“True Detective: Night Country”

Sunday marks the final episode of “True Detective: Night Country,” Issa Lopez’s triumphant revival of the HBO series originally created by Nic Pizzolatto. A six-year old murder, five-body “corpsicle,” and chilling hints of the supernatural intertwine throughout the season, all of it made exponentially more chilling and suspenseful by the long night looming over Ennis, Alaska.

So, as Police Chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) would say: Ask the question (cue Kali Reis’ Navarro rolling her eyes). Who’s the killer? Too simple. What’s the motive? Now we’re cooking. What were the men of Tsalal hiding? There’s something there…

With such a rich, engrossing, and open-ended mystery, the final hour has to wrap everything up neatly — but could also choose to languish in a few loose ends, like so many stories do. Either way, we’re asking the right questions going into Episode 6, the ones that could offer resolution for every character and their demons.

Who’s the killer?

OK, simple or not, it IS the main question. The prime suspect is Raymond Clark (Owen McDonnell), the only missing survivor of the incident at Tsalal with ties to Annie Kowtok (Nivi Pedersen), but how did he actually kill his colleagues without additional help? Did he even kill them, or somehow coerce them into harming themselves? As for Annie K. herself, we’ve watched enough crime shows to know that it’s (almost) always the boyfriend.

Will Navarro make it?

With a killer still at large, everyone is in some danger, but the season hasn’t exactly been subtle in foreshadowing certain harm for Navarro while interweaving her family’s mental health history and the spiritual parts of Ennis. She describes it to Danvers as a curse: “Something calls us and we follow. It’s calling me now. She’s calling.” Can confirm: She keeps seeing ghostly figures (and the injured Lund) creepily pointing at her! That’s gotta get in your head. And let’s not overlook that Navarro herself is on a masochistic streak, whether it’s picking arguments with Danvers and Qavvik (Joel Montgrand) or getting into a fight with the abusive man she arrested in Episode 1.

What about the tongue?

Perhaps the most disquieting detail of these two cases is Annie’s tongue, found at Tsalal after the scientists disappeared. Episode 2 confirmed that it had experienced unusual tissue damage, possibly from freezing. Was it…kept in a freezer? I can’t even ask follow up questions because that’s so disturbing on its own. Before he died, Hank Prior (John Hawkes) told Danvers that he didn’t kill Annie, just moved her body — might he have something to do with the missing tongue? I hate all of this!
“True Detective: Night Country”Courtesy of Michele K. Short / HBO

Will Peter get caught?

Admittedly, Finn Bennett’s “freshman” officer’s daddy issues may have gone a step too far in Episode 5, when Hank tries to kidnap a witness and Peter ends shoots him dead. At the very least, Peter is looking at some pretty relentless lifelong trauma — and that’s if the doesn’t go to jail. If caught, he’d be an easy scapegoat for the combined corruption of Tsalal and the mine, basically the chosen culprit for all of his father’s misdeeds.

What will happen to Anders Lund (Þorsteinn Bachmann)?

The sole survivor of the “corpsicle” experienced widespread gangrene, multiple amputations, and eyesight loss after his exposure to the cold and ice. He’s also maybe talking to dead people? I can guess how this goes.

Who is “she”?

Given the show’s setting and supernatural imagery, one explanation would be some sort of Ennis legend and connection to Inupiaq stories — but five episodes in, no character has mentioned anything of the sort. And it doesn’t explain how the eerily whispered phrase “She’s awake” popped up in Danvers’ dreams and Navarro’s visions. Whoever “she” is, it’s someone or something that shocked Clark before the power went out at Tsalal, that still terrified Lund when he awoke from his medically-induced coma. Is she a person? Multiple people? And ahead of the finale…is she coming back?