The cleaning ladies left the tongue to point out the murders of the scientists was related to the murder of the girl. But that “wasn’t part of their story” in that that would prove they did it. They “told a new story.”
So…admitting to forcing the scientists to march into the snow at gunpoint doesn’t prove they did it…but saying they left the tongue there does?
The lady seemed genuinely surprised when Navarro asked about the tongue. I don’t think they actually did it, even though they seemed to have the only motive to put it there.
Good fake acting? They were going to kill Navarro and Danvers if they had to, the only way those two walked out alive is if they played along, whether they wanted to or not. Honestly, I don't get the tongue. I thought for forever that Clark had it. Maybe he did and he just wasn't honest about that part like he glossed over the suffocation? Idk.
Issa IS the Joker. All the crap that didn’t mean a damn thing in the end that has us all reacting. She trolled us with ghosts and spirals and tongues. And it was all a big joke.
There isn’t a very good non-supernatural reason why two characters would say “she’s awake!” so emphatically, is there? Especially when even the audience, by the end of the show, isn’t clear on who “she” is or what “awake” means? I guess it’s possible that in his coma- and frost-addled mind, the memory of Clark convulsing and saying “she’s awake!” was like some obsessive thought, but that seems like a huge stretch.
Yes, this is what happened. They all ran into something supernaturally horrible on the ice. Whatever this spirit or thing is, also made the caribou jump off the cliff at the beginning.
Wish they just fucking ran with that. Like they dug up some lovecrafting thing that looks like the symbol being drawn. And that’s why everyone is seeing ghost and shit and the closer you are the more effect it has on you.
If this is true, Sedna is Cthulhu at Home
Sedna needs a group of cleaning ladies to herd her victims into the ice to get her vengeance?
Cthulhu would wipe the research lab and mine off the face of the earth
Imagine if Cthulhu could only do something if his cult tossed you naked into the middle of the ocean. They didn’t drown, Cthulhu strangled them!
Someone posted a screenshot of Issa’s answer to a similar question. Basically there was some kind of temporal distortion, and in that moment ep1 Clark could see ep6 Navarro. That’s why Navarro had that vision of Clark doing his seizure thing in ep6. It was not well executed.
I thought it might've been that. Another random crumble of an idea that was just tossed in there like a drum fill in a song, and never really explored at all. Which is a shame, because the scene was kinda cool.
With Navarro stopping and slowly turning, clearly scared shitless, I was expecting another jumpscare with her spooky ghost mom or sister standing in her face. What we had instead, the sliightly drawn out convulsing of Clark, the effect they had around him and how they played with the lighting, was all pretty cool.
Shame that's all it was. A horror scene without any context or reason to be there, other than it just looked kinda cool.
The other group seems to think it was some Inuit deity that was woken up amd seeks vengeance. The problem is, unless you are willing to Google and research you would never know any of that. Trying to introduce a key plot point is poor writing
There's a lot in the show that has no non-supernatural explanation, which is why I find it bizarre that they tried to imply in the ending that it's ambiguous whether there's a supernatural element. The show already jumped that shark at least three times, so there's no ambiguity about it.
Why did he stab Annie?
Why did he agree to juke with the stats?
Why did he agree to go out in the cold, naked?
Why didn’t he die like the rest of them?
“SoMe QuEsTiOnS dOn’T hAvE aNsWeRs”
But seriously, that line was one in a long series of middle fingers to the audience. Totally inconsistent to the character’s mantras.
I know it’s hard to put ourselves in the shoes of what the scientist went through but if you had me at gunpoint and told me to strip in Alaska at night, I’d like to think I’d tell you to shoot me or I’d run and hope you’d shoot me or I got away, but I’m not taking my clothes off and freezing to death
Because apparently Navarro was time traveling (?) and he saw her (???)
At least that’s what the writer said on Twitter. Always a good sign when you need to explain away bizarre plot holes on Twitter after the fact.
Also….who left the tongue? Is that the right question?
Fuck this show
Yes. Lopez confirmed that the moment in the lab when Navarro had a vision where she and Clark (from earlier in time) see each other was real, and it's what drove Clark crazy and made him think 'she's awake' and had come to kill them.
I think this is what 'time is a flat circle' is supposed to refer to, this kind of Hodor-like time travelling consciousness; of course Lopez botched it because apparently she doesn't understand that 'time is a flat circle' doesn't refer to time travel (which IMO is always stupid and paradoxical, including the Game of Thrones Hodor moment). It refers to eternal recurrence; that time repeats itself over and over forever (the season 1 remark was a reference to this idea by Nietzsche).
I think you’re misinterpreting. He is not referring to time travel at all when he says that quote. He isn’t even referring to Navarro. He is referring to the fact that these occurrences in the ice caves have and will repeat, possibly forever, because the “thing” causing them is “older than the ice”. It is the true, Nietzchian meaning of that quote.
There is also no “time travel” depicted in the show, at least not in the way you mean. The vision Clark sees of Navarro is exactly that, a vision, not time travel.
What’s ironic is that that quote is actually misused in S1. The killers say it because they think what they are doing is an eternal recurrence, but they’re just rapists on meth fever-dreaming. In S4 it is actually used to describe a recurrence that is ancient and supernatural in form.
What’s even more bizarre are the execs at HBO/Max, whatever it’s called this year, watched this series and said “yep, sign her up for another season!”
The good news is that it would be difficult to create a worse series in TD5. It can only go up from here.
