Let's Talk About Peter Prior, The Overlooked MVP Of True Detective: Night Country
This post contains spoilers for "True Detective: Night Country."
Detectives Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) are the focal points of "True Detective: Night Country" for good reason. To witness a clash between two equally strong personalities is nothing short of riveting, especially when Liz and Naravarro make a solid team, despite their innate differences. The two women have been dealing with their inner demons in markedly different ways so far — while Danvers suppresses her trauma with impulsive, headstrong actions, Navarro suffers in silence and channels her rage into solving the Tsalal/Annie K. case. However, there is a third individual in Ennis who is integral to the investigation and has seldom gotten the credit: Peter Prior (Finn Bennett), and his single-minded dedication to the case needs to be talked about if we are to discuss the complicated web of conspiracies gripping the town.
Peter's case is a tad complicated, as he is not solely fueled by a need to be an upstanding cop. His father, Hank Prior (John Hawkes) is the definition of a corrupt officer, who is eventually revealed to have handled the corpse of Annie K. before it was found by the police and hidden key evidence to shield the real perpetrators. Apart from being inefficient and corrupt, Hank is also not a model father and this semi-absentee parent role is inadvertently filled by Danvers, who pushes Peter around to do her bidding as she pleases. A combination of extreme people-pleasing and the genuine urge to do good propels Peter to become a competent detective, where he emerges as a stark antithesis to his father's problematic legacy, which he shoots down quite literally in the penultimate episode of the show.
Connecting the dots
The world of Ennis is an unforgiving one, where almost every individual has a reason to desperately guard their real selves, including Danvers and Navarro, who have a lot of unprocessed trauma to heal from. While Peter also finds himself in a pretty uncomfortable situation — where he is asked to choose between his job and his family while being pulled in a hundred different directions — he is one of the most honest, level-headed people in the town. Although his detective skills are not immediately apparent (given how Danvers dominates every scene with him, being his senior officer), it is clear that Peter's meticulous behind-the-scenes legwork is why the detectives are able to connect the dots at all.
When Danvers first arrives at the Tsalal research base, Peter immediately gets to work and smartly establishes connections between Tsalal and Silver Sky Mine. In episode 2, Peter informs Danvers that Tuttle United is financing the base covertly, and his investigation into this matter down the line explains why Silver Sky might have a vested interest in covering up the researcher case, along with the Annie K. murder. Moreover, as Hank's reputation as an officer isn't the best, Peter takes a massive personal risk by retrieving the Annie K. case files from his father's home and handing them to Danvers. Although Hank interprets it as an act of betrayal, his direct involvement with the case proves that Peter did the right thing by doing so.
Moreover, Peter is the one who connects Annie K./Raymond Clark with Oliver Tagaq, while also finding out the seminal link between Otis Heiss and the ice caves. Heiss ends up being the catalyst for everything that goes down in episode 5, and Danvers could have never cornered him without Prior's competent detective skills.
Pulled in every direction
Given how intense "Night Country" gets in every episode, it is easy to overlook Peter's complicated stance completely, as his struggles mostly manifest in the form of familial responsibilities that clash with Danvers' orders. Peter's wife Kayla (Anna Lambe) is rightfully miffed with him after he repeatedly chooses duty over family, especially after Danvers is disrespectful towards her mother while expecting Kayla to look after Leah (Isabelle Star LeBlanc) in her absence. As Kayla is already overwhelmed with her studies and the responsibility of looking after her child, Darwin, her insistence that Peter be more present at home as both a husband and father is not unjustified.
However, if we are to place ourselves in Peter's shoes, it is evident that the reason why he goes to such lengths for Danvers is because he wants to gain her approval, both as a pseudo-parental figure and a senior police officer. Bennett spoke to LA Times about his character's tendency to people-please to the extreme, and why the dark nature of the Tsalal case intensifies his tendency to push himself harder at work at the cost of his family:
"You would be driven as a young cop looking to prove yourself and having a purpose in life other than cleaning caribou off the road. I think that's why he's prepared to go the extra mile for Danvers. But it's a really good question why he doesn't go the extra mile for his wife or his father."
Perhaps, the answer lies in the fact that Peter is also flawed in his own ways, and the events in Ennis push him to breaking point, where he feels compelled to kill his father for the latter's unforgivable wrongdoings.
Closing the door to escape the loop
Once Danvers confronts Hank after he shoots Heiss, Peter enters the scene, baffled and shocked by the truth. The foundation of trust had already been shaken when Peter learned earlier that his father was responsible for exposing the truth about the William Wheeler case, which landed Danvers and Navarro in trouble. However, Hank's unflinching willingness to shoot Danvers to prevent her from solving the Annie K. case proves unbearable for Peter — in a split-second reflex, he headshots Hank. Although an instinctual decision, the ramifications are dire, as he has to not only bury two bodies now but shoulder the guilt of committing such an irreversible act.
To say that Hank had it coming is an understatement, but it is undeniably tragic that Peter had to pull the trigger, where he had to choose between rationality and his more emotional impulses. It was the rational choice to shoot someone who aided a corrupt multinational to cover their murderous tracks and was about to kill another unarmed officer, but Peter's relationship with Hank, no matter how complicated, is steeped in intense emotions. Forced to choose between two parental figures, Peter sides with the cold, hard truth, and decides to bury this chapter deep within the ice for good. As Rose Angineau (Fiona Shaw) states, he needs to close the door to finish what he started, lest the past comes back to haunt him.
Although Peter Prior is still one of the few good-hearted, upstanding cops in Ennis, his hands are now sullied by something that can never be washed off, even if he manages to make peace with it. Peter is doomed to pay for the sins of his father, along with that of his own. Can this cyclical spiral of trauma ever be broken?