Warning! Contains major spoilers for True Detective season 4.
Summary
- True Detective: Night Country’s episode 2 reveals connections to season 1’s narrative, raising excitement for the story overlaps ahead.
- Episode 2 confirms Travis as Rust’s father, connecting season 4 to season 1’s supernatural themes.
- The spirals play a significant role in the overarching murders and hint at the presence of the Yellow King cult from season 1.
True Detective: Night Country‘s episode 2 not only reveals several new details surrounding its overarching murders but also draws intriguing references to its past seasons. Written and directed by Issa López, True Detective season 4 unfolds in a fictional Alaskan town named Ennis. Despite having a completely different setting than True Detective season 1, season 4 drops several fascinating easter eggs that connect it to season 1’s narrative.
In episode 1, True Detective: Night Country only paved the way for these connections by featuring spiral motifs, subtle horror movie references, and occult symbolism. However, in episode 2, the show switches gears and presents several connective threads between its storyline and season 1’s, making it hard not to wonder if the two seasons share a deeper link than initially apparent. While only time will tell how season 1’s events will influence True Detective: Night Country, season 4’s episode 2 effectively raises the excitement and hype for all the story overlaps that lie ahead.
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11 True Detective: Night Country Confirms One Rust & Travis Cohle Theory
One episode 2 detail reveals Travis was Rust’s father
True Detective season 1 briefly mentions that Rust’s father was an Alaskan named Travis who died from leukemia. Owing to this, when True Detective introduced an eccentric Alaskan character named Travis in its opening episode, it was hard not to speculate that he could be Rust’s father. True Detective: Night Country‘s episode 2 confirms that Travis is indeed Rust’s father when Rose refers to him as Travis Cohle. Whether this season 1 reference will pave the way for a Matthew McConaughey cameo is yet to be seen, but it certainly explains why, like Rust, Travis is seemingly able to bend the boundaries between the supernatural and the material world.
10 One Detail Suggests The Researchers’ Murders Connect To True Detective Season 1
True Detective: Night Country connects its central murder mystery to season 1
In episode 1, True Detective: Night Country set the stage for its season 1 connection by featuring several spiral motifs. Although episode 1 did not confirm season 4’s narrative would tie into season 1’s, Night Country‘s episode 2 seemingly establishes that season 1’s spirals will indeed play a significant role in the overarching murders. While there is still an air of mystery surrounding the true meaning of the spirals in the True Detective universe, episode 2 reveals that the killer in season 4 drew them on the foreheads of the frozen Tsalal researchers.
9 True Detective Season 4’s Episode 2 Drops A Major Yellow King Reference
One season 1 reference foreshadows True Detective: Night Country’s supernatural explorations
Season 4’s clear references to its origins suggest its supernatural presence looms over the series’ overarching narrative.
When Rose asks Navarro if she noticed the spirals on the researchers’ foreheads, Navarro claims she has seen the spiral symbol before. Rose then explains that the spiral is likely even older than the Alaskan ice, hinting at its origins. Although she does not elaborate on what she means, it seems evident that she is referring to the Yellow King, Hastur, whom the Tuttle Cult worships. In classic horror literature, Hastur first appeared in Ambrose Bierce’s 1893 short story Haïta the Shepherd and later in Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow.
H.P. Lovecraft introduced Hastur as one of the many cosmic deities in The Whisperer in Darkness, and August Derleth turned him into a Great Old One who resides in Carcosa. True Detective season 1 avoided explaining whether Hastur was merely fabricated by the Tuttles or existed as a real entity. However, season 4’s clear references to its origins suggest its supernatural presence looms over the series’ overarching narrative.
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True Detective: Night Country incorporates several supernatural elements in its plot. However, the series’ case has a surprising real-life inspiration
8 Season 1’s Spirals Have Become Instrumental To True Detective: Night Country’s Storyline
Spirals become even more prevalent in True Detective: Night Country’s narrative
The closing arc of True Detective season 4’s episode 2 establishes that Annie K also had the spiral tattooed on her back, and, four days after her death, Clark also got it inked on his chest. While investigating the van where Annie and Clark secretly met, Navarro and Danvers find a huge spiral painted on the ceiling of the van, hinting that both Annie and Clark might have somehow been involved with season 1’s Yellow King cult and may have also been devotees of Hastur. This proves that understanding the true meaning of the spirals will ultimately lead Navarro and Danvers to the answers they seek.
7 Jodi Foster’s Danvers Repeats One Rust Cohle Quote In True Detective: Night Country
Danvers’ mental framework to solve crime echoes a Rust Cohle line
When Jodi Fosters’ Danvers and Finn Bennett’s Peter discuss what might have happened to the researchers, Danvers prompts Peter to “ask the right questions.” Later in the episode, Navarro tries to “ask the right questions” surrounding the Annie K mystery by recalling how Danvers always prompted her to. Danvers’ mental model of asking the right questions is reminiscent of what Rust Cohle did in season 1. Like Danvers, Rust asked detectives Thomas and Maynard to ask the “right f**king questions” in the closing scene of season 1’s pilot when they kept beating around the bush.
