It wasn’t an unexpected turn—True Detective: Night Country went from the absolute grim depths of darkness to the new dawn of hope. Hope has made its presence known throughout the season, albeit cryptically. And now that it’s the end of the road and we can put our feet up and look back, all we’re left to ponder over is how good things can often look ghastly at the beginning. Despite having an ominous start and an increasingly creepy journey in the middle, the season finale is nothing but kind to the characters. From the brink of death, Navarro comes back with a newfound identity and purpose. Danvers, on the other hand, is given a solid chance at redeeming herself. As for Peter, the young deputy will likely break the destructive ties he has with his problematic roots.
Spoilers Ahead
Is the ice cave connected to the Tsalal Research Station?
If there’s one thing that Otis Heiss has done right in his life, it’s pointing Danvers and Navarro to the opening of the ice cave. Wasting no time, Danvers and Navarro took their chance and braved the blizzard, hoping this might be it. Remember what I was saying about hope not always emerging in a form that you’d recognize right away? Well, it’s kind of relevant to how I perceive Navarro’s bone-chilling supernatural encounters. They always start as something ominous and eventually lead her to the doors she’s looking for. A very similar thing happens here, too, where a terrified Navarro follows a spooky voice, takes a painful fall, is joined by an equally unfortunate Danvers, and finds the treasure chest of information and the man they’ve been looking for. What do you know?
Clark’s not only been here all along, but the ice cave is an extension of the Tsalal lab. No wonder; this is the same cave where Annie K. was murdered. Danvers discovers the murder weapon, and its obvious resemblance to the star-shaped wounds confirms that she was killed right here. Navarro notices scratch marks on the floor and, in a eureka moment, finds the staircase that connects to the Tsalal Station. Clark has been hiding down here the whole time, and its entry was hiding in plain sight all along, right there in the kitchen where Annie’s tongue was found. Clark gives both the cops a good old cat-and-mouse chase and almost succeeds in neutralizing them. But Navarro and Danvers haven’t come all this way to be ambushed by a frail and feeble scientist. As Clark drags an unconscious Navarro to finish the job, she manages to regain her strength and is almost about to send him where his other scientist buddies are before Danvers stops her.
Did Raymond Clark kill Annie?
Navarro may be a softie otherwise, but time and again, we’ve seen just how reckless and ruthless she can be around men who’ve harmed women. Case in point: the Wheeler murder. It’s in the finale that Danvers finally comes out and gives us the reassurance that we were not at all off in our speculation. Navarro’s very unlawful, very righteous act of putting a bullet in Wheeler’s head came from a place where a woman’s plight triggers her most violent instincts. And it’s this indomitable urge to torment awful men that makes her torture Clark with a seemingly endless loop of Annie’s dying screams. Clark’s not telling the entire truth. But he’s honest about one thing. Silver Sky and Tsalal mutually benefited from rotting the town of Ennis from within. Tsalal wasn’t helping out Silver Sky with falsified pollution reports for nothing. The extreme havoc the mines were wreaking on the permafrost actually helped the scientists acquire pristine DNA samples of certain microorganisms. Sure, they convinced themselves that they were doing it for the greater good—that they were doing it to save humanity.
But if they were truly as humanitarian as they believed, how could they go on perpetuating the unthinkable plague that took countless native lives? Annie was a curious one. And once she had figured it all out, no amount of love that she felt for Clark could’ve stopped her from doing the right thing. Of course, the Tsalal scientists weren’t about to let Annie get away with the destruction of their research. But more than that, they couldn’t let Annie run out into town and rip apart the benevolent image of the Tsalal research center. The worst thing, though—the thing that must’ve surpassed the pain of being beaten to a pulp—was the fact that it was the man she loved who sealed the deal and killed her. Clark’s denial may be utterly frustrating, but if you ask me, I don’t think he’s lying about his fear of Annie’s ghost. If he wasn’t entirely convinced that Annie’s spirit had come back to brutalize her killers, he wouldn’t have stayed in hiding for all this while. He could’ve at least sought refuge from Kate. I guess the only thing that kept him stuck in the “night country”—the perpetually frozen maze underneath Ennis—was his fear that he’d have to face Annie’s wrath up there.
What does the future hold for Navarro, Danvers, and Peter?
