Major spoilers below for the season finale of True Detective: Night Country, so be warned if haven’t yet seen all the big reveals, which are available to stream with a Max subscription.
In its first five episodes, True Detective: Night Country set up a slew of sunless mysteries and questions for viewers to ponder going into the horror-tinged thriller’s season finale. By and large, showrunner Issa López delivered the answers that a murder-mystery needs, with all of the unresolved deaths being explained by the end, some in far more detail than others. But what about story threads that weren’t fully contextualized, such as Navarro’s fate or Annie’s tongue?
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Let’s indulge in a three-fingered handful — we see you, Blair — of the darker curiosities and unanswered questions that audiences were left with by the time “Part 6” was in credits mode. Some of them have been addressed with varying levels of clarity by Night Country’s writer/director López and star Kali Reis, such as our first mega-inquiry.
Did Navarro Die At The End Of True Detective: Night Country?
The final time we get a full-on shot of Reis’ Navarro, she’s on the other side of learning the truth — or at least a substantial part of it — about Annie’s death, while also having come to terms with the voices that she believed were haunting her throughout the season. She sets out walking into a snowy abyss as she’d done earlier in the season, but without the same heaviness that pulled at her before, making it appear like less of a suicidal instinct. Navarro also seemingly pops up in the final moments within what’s believed to be Liz Danvers’ lakeside home. But what’s the truth here?
As it turns out, Issa López is fully behind the idea of viewers taking and embracing whichever ending and meaning they choose to, and laid the story pieces out as such to stoke multifaceted reactions. Speaking with Variety, the showrunner was asked if Navarrow was “in a place of peace,” and if she was still alive, to which López replied:
What she finds once she surrenders to it is that the voices are trying to embrace her, and give her something that is a missing piece of her life. So now she can, with that knowledge, make a decision about this instinct that she always had, of, 'Just go, and keep on going.' And do it at peace with herself. If that takes her to the afterlife or not, it’s a little bit open for interpretation. There is going to be a part of our audience that wants to believe in the poetry of her just leaving to be with the spirits of the people she’s lost, and not be alone in the way that she is now. And that’s OK! That’s an interpretation.
The last scene is then addressed, concerning the idea that it's not exactly clear whether or not Navarro is with Liz in both body and spirit at that point, or if that's mean to represent the former Trooper's essence that her former partner can never shake. To be expected, perhaps, López is all about that dichotomy. While holding back her own thoughts, she said:
When the author speaks, it’s over. And I don’t want to cut out the reading that your colleague had. I love, love, love that, because what you two did is what I want our audience to do. If the Navarro that comes back is her spirit, there’s a beautiful poetry into that: It’s a spirit at peace, not like the apparitions that she saw before. And if she is Navarro after going on a walkabout and coming back to hang with her friend, that’s beautiful too.
During my initial viewing, I read things as totally literal, with Liz and Navarro touching base again months after the fact, Shawshank Redemption-style. But upon rewatching, I can't say for certain if Liz fully acknowledges Navarro's presence or not, so I'm more open to the idea of a ghostly presence, even though I don't want the character to have actually wandered to death.
Were The Supernatural Elements Real?
As we’ve talked about in the past, Night Country leaned heavily into connections to True Detective Season 1’s Rust Cohle and other elements, and it similarly toed the line between supernatural and rational. That said, the season ended without any surefire clarification on whether the ghostly experiences had by Navarro, her sister Julia, Rose and others were legitimate, or only figments of mental illness. Perhaps the most convincing moments of truly otherworldly forces were the times when they got the ever-skeptical Liz’s attention, but she blew everything off immediately. (Who finds a crucifix in their hair and then goes on with their day?)
