We’ve reached the halfway point of True Detective: Night Country, and while some things are starting to slowly tie together, the series appears to be doubling down on the supernatural element of it all while continuing to hold key details of our central characters’ histories from us as the story slow burns its way to the end. This close to the end, however, the ratcheting up of the supernatural quotient feels less exciting as having a possible real-world explanation for the deaths of both the Tsalal scientists and Annie K and leaves me a bit worried that the series might be putting too many eggs in that basket so that a switch to a more mundane answer for the series’ mysteries won’t feel as earned.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with a story offering a supernatural explanation for the events its telling, but when that same series is also grounding itself in the dark, very real world of personal grief and unchecked personal trauma (see the pasts of both Navarro and Danvers – whose personal familial traumas have led to them being closed off and unwilling to let others in, while continuing to push away grief and a sense of guilt rather than face it), it can make it a bit harder to accept that the spirits are the ones responsible for the events unfolding (see also Showtime’s Yellowjackets, which continues to ask its audience to hedge its bets on whether or not dark spirits or traumatic mental health breakdowns are responsible for the situations in the past timeline of the series). It’s one thing when a supporting character appears to follow her dead boyfriend’s ghost to find the frozen bodies of several of the scientists in the ice. It’s another when the dying scientist in the hospital does his best Exorcist impression to warn Navarro that her estranged and very dead mother is waiting for her on the other side. One feels somewhat plausible for a woman who, let’s face it, may have imbibed a bit prior to her evening walk. The other is just plain laughable and feels out of place in the story landscape that has been established.
In addition to the leaning into the supernatural over a more realistic solution to the issue – with the caveat that we still have three episodes to solve the mystery and that the supernatural might very well turn out to simply be window dressing, a la season one of True Detective – this week we learned a bit more about the relationship between Navarro and Danvers. Namely, that the case that shattered their working relationship was not, in fact, the murder of Annie K (which led to Hank abusing his power as Captain by removing Navarro from the case, rather than Danvers making that call). It was a domestic violence case, the story of which Danvers relayed to Peter with a key fact missing: the perpetrator was very much alive – and humming “Twist and Shout” – when the pair arrived on the scene, and we don’t know yet just how he died.* It’s interesting that while we know a good amount about the traumas that shaped Navarro and Danvers into the closed off individuals they are today – with Navarro still having enough empathy left to care, deeply out of a sense of guilt, for her sister – the series is holding back the reveal of the action that led to the pair splitting apart. I’m intrigued to see just what happened at that scene that impacted both so completely.
*We’ve seen that Peter seems to be the only cop on the force who still has the ability to maintain a relatively normal life outside of work – although Danvers is working to quickly destroy any domestic happiness he has with her overbearing nature. But this week we got to see that he can also read Danvers like a book – he knows that she’s lying about what happened at that crime scene that led to Navarro being sent to the Troopers and I suspect he – and us – are going to discover the truth before too long.
So, “Part Three” felt very much like a halfway point in the story. More threads of the twisting tale were revealed, we were granted more indications that something supernatural might be guiding both the investigation (it’s always eerie when characters start hearing the same creepy musical call-back to a past horror) and its investigators by digging deeper into their own pasts to find answers that might help in the present, and we learned a bit more about the tangled web that is the Ennis Police Department, where anger, resentment, and distrust abound. There is still an awful lot of story left to resolve before the series ends in three weeks, which gives me pause. It’s incredibly hard to successfully and satisfyingly wrap up a sprawling mystery like this one, so I’m crossing my fingers that the story comes to an end in a way that works. But the jury remains out on that particular point.
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