True Detective
Night Country Pt. 4
Directed by Issa López
Written by Issa López, Namsi Khan, & Chris Mundy

* For a recap & review of Pt. 3, click here.
* For a recap & review of Pt. 5, click here.
Danvers wakes up in the night and watches the footage of Annie. She goes back over it, trying to find anything that might be a lead. Mostly it’s just abstract nothing. But Danvers can’t get those sounds of Annie’s screams out of her head. It’s December 24th, the seventh day of night in Ennis. Chief Danvers gets word from Pete that things are being packed up early to go to Anchorage. Captain Connelly’s there, too. But Danvers has other issues to take care of, too. She runs into Julia on the road, who’s stripping off her clothes and having a mental health crisis of some kind. Liz does what she can to comfort Julia and tells Pete to contact Navarro.

Things are okay for the time being. Navarro has to figure out what to do with her sister. She also wants to talk to Danvers about the video of Annie. In spite of their history, Navarro’s thankful for what Liz did for Julia. Later, she takes Julia to a mental health facility. Rough Christmas. Yet both Evangeline and Julia know it’s necessary. Julia cries, apologising, but big sister only says: “You‘re perfect.”
Chief Danvers isn’t thrilled to see Cpt. Connelly at the station. She questions why he’s here for “a routine body transport.” Connelly talks about the shooting, the stuff at the mine, and everything else, acting like he’s only around to help. Danvers thinks it’s more about controlling her. She then tells Connelly that the men “died before they froze.” He’s not so keen on listening, though. He’s even seen the Annie video. Was that smart on Liz’s part? Not so sure.
A man named Otis Heiss was admitted to the hospital in 1998 with “burns on both corneas, ruptured eardrums, self–inflicted bites.” He’s off the grid for the past 8 years. He’s also got a big record, from criminal to mental health. Otis became an addict after his accident. Danvers wants to find Heiss, which requires more police manpower. Everybody’s already out searching for Clark, so now they’ve got two targets. Tough stuff for Christmas Eve, especially for a guy like Pete with a family at home.
Navarro says there are no “ice caves” near where Annie’s body was discovered. So where was she in the video? Danvers believes this means the body was dumped in town to “send a message,” so the brutal murder happened elsewhere. Neither Navarro nor Danvers are big on Christmas, so they decide to keep up the investigation. While they’re working, Cpt. Prior waits at the airport for his fiancée, but the woman never arrives, leaving Hank beyond disappointed.

On the case together, Liz and Evangeline get closer somewhat. They bond over their experiences with prayer. Young Danvers’s mother had died and her father urged her to pray: “I prayed so hard day and night that my knees turned black. Couldn‘t even walk at the funeral.” A rare moment we’ve seen during which Danvers and Navarro have a nice conversation. Soon the two women arrive at the Bryce household, where Liz makes Evangeline go to the door because, y’know, things are awkward. “Is there anyone in this town you haven‘t fucked?” Navarro asks Danvers. But it’s essential to go to somebody like Adam, who’s able to give them an idea about the nearby “ice cave system.” The issue is Adam says the place is incredibly dangerous. So on top of maps, they’d need an expert to guide them since it’s a precarious location. Danvers and Navarro make clear they have to go there. Adam says if they can make contact with the guy who mapped the cave system that’d work. And who is that guy? Otis Heiss.

Poor Julia. She’s seeing her dead mother. The rough ahead is going to be bumpy.
At the police station, Cpt. Prior gets a drink to take the edge of heartbreak off while his son’s still there plugging away at work. Hank plays off his bride-to-be not showing up, but Pete wonders if his father sent the woman any money. It’s a good probability that Hank has been scammed. Pete can tell just how deeply Hank is affected because of how much his dad’s playing it cool. At least it’ll be a family Christmas, I guess.
That night, Rose and Navarro get together at the former’s place, where Christmas is delightfully in swing. Navarro asks about Rose’s past. The older woman says she was a “very serious professor” with “very serious ideas” and then one day she’d simply had enough with it all. She prefers the quiet of Alaska, “except for all the fuckin‘ dead.”
At the Silver Sky Mining Company’s office, there’s new graffiti: MURDERERS followed by a cartoon skull. Kate McKitterick calls Chief Danvers, asking her to come personally, even though they do not like each other one bit. That doesn’t mean they get along. Kate continually brings up her and Liz’s past, no matter the situation. Though you probably can’t blame her. Kate wants to press charges against the culprit of the graffiti: Liz’s daughter Leah. The Chief doesn’t want her daughter’s life to get messed up with charges over some spray paint. Kate lets it go for now since it’s the holidays.