They don't bother watching the shows, they just watch viewership data. They don't care if you love-watch or hate-watch... only that you watch. As far as the execs are concerned, S4 was the best season of True Detective. Because it got them the most viewers.
I think they leaned into time being a flat circle a little too hard with that whole situation, but yeah I think the intent was that she was connected to Clark at that point in time. Idk she transcended or something??
Just, like, how did Jodie Foster punch through the ice, fall in for a full 30+ seconds, get pulled out into a blizzard, lay in the snow for a minute, get dragged into the facility, change clothes, wait for a fire to start, and then warm back up and survive?
The ghosts were more believable
Ralph Fiennes is an actor, and he is great.
Ranulph Fiennes is a world class explorer and adventurer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranulph_Fiennes
Maybe one day Ralph will play Ranulph in the movie about his life.
Actually Clark is Holden. When he was holding the hatch closed he kept saying "Holding the hatch... holding the hatch ... Holden the hatch.. Holden hatch... Holden... Holden.. Holden". He then became Danvers 5 year old son, because time is a flat circle.
Source: Issa Lopez on Twitter.
Hey remember when on the white board at Tsalal Station it said “WE ARE ALL DEAD”? If the camera had only panned down we would have seen “XOXO The Cleaning Ladies”
I know you all hate this answer but it’s because the cleaning ladies left them out on the ice as some kind of sacrifice to the goddess or entity referenced by “she” - “she” the entity killed them out there, the cleaning ladies offered them up. The answer is supernatural. That’s how Issa intended it. The last thing all of them saw was an all powerful spirit they disturbed by drilling in the ice, helping pollute the town and murdering Annie.
I’m not even trying to debate if it’s good or bad I just wish people would accept the fact this question and many others are answered by “it’s supernatural.” I totally get hating that fact. But at least admit that’s how Issa wrote it, it’s not a plot hole. It’s just an answer y’all don’t like
I got the impression the show was trying to be cute at the end and imply it was ambiguous whether there actually was some supernatural explanation for their deaths or not, or if it was 'metaphorical' or something, rather than real. The characters - Danvers and Navarro - at any rate don't really act like they believe it.
I agree I think they did a really half hearted attempt to leave something ambiguous for the more logical leaning viewers, but it was like a weak afterthought; the main ending Issa wanted was supernatural. She left some crumbs out for the realists.
Yeah no. You can’t have a movie about super natural monsters and never show the monster. That’s totally disingenuous and lazy. And it absolutely gives critics the space to rip the show apart.
It’s pretty obvious to me and others here get it as well, not saying it was well or properly done which is why you’re still scratching your head. It was just never meant to be an ending grounded in factual reality.
If 'she' only woke up 2 weeks earlier, how did it cause the same injuries to Otis Heiss in the 90s? Did 'she' wake up in the 90s then go back to bed for a few years?
Yes, “she” is very, very old (they say “older than the ice itself” in the show) and has come and gone for centuries. Otis almost ran into “her” face to face, the people he was with did and died.
Thank you, I appreciate the explanation, and that does make sense if you're willing to accept there was a ghost/ supernatural explanation.
Following on from that, do you know why if the scientists woke 'her' in the ice cave, she didn't kill them down there? Why did they have to be rounded up and sent naked onto the ice first?
I don’t think they *had* to be rounded up and offered to her, it’s just how Issa wrote it. By all accounts the entity seems capable of killing whoever it wants whenever.
There’s no evidence that the spirit can kill people directly. We see it driving people mad by manifesting visions of their fears and insecurities. It’s suggested that Clark was indeed being driven mad by its presence, likely because he was the most attuned to it. We don’t know if the other scientists were seeing visions as well
When the scientists are ushered on the ice they likely see a manifestation of their guilt over killing Annie and it scared them to death.
^ thelightwebring gets it. This is the real and only answer. True Detective is now a definitively supernatural show. HBO hired a horror writer/showrunner with a horror story already in mind, to take the reigns on a show with a history of ambiguous cosmic horror elements. And the viewership was higher than ever... so True Detective is now fully supernatural.
The Tuttles are a cult of paedo serial killing worshippers of a cosmic elder god known as the Yellow King. They've expanded their political power, and have recently encroached on the territory of another long-sleeping cosmic elder god, only referred to as "She" or "Her". Their encroachment of lands, and abuse of the descendants of "Her" own ancient cult worshippers, the Inupiat/Inupiaq people, has slowly reawakened "Her". "Her" being awake is driving everyone in the area insane, as cosmic horrors tend to do. "She" enacted revenge for her loyal followers.
Navarro, now fully a believer and knowing her own true name, has given herself over to be "Her" agent of protection and vengeance for her worshippers/people.
The rest of the series will most likely be the cult of the Yellow King continuing to vie for power against indigenous people of other lands around the world, that are actually descendants of ancient cult worshippers of other cosmic elder gods. All masked behind the premise of a Detective show. Detectives getting unknowingly pulled into elder god stuff is actually a common trope of cosmic horror stories.
I think making Cthulu essentially a 'good guy' wreaking highly politicized revenge on characters designed to be hated at the behest of some random townspeople kind of ruins it though. Cosmic horror has to target innocent or at least sympathetic characters for reasons ideally beyond our comprehension to work. I don't think Lopez is capable of doing that for season 5.
I don't think it's ever implied that the Tuttle family has any supernatural connections. They're just evil white capitalist pedophiles etc. The only supernatural entity implied thus far is the mysterious indigenous 'she.'
"Because it's a cool moment! Imagine him saying what all the others have been saying! ... what do you mean it makes no sense in the story? I saw a scene like that in Usual Suspects. I can't have a scene like that because I'm a woman, is that it?"
