A decade after Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson ushered in the movie-star-on-TV paradigm with "True Detective" Season 1, HBO's mixed-bag crime thriller has thankfully returned to its roots. In the Jan. 14 premiere of "True Detective" Season 4, subtitled "Night Country," Jodie Foster's hardened Detective Danvers confronts the crooked spiral north of the Arctic Circle.
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Even with all the Season 1 connections (we'll get into it), the new "True Detective" feels like a reimagining. Series creator Nic Pizzolatto takes a backseat to new showrunner Issa López, a Mexican filmmaker doing her first major English-language project. López directs all six episodes of the women-led season, which also stars former boxer Kali Reis and the incomparable Fiona Shaw ("Andor").
In another departure, the "Night Country" premiere embraces the supernatural. It's December 17, the last sunset of the year in Ennis, Alaska, and freaky things are happening. A Native hunter watches a herd of elk yeet themselves off a cliff, for starters. (They're coming for your crown, Tom Cruise!) Then, a group of male scientists disappears into all that ice, abandoning their enviable DVD collection, including a well-placed copy of John Carpenter's 1982 horror classic "The Thing."
Thrills and chills abound, but what does it all mean? Read on for a rundown of every detail you might have missed in the premiere, from the Annie K hints to the meaning behind that opening quote.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for "True Detective" Season 4, Episode 1.
Plot Summary: What Happened at Tsalal Station?
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During the last sunset of the year, the male scientists at the Tsalal Arctic Research Station are having a normal night in—doing laundry, making TikToks and watching "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"—until one man, Clarke, starts violently shaking. He whispers, "She's awake," and the lights go out.
At least two days later, the Tsalal supply guy arrives to find the station abandoned. Ferris Bueller is still singing "Twist and Shout" on the TV and a shadowy figure runs across the hall. The only evidence the men left behind is the severed tongue of an Iñupiat Native woman, which could belong to an anti-mining activist named Anne Kowtok ("Annie K"), who was found dead without a tongue some years ago.
We cut to Ennis Police Detective Liz Danvers (Foster) investigating the scene at Tsalal alongside two other cops: The jerky, suspicious Hank Prior (John Hawkes) and his mild-mannered son Pete (Finn Bennett, "The Nevers"), who serves as Danvers' partner-slash-punching-bag. "We are all dead" is written on the white board in the lab.
Danvers' former colleague, the formidable Detective Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), never got over Annie K's murder. She found the body and led the investigation, but Hank removed her from the case when she started pressuring higher-ups at the mine. Danvers keeps Navarro away from the Tsalal investigation, but throws her a bone when she uncovers a photo of Clarke wearing Annie K's pink parka.
In the final moments of the episode, a backwoods-type Ennis woman named Rose Aguineau (Fiona Shaw) is led by the spirit of a man named Travis toward the dead Tsalal scientists partially buried in the ice. Their mouths are agape as if they died screaming.
Who Was Annie K? Why Does She Have a Crooked Spiral Tattoo?
Michele K. Short/HBO
Anne Kowtok was a midwife and activist who made a lot of enemies protesting the adverse environmental effects of the mine, which basically powers the economy of Ennis — and has since poisoned some residents' drinking water, we learn.
Annie was brutally murdered, and Navarro found her body. She was stabbed 32 times, had her tongue cut out and sustained star-shaped wounds. As Navarro puts it to Danvers: "You could see the disgust in the way they cut her. Forensics showed that someone kicked her after they dumped her dead body ... Wouldn't have happened if she was white, though."
Danvers wasn't transferred to Ennis until after Annie's case had gone cold. Navarro asked her to reopen it at the time, but Danvers refused and urged Navarro to transfer to the troopers unit. The two have been on the outs ever since, although Navarro hinted there's more to the story.
In the most intriguing easter egg this episode, we see from morgue photos that Annie had a tattoo of a crooked spiral, which symbolized the powerful Tuttle family's pedophile ring in "True Detective" Season 1. Annie could've been a victim of something similar. Or maybe the mine is connected to the Tuttle family ring.
What's Going on With Navarro and Her Sister?
Michele K. Short/HBO
Navarro and her sister seem to have a weird connection to some spiritual realm and it's tied to their mother, who either went crazy or died — or both, most likely. Navarro's sister Jules (Aka Niviâna in her first professional acting role) thinks she saw someone in her locked apartment, and it sounds like she's spent time in mental hospitals.
For her part, Navarro had her own spine-chilling interaction with the dead while in the army (Iraq or Afghanistan, it looks like). In flashback, a soldier with half his head blown off whispers to Navarro, "Listen."
Is Danvers Leah's Mom?
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Danvers may be Leah's (Isabella LaBlanc, "Pet Sematary: Bloodlines") stepmom. It sounds like Leah's father was killed by a drunk driver and Danvers has cared for her ever since: "You don't really have to be my mom, Liz," Leah tells her. "Think my dad would've understood."
What's more, Danvers may have lost a child to a drunk driving accident. There's the polar bear plushie and the child's hand (more on that below). She also flashes back to a child's shoes while pulling over the drunk driver Cheryl.
Is Something Supernatural Happening in Ennis?
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Unlike "True Detective" Season 1, which had a natural explanation for everything, the supernatural is definitely at work in "Night Country." Even if Travis' ghost is just a figment of Rose's imagination, you can't explain away the fact that the lights and TVs are flickering at the creepiest possible moments and multiple characters hear someone whisper, "She's awake."
Danvers hears it while a child's hand rests on her shoulder. Then, she spots a polar bear plushie (the same one that appears in the opening credits) on the floor. Navarro also hears it before a one-eyed polar bear walks out into the road. "Lost" flashbacks, anyone?
That Opening Quote, Explained
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In a direct callback to Season 1, "Night Country" opens with a quote from Hildred Castaigne, the fictional protagonist of a Robert W. Chambers short story from 1895: "For we do not know what beasts the night dreams when its hours grow too long for even God to be awake."
In the story, Castaigne goes insane upon reading the fictional play "The King in Yellow," which "True Detective" fans have long cited as Pizzolatto's inspiration for all that sinister "Yellow King" stuff in Season 1. Castaigne is a poster child for the unreliable narrator, so the quote may be a hint that our point-of-view character, Danvers, isn't giving us the full picture.
New episodes of "True Detective" Season 4 premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and Max.
