speculation among fans, including talk of pollution causing the inhabitants of Ennis, Alaska to lose their minds, and even a potential Lovecraftian creature that would finally fulfill the cosmic horror promises of season 1. Considering new showrunner Issa López's penchant for weaving the paranormal with gritty realism, as evidenced in her 2017 feature "Tigers Are Not Afraid," it wouldn't be completely out of the question to see "Night Country" go full supernatural by the end of its six-episode run.
But that's just one of many theories regarding exactly what's going on in "Night Country," some of which are a lot more grounded in reality than talk of eldritch beasts rising from the ice. For example, as /Film's Valerie Ettenhoffer writes, "Someone could have killed Annie for being an outspoken activist, and someone could have killed the scientists as a result of addiction, mental illness, or rage, because they saw something they shouldn't have, or as punishment for some misdeeds that haven't come to light yet." As things progress, one character keeps cropping up who would fit this particular theory nicely, and episode five of "Night Country" just added yet more weight to the idea this mysterious character could have something to do with the scientists' deaths.
Blair's laundromat appearance in Night Country episode 5
A shocking reveal In episode four of "Night Country" confirmed that the "Night Country" in question is in fact not a synonym for Ennis itself, but as Otis Heiss (Klaus Tange) seems to suggest, an actual subterranean area deliberately hidden from the town's inhabitants. In episode five, we see police chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and State Trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) try to find their way into the underground caves where they believe Annie K shot her final phone video before she was killed. These caves are almost certainly what Heiss was referring to, especially since we've now heard a friend of Eddie Qavvik (Joel D. Montgrand) seemingly confirm as much.
In the fifth installment, Qavvik meets Navarro at the laundromat owned by Kayla Malee (Anna Lambe)'s grandmother, and brings a friend who claims that the spiral symbol represents the caves beneath the tundra and that he was warned by his grandmother to stay off the ice when he saw it. That in and of itself is a fairly big revelation considering the spiral has proven to be much more than an Easter egg this season and appears to be getting a whole backstory with "Night Country." But there's more to this scene. As the man is speaking, someone enters the laundromat and passes the group. This character is Blair Hartman.
Played by Kathryn Wilder, Blair was first seen in episode one and has cropped up a couple of times since. She's also become the focus of several online sleuths who are convinced she's the key to the mystery being unraveled by Navarro and Danvers. Now, with her appearance in episode five, that theory becomes increasingly intriguing.
Blair's previous True Detective: Night Country appearances
Blair showing up just as Evangeline Navarro is learning about the spiral — which isn't the only season 1 symbolism in "Night Country" — is significant considering her earlier appearances. In episode one, Navarro is called to the Blue King crab processing plant to deal with an assault. It turns out that Blair was being abused by her boyfriend, Ace (Aron Már Ólafsson), while on the job, only for Blair's coworker, Bee (Diane E. Benson), to knock out the "a**hole" with a metal bucket. At first, this scene reads as a way for Issa López to world-build and introduce domestic violence as one of many issues plaguing Ennis. But if you pay attention, as many Redditors have, you'll notice some intriguing details.
A brief closeup shows Blair her wiping her face with her right hand, revealing she's missing half her ring finger and pinky. In episode two, Peter Prior (Finn Bennett) says forensic teams found a handprint on one of the shoes discarded by the scientists before they died. He shows Danvers an image of the print, which appears to be missing two fingers. The way the print is captured makes it look as though the two fingers that are supposedly missing could just be a lot fainter than the rest of the digits, leaving some room for doubt. In that sense, it's far from a smoking gun, but suspicious nonetheless.
What's more, in episode five, Blair doesn't say a word to Navarro when she arrives at the laundromat. Why? Navarro was the cop who chose to book her abusive ex rather than charge the ladies for defending themselves. Wouldn't Blair have something to say? A thank you, perhaps? Well maybe, unless she's hiding something that she doesn't want Navarro knowing ...
Blair doesn't seem to like spirals very much
Blair's hand reveal isn't the only time we encounter the theme of missing fingers. In the same episode, Peter Prior finds his son, Darwin's, drawing of a monstrous blue female figure with severed fingers. According to Prior's wife, Kayla, the drawing depicts a "local legend," which Issa López has confirmed to be Sedna — a sea spirit or goddess who, according to the tale, was thrown into the sea by her own father. In some tellings, he also cut off his daughter's fingers at the joints, after she tried to climb back into the boat.
This, alongside the numerous instances of characters hearing or saying the phrase, "She's awake" throughout "Night Country," hints at some sort of similarly god-like female entity potentially responsible for the ongoing troubles in Ennis. Or perhaps, as the more grounded theories posit, it's a hint that the person responsible for the Tsalal scientists' horrific "corpsicle" deaths is a real-world manifestation of a Sedna-like spirit, wreaking female vengeance upon the isolated land plagued by domestic violence and innumerable social issues. Which, as it happens, would tie in quite nicely with the idea that Blair has something to do with it all.
This idea is bolstered in episode two, when Liz Danvers revisits the Blue King crab processing plant to question Bee — the lady who hit Blair's ex-boyfriend with a bucket. Danvers shows the former Tsalal cleaner the spiral symbol found on the forehead of one of the deceased scientists, but Bee denies any knowledge of it. She then asks Blair if she recognizes the symbol. Blair says "no" but looks visibly shaken and abruptly leaves. Which makes her appearance in episode five, just as the spiral symbol is being explained, seem more than a coincidence.
Blair, the blue king?
If you're still not convinced, there's one more element to consider. Back in season one, Matthew McConaughey's Rustin Cohle and Woody Harrelson's Marty Hart are on the case of a serial killer associated with the image of a "Yellow King" — something writer Nic Pizzolatto took from Robert Chambers' 1895 short story collection "The King in Yellow." As fans of season one will remember, when we first encountered the killer, Errol Childress (Glenn Fleshler), he appears as a seemingly harmless groundskeeper, mowing the lawn of a school. When Rust meets Childress he walks past a sign that reads "School Closed Until Further Notice, God S Working." As Redditors and several articles have pointed out, the way the camera moves past the sign causes the fence post to separate the words "notice" and "king." This may or may not have been intentional, but more importantly, the sign is accompanied by an image of Jesus with a yellow halo — a king in yellow, if you will. All of which seemingly foreshadowed the reveal that Childress was the serial killer, or yellow king, the detectives were looking for.
Now, in "Night Country," which is basically a stealth sequel to season one, yet another Redditor pointed out that when Blair is first introduced she can be seen next to a sign bearing the factory's name. But with Navarro standing in front of the sign, it simply reads "King." Is Blair this season's yellow king? Considering all the other evidence, it's looking increasingly likely.
What does any of this mean? Well, as of episode five, we're none the wiser as to what the heck is going on in Ennis. But the more we see Blair pop up, the more the theory that she has some involvement in the scientists' demise seems plausible.