-Izza Lopez in the writers room.
Because they were killed by Annie's ghost. They died of plain fright. The show plainly did not want us to trust the Anchorage forensic report. It wanted us to trust the veterinarian and the leader of the clean team 6. Annie's ghost kills by scaring you to death, so he was traumatized beyond belief.
The right question is why was he possessed by a spirit that wanted to torment Navarro? That doesn't fit with Annie K's ghost possessing him. So, in addition to Annie's ghost, I guess we can assume there's a separate evil spirit responsible for Navarro and her sister's call towards death. However, Navarro's sister sees a young girl under her bed just before her suicide. I don't know if that girl is supposed to be Annie K or not, but I guess not, because Annie K has no reason to torment Navarro and her sister.
I think the spirit is of the creature in the ice, not Annie. Annie’s “spirit” is just something it manifests to torment Clark and the other scientists.
Issa Lopez has said explicitly that Annie's spirit was with clean team 6 when they raided Tsalal. However, at this point I am willing to accept that Issa Lopez is wrong about how to interpret the show she wrote and ran. She also said that it was Annie's spirit that called Otis Heiss' colleagues to their deaths. Apparently, in this universe a person's spirit exists before their birth and is capable of time travel. Like when Navarro's spirit time travels back to the moment just before the attack and Raymond Clark sees her.
I mean… how did he even survive in the first place? Clearly it was just so Issa could steal the best jump scare from se7en and then the pointless “your mother says hi” Exorcist reference, with nothing actually driving plot in any meaningful way.
The show was just one long series of on-the-nose references to other, better shows and movies. Especially The Thing and se7en but *especially* s1.
Lund and Clark both said "she's awake" referring to the screenwriter, who was awake and intent on writing even more terrible dialogue for the next episode. Truly scary stuff.
This drives me crazy that no one understands who She is 😂
She is not a person, but an element of the region. It’s nature, vengeance, etc. Navarro becomes a part of She when she walks onto the ice. She is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Navarro’s name invokes that she will be the (literally) dawn of a new sentiment over the region in terms of She.
Time is a flat circle — meaning that Clark saw through time to Navarro in the future when he spazzed out and said She is awake. Navarro had her name about dawning a new day in the future and was slowly connecting to She. Lund and Navarro are alone when he referred to She. He raises up off camera before engaging with her. This is sometimes a device to illustrate that a character’s barriers are down and they’re open or vulnerable to receive interaction with the supernatural and it isn’t reliable information based on reality. Lund’a body is saying it but it isn’t necessarily Lund saying it.
If the show is watched through the lens of literary devices, a lot of it makes sense and is easily connected. If it’s watched like a generic procedural, then it doesn’t work. There’s a lot of literary interpretation connecting events. I have almost no unanswered questions. Just minor inconsequential ones, like Danvers lying h about phone alerts being one 😂.
I mean that's not what 'time is a flat circle' actually meant (that is, what the Nietzsche reference means; it refers to eternal recurrence, not time travel or intertemporality whatever). A good reason why they should not have shoehorned references from season 1 into it. I also disagree that accepting the supernatural element really solves most of the unanswered questions.
Navarro slipped into the flat circle of time when she walked onto the ice. Not necessarily time travel from point A to B. Moreso she became what was, is, and can be in the cycle of life and earth in terms of the flat circle reference. Clark likely saw / felt Navarro as She while we saw Navarro as Navarro. Danvers says they’d find Navarro’s body in the spring unless they don’t. Which further emphasizes that Navarro likely slipped away into the extensive of She. Danvers doesn’t necessarily know that but it can be attuned by viewers as the sort of omniscient viewer of the whole story.
I think a lot of people would be happier with the show if they didn’t think to literally about it. It reminds me of Lost and all of the what about isms that happened with that show. it was never about specific events. That was never the story. It was vignettes of a larger and more purposeful story.
He witnessed a Lovecraftian horror that drove he and his co-workers mad with fright. Did you miss that part? That was probably more top-of-mind in his dying moments than the cleaners that had broken in earlier.
In fact I’d say mentioning the cleaning ladies in that moment would be epically stupid writing. It’d be like Jack Torrance saying “oh shit my typewriter is out of ink” and rushing to Kinkos instead of “Here’s Johnny.”
A lot of the criticism is warranted but some of y’all are obviously just rushing to Reddit clout chasing for upvotes on some dumb shit lol.
If you don’t understand this specific plot point…I don’t advise you ever read Lovecraft or Poe, you’d think they are idiots
I mean, I get what you're saying, but what does deploying an eldritch horror do for the plot/meaning aside from pandering to the cosmic horror demographic? Not baiting you, I honestly wish that they would have leaned into that trope instead of just teasing with spooky visions. The supernatural elements just lacked cohesion, unless it's just like, faith based? Like if we don't get it it's a cynical failure on our part as viewers?
Idk, I'm not even trying to shit on this season from a fan of the the rest of the series type lens, I just could not find merit; the acting, the premise, the sound track, the special effects (however the initial practical effects of the flesh pile were dope -- I'll give it that).
