True Detective: Night Country has been a bit up and down for me in season 4 here, with some elements working, but one aspect really, really not.
I keep thinking about how season 4 here was supposedly a different mystery show pitched to HBO, then converted into a True Detective season and integrated with season 1 (albeit this week, there were no real connections). That’s why I think these seemingly supernatural elements exist when it simply does not fit with the past seasons, even season 1.
There is one theory to explain at least some of this, and that escalated this week. That’s the idea that Navarro may be suffering from some of the same schizophrenia as her mother and sister. It would explain things like why she’s seeing polar bears in the road or ghosts on the ice or most pressingly, a seemingly demon-possessed amputee who tells her she will see her (dead) mother soon. You could write that stuff off as “real” within the context of her own mind.
This does not explain a lot of the other stuff, however, as it’s only contained to Navarro.
- We have Danvers waking up from a “she’s awake” whisper and seeing a one-eyed polar bear stuffed animal, connected to Navarro’s apparent hallucinations.
- We have the woman who had the ghost of Rust Cohle’s dad lead her out onto the ice to find the dead bodies.
- We have the dead scientists themselves, where as we learned this week, they were apparently all simultaneously frightened to death by something, causing cardiac arrest, and it’s hard to think of a “real world” explanation for that. Then you have the near-dead scientist saying that they “woke” a woman up, which again, feels like some sort of demonic spirt type thing.
- We saw a video of Annie K in an ice tunnel or somewhere similar saying that she “found it” before screaming, apparently being murdered. This one could be a bit more loosely interpreted, but again, it feels like something supernatural.
I could be wrong, there could be a logical explanation for all of this. Well, all of this? I’m not as sure about that. The only thing I can possibly think of is that the mine has poisoned the town so thoroughly that they are all starting to get severe cognitive damage resulting in hallucinations and psychotic behavior, though I’m not sure that’s going to be the answer here. The answer feels like…ghosts or demons. And I don’t like that. Not for True Detective, at least.
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