I guess it was my own cynicism that’d made me wonder if Peter would be able to handle the emotional fallout of the whole ordeal. But people surprise you. And the surprise is nothing but pleasant and rather endearing when it comes to Peter. Even after having to shoot his own father in the head and being tasked with the body’s disposal, Peter hasn’t let the severe emotional impact of the situation turn him even more self-destructive. Instead, he seeks reconciliation with Kayla. The fact that he isn’t puppeteered by a futile sense of emotional invincibility is proven when he chooses to look away from the sight of Rose cutting into Hank’s lungs. All things considered, I’d put my money on Peter’s shot at a better future. And I guess the promise of a better future doesn’t elude Navarro. Now that she’s found a way to hold her ground in the visions she often gets sucked in, She’s come to know that the dead are not calling her with an insidious intent. So this time, instead of being lost in the supernatural realm that’s been making her suicidal, she listens to what the voices have been trying to tell her all along. If anything, her mother’s spirit telling her her Inupiaq name, Siqiniq, which signifies the new dawn at the end of a long night, tells her what her purpose in life is. And this enlightenment, in a way, is the reason she’s able to save Danvers from drowning. Danvers’ soul too, once bound to succumb to the overwhelming hopelessness of losing her son, is now comforted at the thought that Holden is out there somewhere, watching over her. Danvers and Navarro have come a long way. And holding on to each other is only going to be a blessing for the two women who would’ve been very lost otherwise.
Who killed the Tsalal scientists?
True Detective: Night Country hasn’t been shy with its indications that Ennis is home to something inexplicable—possibly even supernatural. But these cryptic looks shared between the narrative and the mysteries it’s home to is never the driving force. If anything, the season set in a drab, almost rural town in Alaska is an advocate for fearless actions. Sure, the supernatural elements are there to either bring doom or show the way to the light, but everything that happens in Ennis, both good and bad, is all human. Danvers’ grief has only held her back. It’s been blocking her thoughts from taking the necessary routes. And now that she’s come to terms with her loss, we finally get a glimpse of the detective, whom even Connelly is intimidated by. To check the opening of the ice cave tunnel for fingerprints is something that randomly pops up in her head. And from there, the mystery practically solved itself.
The Tsalal scientists had no shortage of people who would have a bone to pick with them. Like the mines that turned the land into a place that gives its people cancer and kills babies in the womb, Tsalal has been ruthless in its exploitation of Ennis. While the protests against Silver Sky were more bold and public, the native people’s wrath against the scientists was far more covert. What aided this secret revolt against the cruel exploitation of Ennis was the Inupiaq people’s sense of loyalty. They fight together, especially when they’re attacked by forces that threaten their home. Navarro and Danvers might not have been aware of the brutal ways Tsalal had been benefitting from the wreckage of Ennis, but the native women, the ones who were in charge of cleaning the research station, weren’t blind to what was going on. It wasn’t just Annie’s murder; they were avenging when they stormed into the place and kidnapped the scientists at gunpoint—something that Clark believed was done by Annie’s spirit. They wanted to make the scientists pay for the irreparable destruction of the place they call home. In her reiteration of the events that took place on the fateful night, the Inupiaq woman is anything but remorseful or scared. She’s bold in her assertion that they’d done the right thing by sending the naked scientists walking into the blizzard. After the way they’d exposed Ennis to unimaginable dangers and killed Annie, dying in that very ice was only poetic justice. As for Navarro and Danvers, they’re not beyond bending the law when a crime serves a much greater purpose. The forensics report very conveniently closed the case anyway. And the two cops, one who’s freshly finding her roots and another who’s slowly learning selfless empathy, stand to gain nothing from punishing the women who were only defending their home.
The ending of True Detective: Night Country marks the break of the new dawn. Ennis is now free from the seemingly endless night that engulfs it every year. Although we skip the time it must’ve taken for Danvers, Navarro, and Peter to get their stories straight, Danvers’ confident claim of a clean investigation proves that they’re all on the same page. She’s not one to rat on the people she holds close. No one will look into Otis Heiss’ murder in any case. By killing Otis, Hank unknowingly makes sure that his own death goes uninvestigated. Without Tsalal’s support, I doubt that Silver Sky will have much luck keeping its business going in Ennis. So, in a way, the investigation has rid the town of all sorts of evil. But Navarro didn’t want to leave that up to chance. So her farewell gift to Ennis was a video of Clark spilling the beans about how Silver Sky has been poisoning the town. Her gift to Danvers was helping her purge her self-destructive bitterness throughout this journey. And in turn, it has also helped Danvers get closer to Leah, the almost-daughter who has never stopped believing in her.
Navarro came to Ennis when she was lost in her own mind, a mind that was crowded with questions and unresolved trauma. Now that she’s made peace with her losses and her overwhelming identity crisis has been put to rest, she’s finally gotten on with her life. Now, coming to the question that I know has been bugging you, Who left Annie’s tongue in the Tsalal station? Well, while I have to admit that it is purely speculation, I do believe the incident was of a supernatural nature. There’s no denying that something was leading Navarro closer to finding the pieces of the puzzle. Now I don’t know if it was Annie’s spirit, but it’s not impossible that there’s something protecting the people of Ennis. Annie’s tongue was the only clue that connected her death to the deaths of the Tsalal scientists, which eventually led to the whole mystery being solved. So, chances are, whatever was guiding Navarro and, on some level, Danvers too was the very same thing that had dropped that crucial clue just at the right spot. If anything, Clark’s suicide only doubles down on the possibility that something supernatural was at play here. If it was guilt, he wouldn’t have waited this long to end his life.