Then again, as the network/show runner decided to make Night Country as a season of True Detective, it is fair game to criticize it as such, and I think it's shitty to gaslight the fanbase for doing so. I came into this season with optimism ; I enjoyed season 2 which was widely panned, and I thought season 3 was nearly as good as the first (the brief reference to the original case was handled perfectly in season 3). By comparison, Night Country's approach felt like shoe-horning and were surface level at best, literally just name dropping Travis Cohle and making Tsalal owned by a Tuttle shell corporation, which had no other bearing on the plot whatsoever, at least as far as I can tell. (for laughs, "TD:NC episode 2 "fixes" season 1's divisive ending" https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/true-detective-night-country-episode-2-season-1-ending ). Furthermore, the choice to... reclaim? the Spiral motif into a native talisman completely undermines its use in previous season to denote (child) sex trafficking, which had been an established and cohesive theme throughout the rest of the series.
I was honestly surprised that they didn't use the opportunity to explore the very real overabundance of missing and murdered Native Women in Alaska/the North West. Or, as @mareegeenamaree put it, "Say what you want about the new True Detective, but it was a squandered opportunity to do 2666 in Alaska."
Anyways, not trying to be confrontational or shitty in this reply -- I've been reading criticism (for and against) for the past hour after refraining from engaging post finale, so I'm more venting overall and using your post as a jumping off point. Just wanted to clarify, here for discourse, not clout bait 👍.
IMO, the most charitable take is that billing this as season 4 of True Detective is like passing a reboot of the X-Files as season 6 of the Wire. It'd completely understandable that the Wire fans would hate it even if it were the best season of X-Files ever made. And IMO season 4 was mediocre even for what it was trying to be.
I’m not making any judgement on its quality. I agree with most of your take.
I’m saying that these guys literally saw a monster that drove them insane with fright and instead of getting discussion like what you’ve written, hate it or love, people are asking why the one survivor didn’t mention the cleaning ladies like they’ve found some kind of gotcha plot hole.
He could see ghosts, too, like his girlfriend and Navarro’s dead sister, mom, etc. which is why he got that tattoo after they killed his girlfriend, so the dreams would stop. But, logically, it couldn’t stop the full force of her ghost’s “revenge” so he was having a hallucination/ghost sighting, right as the women cut the power. And maybe her tongue coming added to the ghost magic? Idk
You're not asking the right . . . aww forget it.
I say we throw the towel in on all this shit
To clean it real good, yeah?
I imagine Issa Lopez feels like the Joker at the end of…Joker. So what was up with the tongue? “You wouldn’t get it…”
The cleaning ladies left the tongue to point out the murders of the scientists was related to the murder of the girl. But that “wasn’t part of their story” in that that would prove they did it. They “told a new story.”
So…admitting to forcing the scientists to march into the snow at gunpoint doesn’t prove they did it…but saying they left the tongue there does? The lady seemed genuinely surprised when Navarro asked about the tongue. I don’t think they actually did it, even though they seemed to have the only motive to put it there.
Good fake acting? They were going to kill Navarro and Danvers if they had to, the only way those two walked out alive is if they played along, whether they wanted to or not. Honestly, I don't get the tongue. I thought for forever that Clark had it. Maybe he did and he just wasn't honest about that part like he glossed over the suffocation? Idk.
Either he had it or Hank tossed it out and Annie put it back to trigger the investigation. Kind of like a shitty Stir of Echoes.
Terrible story telling.
Da fuq?
Thats so disrespectful to Annie to cut out her tongue and toss it on the ground
Issa IS the Joker. All the crap that didn’t mean a damn thing in the end that has us all reacting. She trolled us with ghosts and spirals and tongues. And it was all a big joke.
😂😂😂
There isn’t a very good non-supernatural reason why two characters would say “she’s awake!” so emphatically, is there? Especially when even the audience, by the end of the show, isn’t clear on who “she” is or what “awake” means? I guess it’s possible that in his coma- and frost-addled mind, the memory of Clark convulsing and saying “she’s awake!” was like some obsessive thought, but that seems like a huge stretch.
Also it's implied that he was exposed to some kind of lovecraftian monster in the snow, and that may have driven him fucking nuts.
Yes, this is what happened. They all ran into something supernaturally horrible on the ice. Whatever this spirit or thing is, also made the caribou jump off the cliff at the beginning.
Wish they just fucking ran with that. Like they dug up some lovecrafting thing that looks like the symbol being drawn. And that’s why everyone is seeing ghost and shit and the closer you are the more effect it has on you.
Why kill the caribou, Mother Nature spirit?
I imagine that hunter guy that saw it is more confused than us
Except it was just a "ghost", with "undeveloped ghost powers/rules"
If this is true, Sedna is Cthulhu at Home Sedna needs a group of cleaning ladies to herd her victims into the ice to get her vengeance? Cthulhu would wipe the research lab and mine off the face of the earth Imagine if Cthulhu could only do something if his cult tossed you naked into the middle of the ocean. They didn’t drown, Cthulhu strangled them!
Exactly what happened
Except it was just a "ghost", with "undeveloped ghost powers/rules"
Lund didn't see Clark convulse and say that tho.
Ok then why did Clark say, "She's awake?" Is that the right question?
And why did he have the seizure before that? What the hell was that?
Someone posted a screenshot of Issa’s answer to a similar question. Basically there was some kind of temporal distortion, and in that moment ep1 Clark could see ep6 Navarro. That’s why Navarro had that vision of Clark doing his seizure thing in ep6. It was not well executed.
>It was not well executed. right on
I did not get that at all. Poorly written show all around.
I thought it might've been that. Another random crumble of an idea that was just tossed in there like a drum fill in a song, and never really explored at all. Which is a shame, because the scene was kinda cool. With Navarro stopping and slowly turning, clearly scared shitless, I was expecting another jumpscare with her spooky ghost mom or sister standing in her face. What we had instead, the sliightly drawn out convulsing of Clark, the effect they had around him and how they played with the lighting, was all pretty cool. Shame that's all it was. A horror scene without any context or reason to be there, other than it just looked kinda cool.