Navarro receives a call from Julia, but she doesn’t realise that her sister is sitting at the edge of the frozen water, where she strips down naked and begins to walk into the darkness beyond. Julia stacks up her clothes, not unlike the clothes of the researchers, then she walks away as “Everybody Dies” by Billie Eilish plays. Simultaneously, Leah packs up and leaves to go to the Priors’ place. Liz dumps out the turkey she planned on making for the holidays. Instead she grabs a bottle of liquor from the freezer and starts watching the video of Annie again. She notices something near the end before the video cuts out. She looks back at the video of Clark and notices something there, as well. She calls Navarro and says that somebody cut the power at the research station, which is similar to Annie’s video. But why is there power in an ice cave? Danvers has her ideas and Navarro says it’s “not crazy.” Danvers wants to go check things out, but Navarro doesn’t want her out driving drunk, neither does she want Peter to be bothered on Christmas Eve, however, the Chief is dead set. She calls Pete to ask him to go with Navarro as backup, and the young man dutifully agrees to go.

Pete and Navarro go back out to the nomad camp. They knock on Tagaq’s door to no answer. The officers head inside carefully, but the place is pretty quiet, and it appears like it’s been deserted. There’s dust and frost all over the place. There are also spirals, too. There’s big one on a piece of cardboard on the floor. There’s a stone with a spiral carved into it. Men outside confront the officers. They say Tagaq left the day after Navarro and Danvers initially came. Navarro asks the men about the spiral, however, only the dogs respond by barking; none of the men speak a word.
Danvers goes to see Connelly for a drunk holiday fuck. They wind up talking about their professional issues. Connelly admits that she was “a better cop” but also says she isn’t good with people, either. He mentions Jake and Holden making Danvers worse at her job. It all drives Liz back out to drive home drunk, even though Connelly tries to stop her. Perfect time to hear “Baby, It’s Could Outside” which then leads into Hank watching Elf home alone, left with his expensive champagne and his rose petal-covered bed that won’t get put to use now. All around, Christmas in Ennis is awful. The next awful thing in Ennis comes when Navarro’s called by the Alaskan Coast Guard, obviously hearing about what’s happened to her sister. While Pete goes off home for Christmas with the family, Navarro’s left to mourn the loss of hers. First thing Evangeline is go back to the facility where she left Julia and rage at the people there for allowing her sister to leave. Then she goes out to fight a few guys. Not a great coping mechanism, especially since it’s a three-on-one situation that ends with Navarro being beaten.

On the road, Danvers sees a polar bear, the one with a scarred, missing eye, and she swerves out of the way, sending her vehicle into a snow bank. The polar bear comes by the vehicle’s window and stares in at Liz, who barely moves an inch. The bear soon walks away into the dark. Navarro shows up at Qavvik’s place surprising him in the middle of the night with her bloody, bruised face. He rushes to help her clean up. She’s even missing a tooth, too. She’s really banged up bad. Qavvik notices the spiral stone, but he’s more concerned with fixing Navarro. She asks him why he’s alone in life, though he says he’s not. She believes she is, that Danvers is, that Rose is, but Qavvik sweetly tries to remind her that she isn’t alone, either. He then lures her in with some nice talk before putting her broken finger back into place.
Danvers wakes from dreams about Holden to hear Navarro at her door. They chat about Tagaq’s disappearance and the spirals left behind. After that, Navarro winds up accidentally getting a glimpse of the stuffed polar bear that belonged to Holden, the one she saw in her dream. It shakes her. But Danvers doesn’t want to hear anything about it: “Dead people are dead.” She doesn’t believe in an afterlife or ghosts or anything else. Navarro questions why Danvers keeps the polar bear, so Liz childishly opens the door and tosses it into the snowy streets. “There‘s nothing except us, we‘re here, Navarro, okay? Alone. The dead are gone. Fucking gone.” This is when Navarro reveals Julia committed suicide the night prior. She believes she’s “next” to be taken down by her family’s curse: “Something calls us and we follow, and it‘s calling me now.” Danvers brings up Wheeler and says that Navarro “saw something” that day. She thinks Navarro saw a ghost or a spirit. Navarro remembers a dead-eyed girl standing by the body, staring, pointing, screaming. She denies seeing anything to Danvers.

Fisherman spotted something near one of the dredges: Clark.
Danvers and Navarro head out to investigate together. Inside the place, there’s a giant spiral. Then they hear someone running. Is it really Clark after all? Danvers chases after him while Navarro slowly checks around, hearing ghostly voices and noticing a woman’s body floating through some water. Navarro sees footsteps leading out of the water and into the shadows. Danvers keeps chasing the man she believes to be Clark, though it’s a labyrinth in that building. She finally corners the man and asks him to raise his hands. Then we see it’s not actually Clark, it’s Otis Heiss. Danvers tries to talk with him but Heiss is terrified. She asks about the coat he’s wearing and if he got it from Clark, to no response. Navarro comes upon a Christmas tree lit up playing music that’s slowly losing power. She turns around into the face of a woman’s ghost screaming. Heiss tells Danvers that Clark “went back down to hide . . . in the night country.” When Danvers finds Navarro the latter’s sitting quietly in front of the Christmas tree.