“True Detective: Night Country” boss answers our burning questions after those major season finale reveals
What really happened to the missing scientists, Annie K., and Navarro?
Warning: This article contains spoilers for the season 4 finale of True Detective: Night Country, "Part 6."
After six very dark and very cold episodes, the many mysteries involved in True Detective: Night Country have officially been (mostly) solved.
Although some precise threads are left a little to the imagination for us armchair detectives, the answers to the season's biggest questions have been revealed. Namely, it was the Tsalal scientists who murdered Annie K. when she realized the corrupt shenanigans they were involved with, which the cleaning crew later figured out when they inadvertently found the opening to the ice cave research lab where Annie was killed.
Those women then in turn took matters into their own hands to get justice for Annie, by forcing the scientists at gun point out on to the ice, where they claim they instructed the men to get naked and then simply left them there, but didn't actually kill them. "If she wanted them, she would take them. If not, their clothes were there for them,” they said of the ice. This satisfies Danvers, who later tells corporate an avalanche killed the men, neglecting to mention the women's involvement. We also learn that after the investigation, Navarro disappeared, but Danvers claims to not know anything about that.
Here, EW picks the brain of season 4 showrunner and mastermind Issa López about all of these mysteries and our remaining burning questions.
Michele K. Short/HBO
Jodie Foster in True Detective: Night CountryENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let's start with Clark, the final scientist, dying out on the ice outside of Tsalal. How did he escape? Is it fair to assume after he filmed the video, at Navarro's request, she let him go, and the ice just had its way with him?
ISSA LÓPEZ: That's exactly what happened. I mean, he's given them everything he can give them because what he told them is his absolute truth. That's all he has. And he's asking to die, for her to let him die. And so she's going to give him that. Part of her is like, f--- you, no, because she doesn't want to give this murderer anything. But another part of her thinks he deserves to die with whatever is outside, number one. And number two, she needs the video and he's willing to give it to her. So he makes the video for her. He cleans up a little, so he doesn't look like he's being tortured. He does the video from a place of honesty, and then she walks out into the ice [later] to find he's dead.
So we find out what happened to Annie, and then we find out what happened to the Tsalal men... or do we? Should we believe the story the women told?
Well, it's just a story, but I do believe that these women took these men and sent them out into the Arctic. What happened to them out there after that? We will never know. Because maybe they just panicked into delirium induced by hypothermia. But maybe they saw something out there so horrible that they gouged their own eyes out and then they were flash frozen. So the decision of that, those events, what happened out there in the night, those are yours. Both work, but I'm not going to tell you.
And what about Annie's tongue? We are never told exactly who put it there.
Is it perfectly possible that when the body was found by the community, someone kept her tongue as a gesture of reverence and respect and knowing that there was going to be an opportunity to come back? Maybe that happened, and they preserved that tongue because Danvers in episode 2 says there was some cellular damage, and it was weird. It could be because of freezing or not, we don't know. So anyways, the tongue disappears. Or it could be that the tongue is kept in a different place waiting for Annie to come back and leave it there as a sign of this is now finally when she gets to tell her story through the women.
Speaking of going out into the ice, we see both Navarro and Danvers also making their own journeys out into the ice to confront their demons, but unlike the scientists, they live to tell the tale. And they also find themselves and each other out there.
Absolutely. I think that one goes because she feels the call of whatever is out there. And this is from Navarro's perspective, so I'm going to go full magical because this is her perspective, right? One option, if you're going to go rational, is that she is losing her mind a little. And the Navarro explanation is that there is something out there calling us and we go, but what's calling her is that female principle that is waiting in the dark, in the ice. But that principle for her is not destructive. For her it's identity that she's embraced, and she receives her name, and now she's free. So she has to face the thing that she fears the most, which is, am I losing my mind? Am I cursed? Is this going to kill me? And by instead of running away, running to it, she finds herself out there.
And with Danvers, she goes out looking for Navarro because she had told her, if you want to walk out in the ice and die, do it. And she does. So Danvers goes out to say, hell no, I didn't actually mean that. And what she finds out there instead of Navarro, is that there are things calling her outside, which is her own things, her own pain. Is that what took the scientists, their own guilt? I don't know. What Danvers is carrying is the death of her child, which is killing her in life. She's a dead woman, she's been walking dead for a while, so she has to actually die in that moment. She goes into the ice and dies in there and is brought back by Navarro, who now can make her own decisions in freedom and owning her own name. So she's brought back to life, too. She goes through that to be able to then talk about what happened and cry and break down finally about her loss.
Before the season aired, I read that you considered the season a bit of a love story between these two women, not in the romantic sense, but in the sense of two people finding each other to find themselves. And I thought after seeing this episode that was a perfect way to put it.
It's absolutely true. I think that, and I did learn this from my work with the Inuit in this, I asked them, well, how do you face the long night and the darkness? And they were like, community, by standing together, because otherwise, if you're on your own, you die. You die out there if you're on your own, if you're isolated. So you have to come together. And it is a love story, these two women. It is not a romantic love story, but it's a profound love story of forgiveness of each other and forgiveness of themselves especially. And a process of "I see you" that they need to go through. They need to see each other to then see themselves.
The episode ends with Danvers saying that Navarro disappeared, but we see a vision of them together enjoying the sunlight on a porch. Was that real or was that more an imagination of some kind?
That's also a free interpretation for each person watching the show. I have mine, but that doesn't say that any other reading is wrong, because at that point, the story is no longer mine. It belongs to the audience. For me as an audience member, Navarro is alive. She went out and had her walkabout in a way in the ice, because now she can do that, and find a way back. But it is true that no one ever leaves Ennis... or anywhere.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
Related content:
True Detective's horrifying 'corpsicle' was inspired by rat kings, frozen shrimp, and mummies
True Detective season 4 boss on premiere twists and coming up with the corpsicle: 'F--- my life'
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.