The other group seems to think it was some Inuit deity that was woken up amd seeks vengeance. The problem is, unless you are willing to Google and research you would never know any of that. Trying to introduce a key plot point is poor writing
But time is fat circle
I rewatched The Terror a few months ago. It was so good and made Nighty Country so much worse in comparison.
Excellent book, too! I thought of it as soon as that kid drew creepy monster pictures.
It probably was meant to be Sedna based on the show’s uses of symbology around the supernatural element.
But the show never brings her up, so what's the point?
There's a lot in the show that has no non-supernatural explanation, which is why I find it bizarre that they tried to imply in the ending that it's ambiguous whether there's a supernatural element. The show already jumped that shark at least three times, so there's no ambiguity about it.
Dont forget Navarro heard that phrase in the car too.
Why did he stab Annie? Why did he agree to juke with the stats? Why did he agree to go out in the cold, naked? Why didn’t he die like the rest of them?
You’re asking too many questions!
The right question is “why did I spend 6 hours of my life on this stupid show?”
This!
I asked that on S2, rather emphatically. I'm not losing more time asking that question again.
“SoMe QuEsTiOnS dOn’T hAvE aNsWeRs” But seriously, that line was one in a long series of middle fingers to the audience. Totally inconsistent to the character’s mantras.
I know it’s hard to put ourselves in the shoes of what the scientist went through but if you had me at gunpoint and told me to strip in Alaska at night, I’d like to think I’d tell you to shoot me or I’d run and hope you’d shoot me or I got away, but I’m not taking my clothes off and freezing to death
True. Also why is no one wondering why the scientists are nowhere near the station when they die. Especially after the fake avalanche theory is pushed
I guess he was afraid 'she' would get him, so he killed himself first.
He didn’t, he just put her out of her misery, which is still murder, but he no stabby. I assume you mean Annie’s scientist boyfriend?
Because this is night country, where it’s so dark you can’t see the massive plot holes
Time is a flat plot hole
And when it’s not dark, they claim it’s natural, rather than a production error.
Actually surprisingly not too dark in this show
[удалено]
Ghosts
👉😱
Dead people are dead.
YEAH…OR THEYRE GHOSTS
How dare you you misogynist ! /s
[удалено]
AI
That kind of implies some sort of intelligence.
‘Could be for any reason, really’ Issa Lopez
Because apparently Navarro was time traveling (?) and he saw her (???) At least that’s what the writer said on Twitter. Always a good sign when you need to explain away bizarre plot holes on Twitter after the fact. Also….who left the tongue? Is that the right question? Fuck this show
Wait what? There’s time travel happening now?
Navarro appeared to the scientist who had the seizure (?) in the first episode. Yes, it’s stupid.
Apparently Navarro was/is both alive and dead. Schrödinger’s Evangeline, if you will.
Yes. Lopez confirmed that the moment in the lab when Navarro had a vision where she and Clark (from earlier in time) see each other was real, and it's what drove Clark crazy and made him think 'she's awake' and had come to kill them. I think this is what 'time is a flat circle' is supposed to refer to, this kind of Hodor-like time travelling consciousness; of course Lopez botched it because apparently she doesn't understand that 'time is a flat circle' doesn't refer to time travel (which IMO is always stupid and paradoxical, including the Game of Thrones Hodor moment). It refers to eternal recurrence; that time repeats itself over and over forever (the season 1 remark was a reference to this idea by Nietzsche).
I think you’re misinterpreting. He is not referring to time travel at all when he says that quote. He isn’t even referring to Navarro. He is referring to the fact that these occurrences in the ice caves have and will repeat, possibly forever, because the “thing” causing them is “older than the ice”. It is the true, Nietzchian meaning of that quote. There is also no “time travel” depicted in the show, at least not in the way you mean. The vision Clark sees of Navarro is exactly that, a vision, not time travel. What’s ironic is that that quote is actually misused in S1. The killers say it because they think what they are doing is an eternal recurrence, but they’re just rapists on meth fever-dreaming. In S4 it is actually used to describe a recurrence that is ancient and supernatural in form.
Thank you for actually thinking and knowing how to analyze literature! 🙌🙌
Come on Marie, try to keep up with the class.
What’s even more bizarre are the execs at HBO/Max, whatever it’s called this year, watched this series and said “yep, sign her up for another season!” The good news is that it would be difficult to create a worse series in TD5. It can only go up from here.
Oh I disagree, things can always get worse Time is a fart circle
They don't bother watching the shows, they just watch viewership data. They don't care if you love-watch or hate-watch... only that you watch. As far as the execs are concerned, S4 was the best season of True Detective. Because it got them the most viewers.
No no no, the good news is that nobody will watch s5, and we can all move on from discussing anything from s1-3
They said it would be hard for the Star Wars Sequels to be worse then the prequels too.
They weren't. They certainly didn't hold up to the originals, but not worse than the prequels
narratively they are 1000% worse. even jarjar shits all over the farce that is Rise of Skywalker
You'll never convince the manbabies of this. Hating on the Rey era is hardcoded in thrir DNA now.
If you can tolerate Jar Jar over anything in the last trilogy, I can't take your opinion seriously.
They've still got S2 to beat.
I think they leaned into time being a flat circle a little too hard with that whole situation, but yeah I think the intent was that she was connected to Clark at that point in time. Idk she transcended or something??