6 True Detective: Night Country Hints At a Tuttle Family Connection
Season 4’s central mystery could lead Danvers and Navarro to season 1’s Tuttles
In a brief scene from True Detective: Night Country‘s episode 2, Peter tells Danvers that he did some background check on the Tsalal research facility. He says he discovered that an NGO funds the research station and the NGO’s taxes can be traced to a shell company called NC Global Strategies. Although nothing seems suspicious about Tsalal’s connection with an NGO and a shell company, Peter also mentions that NC Global belongs Tuttle United, drawing a direct connection between the Tsalal researchers and True Detective season 1’s Tuttle family.
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True Detective: Night Country is already establishing a connection with season 1 of the hit anthology series. It’s opening quote is a major link.
5 Several True Detective: Night Country’s Episode 2 Details Cement Its Parallels With A Real Incident
True Detective season 4 adopts many elements of the real Dyatlov Pass case
In True Detective: Night Country episode 2’s opening moments, Peter and Danvers learn that the researchers removed their shoes and clothes before getting frozen in the ice. They also find that their eardrums had been ruptured, they suffered soft tissue damage, and one of them had even pulled out his eyeballs from his sockets. These horrific details in the researchers’ murders prove that their case was loosely based on the Dyatlov Pass incident, in which several Soviet hikers were found under similar mysterious conditions after they vanished during their expedition.
4 Danvers’ True Detective Season 4 Backstory Is Similar To Rust’s From Season 1
Danvers and Rust will likely have a similar rite of passage
True Detective season 1 reveals that Rust lost his daughter, which ultimately led to his divorce, taking him further into a downward spiral of self-destruction. Season 4 shows that, like Rust, Danvers also could not help but adopt a pessimistic worldview after losing her son. Owing to these similarities in their story arcs, it is possible that she, too, will ultimately realize that even though “once there was only dark,” the light is finally winning after she solves the researchers’ murder case and the conspiracy behind it.
3 The Researchers’ Purpose in True Detective: Night Country Connects It To A John Carpenter Movie
True Detective: Night Country’s episode 2 reveals new similarities with The Thing
Like the characters in The Thing, it is possible that the researchers in True Detective: Night Country also discovered an ancient organism that ultimately infected them and led to their deaths.
The first episode of True Detective: Night Country briefly featured a shot where a DVD of The Thing can be spotted in the background. In a podcast interview (via The Watch), season 4’s creator, Issa López, also confirmed that she embraced the season’s parallels with the John Carpenter movie instead of fighting it. Episode 2 seems to further nail down these similarities between the show and the movie by revealing the researchers’ purpose.
It discloses that the researchers were trying to dig up an extinct microorganism that could prevent cellular decay and help humanity cure chronic illnesses like cancer and autoimmune conditions. Like the characters in The Thing, it is possible that the researchers in True Detective: Night Country also discovered an ancient organism that ultimately infected them and led to their deaths. This would explain how they foresaw their deaths and left the message “We Are All Dead” in the Tsalal facility.
2 True Detective Season 4 Is Repeating One Major Season 1 Theme
Navarro and Danvers have a lot in common with Rust and Marty
True Detective season 1 lays less emphasis on the motivations and backstory of the central killer and focuses more on how Rust and Marty themselves are monsters. “The world needs bad men,” says Rust, acknowledging that a thin line separates him and Marty from the killers they are trailing. Owing to this, the more they learn about the central crime and the killer, the deeper they are forced to peer into the darkness that rests inside them. True Detective: Night Country is seemingly trying to achieve something similar with its leads, Navarro and Danvers. The Annie K case not only ties into their past conflict but also seems to be forcing them to confront their personal demons and repressed guilt.
1 True Detective Season 3’s Straw Dolls Reappear in Night Country’s Episode 2
True Detective: Night Country has a hidden season 3 reference
Apart from discovering Annie’s pictures, her phone, and the giant spiral inside Clark’s van, Navarro and Danvers also find a human-sized straw doll on his bed. They also discover several other small staw dolls hanging from his ceiling, which is a direct reference to True Detective season 3. Hays finds similar straw dolls around Will Purcell’s body in True Detective season 3, and Montgomery later speculates that “the straw dolls are a sign of pedophile groups — like the crooked spiral.“ This seems to be another major clue that connects True Detective: Night Country with season 1’s Tuttle cult.
True Detective season 4 drops new episodes every Sunday on HBO Max.
True Detective
In this anthology series, each season follows a different detective or set of detectives as they forced to confront some horrific truths about their town and themselves. No matter the setting and characters, each detective must unravel lies and clues to solve the chilling mysteries around them.
- Release Date
- January 12, 2014
- Cast
- Matthew McConaughey , Woody Harrelson , Colin Farrell , Rachel McAdams , Taylor Kitsch , Mahershala Ali , Carmen Ejogo , Michelle Monaghan , Michael Potts , Ray Fisher , Jodie Foster
- Seasons
- 3
- Story By
- NIC PIZZOLATTO
- Writers
- Nic Pizzolatto
- Network
- HBO Max
- Directors
- Cary Fukunaga
- Showrunner
- Nic Pizzolatto
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