One Line in True Detective Season 4 Just Revealed the Show's Unique Twist
True Detective may finally go full supernatural.
True Detective has always tap-danced on the line between reality and fantasy. From the first season’s theories that a Lovecraftian monster was behind Dora Lang’s demise to Season 4’s one-eyed polar bear motif, the anthology series has always flirted with the supernatural while staying rooted in reality.
However, one line in Season 4 Episode 2 may change everything — and prove just what made the crew of Tsalal Station react the way they did.
In Episode 2 of True Detective: Night Country, Evangeline Navarro sits down with Rose Aguineau and discusses her seeing the dead, beginning with Travis Cohle (that’s Rust’s dad, for all the Season 1 Easter egg hunters).
Fiona Shaw gets cryptic about Ennis in True Detective Season 4 Episode 2.
“I think the world... is getting old,” she says. “And Ennis is where the fabric of all things is coming apart at the seams.”
The action then cuts back to Elizabeth Danvers, who learns how delicate the ice coring practice really is, and how the team were looking for microorganisms. When we cut back to Evangeline, she’s telling Rose about her sister’s mental health issues and how she claims she sees their dead mother. “Don't confuse the spirit world with mental health issues,” Rose replies.
This conversation, intercut with the scene of Danvers discussing the mining for ice cores, may hold the entire secret of the series. May fans believe some sort of micro-organism was unearthed at Tsalal Station, causing the crew to go mad — especially since Raymond Clark, the still-missing crew member, was an expert in fungi.
The researchers at Tsalal Station may have fallen victim to a supernatural threat as well as a microscopic one.
However, the emphasis on the spirit world, hallucinations, and the erasure of Native culture (like how Danvers is angry to see her stepdaughter with a temporary Inupiaq chin tattoo) all suggest that the supernatural will play into the future in a big way.
Perhaps Tsalal Station did unearth something, but instead of a microorganism that drove the crew mad, it was something more otherworldly that got everyone in touch with the spirit world. If Ennis is really the place where everything is coming apart at the seams, maybe Tsalal Station was the lynchpin needed to unravel it all the way.
It would be a huge twist for True Detective, which has managed to avoid the supernatural so far, but this is True Detective: Night Country. We know the spiral that keeps reappearing has a connection to The Yellow King, so a further connection to the Inupiaq culture and the spirit world isn’t that much of a stretch. With only four episodes left, we should find out soon.