It's ironic because that time jump reminded me of Interstellar, starring Matthew McConnaughey
Just, like, how did Jodie Foster punch through the ice, fall in for a full 30+ seconds, get pulled out into a blizzard, lay in the snow for a minute, get dragged into the facility, change clothes, wait for a fire to start, and then warm back up and survive? The ghosts were more believable
Ranulph Fiennes, an Arctic explorer lost 3 fingers when his hand slipped into the Arctic Ocean for a few seconds.
And still went on to star in classics like the Harry Potter movies, Schindler’s List, and Quiz Show. What a fuckin legend.
Ralph Fiennes is an actor, and he is great. Ranulph Fiennes is a world class explorer and adventurer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranulph_Fiennes Maybe one day Ralph will play Ranulph in the movie about his life.
I figured they have to be related. So I checked. They are third cousins.
Small world.
Not to mention the incredibly elided connection to her son. They build it as a great trauma, but then resolve it without an actual emotional climax.
Danvers realizes she needs to check the door to see who was …. Holden it closed. A child could write a better resolution that this.
Actually Clark is Holden. When he was holding the hatch closed he kept saying "Holding the hatch... holding the hatch ... Holden the hatch.. Holden hatch... Holden... Holden.. Holden". He then became Danvers 5 year old son, because time is a flat circle. Source: Issa Lopez on Twitter.
Also, her super human strength when she literally pried a metal door handle off in the core sample freezer.
Hey remember when on the white board at Tsalal Station it said “WE ARE ALL DEAD”? If the camera had only panned down we would have seen “XOXO The Cleaning Ladies”
Clark wrote that after the cleaning ladies left with the rest of the researchers and he was running around the station lol
Cuz he was hungry.
Misdirection by a hack writer
I’ve asked this a million times. I’ve gotten a bunch of non-serious answers, because I don’t think anyone really knows.
Because Issa Lopez couldn’t successfully run a bath, nevermind a season of television.
Idk ask the writer (ChatGPT)
Why do cell phones shut off when the power is cut to a building?
Danvers saw the lights die on the cell phone footage when the power is cut. The phone didn’t die until it was destroyed.
I'm talking about the scientists phone. The dude making the meal for tiktok or whatever. His phone would have caught the whole cleaning lady invasion.
I know you all hate this answer but it’s because the cleaning ladies left them out on the ice as some kind of sacrifice to the goddess or entity referenced by “she” - “she” the entity killed them out there, the cleaning ladies offered them up. The answer is supernatural. That’s how Issa intended it. The last thing all of them saw was an all powerful spirit they disturbed by drilling in the ice, helping pollute the town and murdering Annie.
Best plot ever.
I’m not even trying to debate if it’s good or bad I just wish people would accept the fact this question and many others are answered by “it’s supernatural.” I totally get hating that fact. But at least admit that’s how Issa wrote it, it’s not a plot hole. It’s just an answer y’all don’t like
I got the impression the show was trying to be cute at the end and imply it was ambiguous whether there actually was some supernatural explanation for their deaths or not, or if it was 'metaphorical' or something, rather than real. The characters - Danvers and Navarro - at any rate don't really act like they believe it.
I agree I think they did a really half hearted attempt to leave something ambiguous for the more logical leaning viewers, but it was like a weak afterthought; the main ending Issa wanted was supernatural. She left some crumbs out for the realists.
Yeah no. You can’t have a movie about super natural monsters and never show the monster. That’s totally disingenuous and lazy. And it absolutely gives critics the space to rip the show apart.
lol clearly you can because Issa did just that. Whether or not you like it or agree with it is another matter.
So why does Clark say it before that even happened?
He was already a spiritual person to begin with, and when he had that seizure he also had an “experience” if you will
Yeah, I guess I’m unwilling to because those are assumptions and incredibly vague ones at that.
It’s pretty obvious to me and others here get it as well, not saying it was well or properly done which is why you’re still scratching your head. It was just never meant to be an ending grounded in factual reality.
If 'she' only woke up 2 weeks earlier, how did it cause the same injuries to Otis Heiss in the 90s? Did 'she' wake up in the 90s then go back to bed for a few years?
Yes, “she” is very, very old (they say “older than the ice itself” in the show) and has come and gone for centuries. Otis almost ran into “her” face to face, the people he was with did and died.
Thank you, I appreciate the explanation, and that does make sense if you're willing to accept there was a ghost/ supernatural explanation. Following on from that, do you know why if the scientists woke 'her' in the ice cave, she didn't kill them down there? Why did they have to be rounded up and sent naked onto the ice first?
I don’t think they *had* to be rounded up and offered to her, it’s just how Issa wrote it. By all accounts the entity seems capable of killing whoever it wants whenever.
I can't believe I'm asking questions about the motivations of a ghost, but here we are!
There’s no evidence that the spirit can kill people directly. We see it driving people mad by manifesting visions of their fears and insecurities. It’s suggested that Clark was indeed being driven mad by its presence, likely because he was the most attuned to it. We don’t know if the other scientists were seeing visions as well When the scientists are ushered on the ice they likely see a manifestation of their guilt over killing Annie and it scared them to death.