As far as all the major mysteries went, the answers were laid out without the need to rely on unexplained events, from the women forcing the scientists into the cold at gunpoint, or the scientists being responsible for Annie’s assault and murder. But when it comes to other things, like Travis Cohle’s dancing specter, what should we believe? Showrunner Issa López told Variety this when asked about the show's stance:
The show True Detective: Night Country both believes in the supernatural and believes that there is a rational explanation in the everyday world for every single event that you see. Very much in the tradition of the original True Detective — where you can assume that Rust Cohle, in the very climax of the series, looking up above the altar in Carcosa of the Yellow King and seeing the spiral of the universe opening before him, is because he fried his brain with drugs years before. Or you can think that he’s actually peering into the Carcosa kingdom. It’s for you to decide.
Obviously not the most pleasing answer for anyone who abhors ambiguity, but I think the important thing to take away is what she isn't doing: ruling out supernatural events. Because to do that would be to say that Navarro was just hallucinating or dreaming when her given name was revealed by her mother, which would be a devastating blow to the character herself. So while I'm not sure how I feel about Julia's terrifying experiences or where Liz's son falls in all of this, I am comfortable believing in the supernatural for the sake of Navarro's peace of mind.
Who Is Leah's Father?
For all that True Detective: Night Country delved heavily into the emotional traumas of all of its main characters, the story quite purposefully held back on specific details about the past and personal lives of Liz and Leah Danvers. It’s an interesting choice, considering the characters shown the least are the ones that so directly connect the stepmother and stepdaughter. But that decision necessarily means audiences came away wondering more about the late family members. Who was the man who was Leah’s father, a role he held before he and Liz got together?
What we do know is that his name was Jake Peterson (as portrayed by Svend Hardenberg), and that he and Liz had a biological son named Holden. It was heavily implied that the husband and son died in a vehicular collision, though without any further details being spelled out in full. But while the relatively few times Jake popped up seemed to be joyous, the lack of flashbacks set up the possibility that those happy times were fewer and farther between than what might have been expected.
For instance, flashbacks with Leah were all but absent, even though she was also Jake’s daughter. Leah and Liz’s relationship apparently stayed strained over the years, presumably because of the lack of closure over the deaths, which also possibly speaks to the family’s home life not being akin to fairy tales. Is it possible that Jake was responsible for the wreck that killed him and Holden? Could that be why we don’t see him in a more loving light?
Who Cut Out Annie's Tongue?
True Detective’s fourth season offered up no concrete answers about Annie’s severed tongue, which served as the only initially obvious connective tissue between the activist’s long-unsolved murder and the deaths of the Tsalal scientists. Of course, it became quite clear in the finale that Annie’s death was wholly connected to the Tsalal engineers, which provided the “why” for it being left at the lab when the scientists went missing.
But the series never explicitly revealed who was responsible for cutting Annie’s tongue out of her mouth, or at what point that act was committed. Some fans such as myself believe that Hank was tasked with mutilating Annie’s body to make it look more related to mining protests than Tsalal itself, though that wouldn’t explain how it showed up at the lab all those years later. And if it was Bee and the other women who kept it, when did they gain access to it? Or, as a third option, what if it was Annie herself who left the icky clue?
This is another mystery that the showrunner is leaving up to viewers to conclude what went down, and she laid arguments for all sides in her interview with Variety. That said, it does sound like Hank chopped it out, and the women were the ones who left it as a calling card for their vengeful actions after discovering Annie’s fate. It’s hard to argue against this:
The version that will work for the people that will read the series as a completely rational story is that the tongue was found by the people of the village. And then the women who know everything knew that they couldn’t take care of Annie’s body in the way that they would like. So one of them keeps a tongue as an act of reverence and kindness to the body that is still going to go through a lot of indignities. They preserve the tongue. Danvers says in Episode 2 that the tongue has some unusual damage, which could be because of freezing. And then when the women come into the station, they leave the tongue as a sign that now is the time of the truth of storytelling — of our storytelling. The stories that Annie couldn’t tell and was silenced for are going to come to the light.
And since her breakdown for how Annie the spirit might have done it isn’t quite as detailed, I’m choosing to go with Bee & Co. as the keepers of the tongue.
Hopefully it won’t be long before HBO makes a decision about True Detective Season 5, but there are plenty of upcoming goodies on the 2024 TV premiere schedule to look forward to before more spirals start popping up all over the place.
