HBO’s True Detective
Night Country Pt. 1
Directed & Written by Issa López

* For a recap & review of previous seasons, click here.
* For a recap & review of Part 2, click here.
“… For we do not know what beasts the night dreams when its hours grow too long for even God to be awake.” This quote from Hildred Castaigne opens the episode. It comes from the short story “The Repairer of Reputations” by Robert W. Chambers which was in the collection The King in Yellow (1895). Immediately, this season connects back to Season 1, if only loosely.
An Indigenous hunter is looking for a shot when a herd of deer start to go mad, running off a cliff together. Elsewhere at an arctic research station, people are going about their work as usual. Then one man, Raymond Clark, starts to shake and suddenly says: “She‘s awake.” Another man soon turns up, but Clark and the other guy are gone. There is something left behind, though: a severed tongue.

A trooper, Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), reports to an incident at a seafood processing plant where an abusive man with a broken nose tries to get at his wife again, so Evangeline has to take him down/into custody. Naturally the men act like a bunch of dummies, as if the abusive husband isn’t clearly out of control. Thankfully Evangeline has no issues handling herself. That’s also when she gets a call from somebody.
Captain Hank Prior (John Hawkes) and Chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) are reporting on the “third day of darkness” to the strange scene over at the research station. Danvers is already fed up with the music constantly playing through the speakers, so she puts an end to that first: “Not a Beatles fan, okay?” They get to business and Officer Peter Prior (Finn Bennett) explains the place was found empty. Danvers asks Peter a few questions, including how the place is funded. She starts looking around a little closer with Peter’s help. The station itself is 18 years old. They research “arctic geology, biology, and the impacts of climate change.” The staff is all male. Danvers compares the men living there to monks, as if it’s a monastery. She continues looking around only to find WE ARE ALL DEAD written on a white board in marker. There are cellphones left behind, but otherwise there isn’t a lot of ‘evidence’ as to what happened here. Captain Prior wonders if maybe it’s a bunch of “dorks” out on an “geek expedition.” But Danvers thinks the men disappeared, at the least, 48 hours prior. And then we have the tongue; most certainly human. Danvers is sure it’s a Native woman’s tongue, too, judging by marks on it she recognises.Rose Aguineau (Fiona Shaw) is cleaning a kill when someone named Travis (Erling Eliasson) turns up. Looks like Travis isn’t wearing any shoes. He does’t say anything. Hmm. Is Travis really there? A vision? A ghost? At the police station, Chief Danvers finds Trooper Navarro waiting. Danvers is a little sassy with the whiteness, which Evangeline calls her on: “My spirit animal eats old fuckin‘ white ladies like you for breakfast, Danvers.” The trooper’s not too happy. We also understand that Navarro’s not typically a trooper, but she’s been kicked down for some reason. Danvers has other things going on, like her daughter Leah (Isabelle LaBlanc), who’s having issues because of a spicy video. Plus, on the way home after picking up her daughter, Chief Danvers witnesses a drunk driver named Stacy smash into a light pole. A rough night.

Navarro visits Ryan Kowtok (Phillip Blanchett) because she believes the things happening now are related to the death of Ryan’s sister Annie, who was protesting at the mine. The protesting drove Ryan and Annie apart. Later, Evangeline also goes to see Julia (Aka Niviâna), her sister. Seems that Julia’s not doing well. She says she shouldn’t have moved here. But Evangeline is happy to have her there. Julia promises she’ll be okay, though obviously she’s hurting.
At home, Peter notices his and Kayla’s (Anna Lambe) son is drawing creepy stuff. But Kayla assures it’s only stuff from their Indigenous culture via grandma’s stories. She and Peter fool around for a moment until he cuts things off quickly to answer a call from Chief Danvers. Peter proceeds to go to his father’s place, where he knows his dad has the Annie Kowtok file, and he slips a box out barely without getting caught.

Peter brings the Kowtok file to Danvers, who explains that Navarro was the one on the scene to find Annie’s stabbed corpse. There was no murder weapon found. Annie’s tongue was missing. It’s no wonder Navarro feels that the cases are connected. Danvers says that Navarro has “this thing about women who get hurt” and is obsessed with the Kowtowk murder. Apparently Navarro pushed too hard up against someone named Kate McKitterick (Dervla Kirwan), and she got in a fight with some mine workers, so Cpt. Prior took her off the case. Danvers says that “Ennis killed Annie, this place.”
That evening, Navarro goes to see Eddie Qavvik (Joel D. Montgrand) for a fuck.
Everyone is haunted by something in Ennis.
Danvers’s life is full of shadows. We see that Liz is not the biological mother of Leah, and it sounds like drunk driving is the reason that the two are still together as a family now. Also, in the night, Liz feels a ghostly presence behind her, a child’s voice calling out. Is it possible that Liz lost a child and a husband? Either way, HAUNTED is the word. Meanwhile, Navarro nearly runs into a polar bear with one scarred eye hole in its face. The bear turns away and walks down the road, leaving Navarro stunned.

Nice to see more spirals in True Detective, as Danvers stands in the middle of a spiralled series of photographs and files from Annie’s case. Out in the midst of the frozen plains, Rose keeps following Travis, who’s quiet obviously a ghost. He does a strange dance then points out into the darkness, as Rose walks slowly in the same direction. Strange stuff happening everywhere in Ennis.
At the research station, Danvers finds the lights flickering and also runs into Navarro. They go have a look at Raymond Clark’s room; the only one with a room to himself. They further talk about Annie’s murder. Navarro says she could “see the disgust in the way they cut her.” Annie was kicked after her dead body was dumped, too. Her body was mangled. Danvers doesn’t think skin colour had anything to do with it, but she doesn’t understand things the way that someone like Navarro does. Evangeline feels a sense of responsibility, as both a woman and a woman of colour, to Annie. Then the lights start to flicker, as Liz gets a call from Peter about Rose finding something out on the ice.

What did Rose find out there, exactly?
Navarro and Danvers are taken out to the spot where Rose located the missing men, whose frozen heads poke out of the snowy ground, as if they’re all frozen in a single, large mass.