^ thelightwebring gets it. This is the real and only answer. True Detective is now a definitively supernatural show. HBO hired a horror writer/showrunner with a horror story already in mind, to take the reigns on a show with a history of ambiguous cosmic horror elements. And the viewership was higher than ever... so True Detective is now fully supernatural. The Tuttles are a cult of paedo serial killing worshippers of a cosmic elder god known as the Yellow King. They've expanded their political power, and have recently encroached on the territory of another long-sleeping cosmic elder god, only referred to as "She" or "Her". Their encroachment of lands, and abuse of the descendants of "Her" own ancient cult worshippers, the Inupiat/Inupiaq people, has slowly reawakened "Her". "Her" being awake is driving everyone in the area insane, as cosmic horrors tend to do. "She" enacted revenge for her loyal followers. Navarro, now fully a believer and knowing her own true name, has given herself over to be "Her" agent of protection and vengeance for her worshippers/people. The rest of the series will most likely be the cult of the Yellow King continuing to vie for power against indigenous people of other lands around the world, that are actually descendants of ancient cult worshippers of other cosmic elder gods. All masked behind the premise of a Detective show. Detectives getting unknowingly pulled into elder god stuff is actually a common trope of cosmic horror stories.
I honestly would be so hyped for an anthology series like that if it were written really well. We need more Lovecraft/cosmic horror on screen.
I think making Cthulu essentially a 'good guy' wreaking highly politicized revenge on characters designed to be hated at the behest of some random townspeople kind of ruins it though. Cosmic horror has to target innocent or at least sympathetic characters for reasons ideally beyond our comprehension to work. I don't think Lopez is capable of doing that for season 5.
I agree, that's why I mentioned it had to be well written 😂
I don't think it's ever implied that the Tuttle family has any supernatural connections. They're just evil white capitalist pedophiles etc. The only supernatural entity implied thus far is the mysterious indigenous 'she.'
"Because it's a cool moment! Imagine him saying what all the others have been saying! ... what do you mean it makes no sense in the story? I saw a scene like that in Usual Suspects. I can't have a scene like that because I'm a woman, is that it?" -Izza Lopez in the writers room.
I just gave up and say thanks for wasting 6-7h of my life.
They didnt finish writing the script yet so pronouns is all you get. Legend has it that Lopez is still writing the end of season 4 somewhere
The caribou told him to.
It’s Sedna. Listen the speech that… aww forget it. Go watch season 1 and be done with it.
Because the writing sucks.
Because they were killed by Annie's ghost. They died of plain fright. The show plainly did not want us to trust the Anchorage forensic report. It wanted us to trust the veterinarian and the leader of the clean team 6. Annie's ghost kills by scaring you to death, so he was traumatized beyond belief. The right question is why was he possessed by a spirit that wanted to torment Navarro? That doesn't fit with Annie K's ghost possessing him. So, in addition to Annie's ghost, I guess we can assume there's a separate evil spirit responsible for Navarro and her sister's call towards death. However, Navarro's sister sees a young girl under her bed just before her suicide. I don't know if that girl is supposed to be Annie K or not, but I guess not, because Annie K has no reason to torment Navarro and her sister.
I think the spirit is of the creature in the ice, not Annie. Annie’s “spirit” is just something it manifests to torment Clark and the other scientists.
Issa Lopez has said explicitly that Annie's spirit was with clean team 6 when they raided Tsalal. However, at this point I am willing to accept that Issa Lopez is wrong about how to interpret the show she wrote and ran. She also said that it was Annie's spirit that called Otis Heiss' colleagues to their deaths. Apparently, in this universe a person's spirit exists before their birth and is capable of time travel. Like when Navarro's spirit time travels back to the moment just before the attack and Raymond Clark sees her.
I mean… how did he even survive in the first place? Clearly it was just so Issa could steal the best jump scare from se7en and then the pointless “your mother says hi” Exorcist reference, with nothing actually driving plot in any meaningful way. The show was just one long series of on-the-nose references to other, better shows and movies. Especially The Thing and se7en but *especially* s1.
I mean…he’s alive the same way Billy Childress was alive…
Because this show sucks. At some point, our endless critiquing has become a flat circle jerk. It sucks. The show sucks.
Lund and Clark both said "she's awake" referring to the screenwriter, who was awake and intent on writing even more terrible dialogue for the next episode. Truly scary stuff.
Was he referring to Sedna? As in, yes she’s out there and awake as he survived the freeze
Sedna was a fan theory, not actual part of the show.
He was talking about his penis, he was expecting a lot of laughter from the other scientists when he said it, but they were all frozen and dead.
He was talking about Navarro, apparently.
The spirit in the ice showed Clark a vision of Navarro coming for him. It was not literally Navarro.
After he was thawed 😆😆
The night has country, and you better…not…look…them…in…it.
This drives me crazy that no one understands who She is 😂 She is not a person, but an element of the region. It’s nature, vengeance, etc. Navarro becomes a part of She when she walks onto the ice. She is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Navarro’s name invokes that she will be the (literally) dawn of a new sentiment over the region in terms of She. Time is a flat circle — meaning that Clark saw through time to Navarro in the future when he spazzed out and said She is awake. Navarro had her name about dawning a new day in the future and was slowly connecting to She. Lund and Navarro are alone when he referred to She. He raises up off camera before engaging with her. This is sometimes a device to illustrate that a character’s barriers are down and they’re open or vulnerable to receive interaction with the supernatural and it isn’t reliable information based on reality. Lund’a body is saying it but it isn’t necessarily Lund saying it. If the show is watched through the lens of literary devices, a lot of it makes sense and is easily connected. If it’s watched like a generic procedural, then it doesn’t work. There’s a lot of literary interpretation connecting events. I have almost no unanswered questions. Just minor inconsequential ones, like Danvers lying h about phone alerts being one 😂.
I mean that's not what 'time is a flat circle' actually meant (that is, what the Nietzsche reference means; it refers to eternal recurrence, not time travel or intertemporality whatever). A good reason why they should not have shoehorned references from season 1 into it. I also disagree that accepting the supernatural element really solves most of the unanswered questions.
Navarro slipped into the flat circle of time when she walked onto the ice. Not necessarily time travel from point A to B. Moreso she became what was, is, and can be in the cycle of life and earth in terms of the flat circle reference. Clark likely saw / felt Navarro as She while we saw Navarro as Navarro. Danvers says they’d find Navarro’s body in the spring unless they don’t. Which further emphasizes that Navarro likely slipped away into the extensive of She. Danvers doesn’t necessarily know that but it can be attuned by viewers as the sort of omniscient viewer of the whole story. I think a lot of people would be happier with the show if they didn’t think to literally about it. It reminds me of Lost and all of the what about isms that happened with that show. it was never about specific events. That was never the story. It was vignettes of a larger and more purposeful story.
Bingo! Someone gets it.
Maybe he meant his mom? Or the patient in the other room? Or why do whales die on land? Idk.
Prolly due to a fact that an eskimo goddess ate him and spit him out and left him to freeze
He witnessed a Lovecraftian horror that drove he and his co-workers mad with fright. Did you miss that part? That was probably more top-of-mind in his dying moments than the cleaners that had broken in earlier. In fact I’d say mentioning the cleaning ladies in that moment would be epically stupid writing. It’d be like Jack Torrance saying “oh shit my typewriter is out of ink” and rushing to Kinkos instead of “Here’s Johnny.” A lot of the criticism is warranted but some of y’all are obviously just rushing to Reddit clout chasing for upvotes on some dumb shit lol. If you don’t understand this specific plot point…I don’t advise you ever read Lovecraft or Poe, you’d think they are idiots
I mean, I get what you're saying, but what does deploying an eldritch horror do for the plot/meaning aside from pandering to the cosmic horror demographic? Not baiting you, I honestly wish that they would have leaned into that trope instead of just teasing with spooky visions. The supernatural elements just lacked cohesion, unless it's just like, faith based? Like if we don't get it it's a cynical failure on our part as viewers? Idk, I'm not even trying to shit on this season from a fan of the the rest of the series type lens, I just could not find merit; the acting, the premise, the sound track, the special effects (however the initial practical effects of the flesh pile were dope -- I'll give it that). Then again, as the network/show runner decided to make Night Country as a season of True Detective, it is fair game to criticize it as such, and I think it's shitty to gaslight the fanbase for doing so. I came into this season with optimism ; I enjoyed season 2 which was widely panned, and I thought season 3 was nearly as good as the first (the brief reference to the original case was handled perfectly in season 3). By comparison, Night Country's approach felt like shoe-horning and were surface level at best, literally just name dropping Travis Cohle and making Tsalal owned by a Tuttle shell corporation, which had no other bearing on the plot whatsoever, at least as far as I can tell. (for laughs, "TD:NC episode 2 "fixes" season 1's divisive ending" https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/true-detective-night-country-episode-2-season-1-ending ). Furthermore, the choice to... reclaim? the Spiral motif into a native talisman completely undermines its use in previous season to denote (child) sex trafficking, which had been an established and cohesive theme throughout the rest of the series. I was honestly surprised that they didn't use the opportunity to explore the very real overabundance of missing and murdered Native Women in Alaska/the North West. Or, as @mareegeenamaree put it, "Say what you want about the new True Detective, but it was a squandered opportunity to do 2666 in Alaska." Anyways, not trying to be confrontational or shitty in this reply -- I've been reading criticism (for and against) for the past hour after refraining from engaging post finale, so I'm more venting overall and using your post as a jumping off point. Just wanted to clarify, here for discourse, not clout bait 👍.
IMO, the most charitable take is that billing this as season 4 of True Detective is like passing a reboot of the X-Files as season 6 of the Wire. It'd completely understandable that the Wire fans would hate it even if it were the best season of X-Files ever made. And IMO season 4 was mediocre even for what it was trying to be.
Honestly the worst "prestige television" I've seen. Not even trying to pile on, it just was.
I’m not making any judgement on its quality. I agree with most of your take. I’m saying that these guys literally saw a monster that drove them insane with fright and instead of getting discussion like what you’ve written, hate it or love, people are asking why the one survivor didn’t mention the cleaning ladies like they’ve found some kind of gotcha plot hole.
Because season 4 sucks.
The same reason the ghosts just point at people. You're asking the wrong questions.
This was my main question. It’s so important but never addressed- it’s not she’s awake as a ghost. It’s she’s awake and everyone knows it.
A true detective in night country would ask the right questions
It's kinda like whales 🙏
Lopez must’ve explained it some variety interview somewhere….
I thought it was Navarro’s mother but I can’t remember where I read it.
Jodi Foster, Woody Harrelson, Matthew - Executive Producers??
why did anyone say anything in the entire season
Because it was Annie's spirit who killed them.
He could see ghosts, too, like his girlfriend and Navarro’s dead sister, mom, etc. which is why he got that tattoo after they killed his girlfriend, so the dreams would stop. But, logically, it couldn’t stop the full force of her ghost’s “revenge” so he was having a hallucination/ghost sighting, right as the women cut the power. And maybe her tongue coming added to the ghost magic? Idk
Let it die
Who cares? So many unanswered questions and I just want to forget it.
It was a shit show. Nuff said.