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True Detective: Night Country’s sixth and final episode gave us answers in the Annie K. case and about the Tsalal scientists — and yes, they might have some of the same answers.
Sunday’s finale opens with Danvers and Navarro chopping a hole in the ice to find an entrance to the ice caves. They walk through a corridor lined with gleaming walls of ice, and they both seem to hear voices as they get deeper inside. (“You feel it too, don’t you?” Navarro asks Danvers.) Navarro leads them down a narrow crevasse, convinced this is the right path — and falls through the floor, landing in another passage. Danvers falls, too, and they’re soon face-to-face with… Raymond Clark! They chase after him and find a secret subterranean science lab with a weird animal skeleton in the shape of a spiral on the ceiling. They also find a ladder that leads to a hatch that opens up inside the Tsalal lab.
While Peter cleans up the evidence and stuffs the dead bodies of his dad Hank and Otis Heiss into his truck, Danvers and Navarro search the lab for Clark with guns drawn. Danvers walks into a sealed specimen freezer, and Clark locks her inside. Then he clocks Navarro with a fire extinguisher, knocking her out cold. Danvers yanks off a long handle and smashes through the freezer door to free herself, but by the time she arrives to save Navarro, she’s already awake and pounding Clark bloody. They tie him up and interrogate him, and he doesn’t want to talk at first, but he admits he did love Annie. So Navarro grabs her phone, puts the video of Annie’s last moments alive on a loop and tapes headphones to Clark’s ears, making him listen over and over again until he talks.
Leah shows up at Danvers’ place just as Peter is finishing cleaning up, and he offers her a ride over to Kayla’s so he can go see his family. Once there, Kayla gets into his truck and demands to know what’s going on. He can’t tell her, he says, but he asks her to understand: “I have to do something… I’m fixing it now.” Back at the lab, Danvers and Navarro fix themselves a snack before going back to Clark and asking him if he was there when Annie was killed. “Not at first,” he begins, explaining that he and the other scientists were digging in the permafrost for DNA from a microorganism that could potentially save the world. They could get it, too, but only because the pollution from the mine helped soften the permafrost. In fact, they pushed the mine to create more pollution to help their research. Annie found out and started smashing up their lab equipment, and Clark heard her screaming, running down to find Anders stabbing her to death to stop her. The other men joined in, with Clark finally finishing her off in a mercy suffocation.
Annie set their research back two years, Clark says, but Navarro reminds him they stabbed her 32 times and cut out her tongue. He didn’t cut out her tongue, though, Clark insists, so Hank must’ve done that when he moved Annie’s body. An enraged Navarro pulls out her gun and points it at Clark, and Danvers leaves the room to let her pull the trigger. She doesn’t, though, leaving him alive — although we learn that Navarro shot William Wheeler in cold blood after arriving at that crime scene. Clark thinks the ghost of Annie killed the Tsalal scientists: “I knew she’d come back.” When the lights went out in the lab, he locked himself inside the underground lab, sealing the hatch and holding it closed, even while someone (or something) pounded on it. Annie was in the caves “before she was born, after we all die,” he rants. “Time is a flat circle, and we are all stuck in it.” (Gee, that sounds familiar.)
Danvers warns Navarro not to let Clark sleep before grabbing some rest of her own. But she wakes up to find the power out and snow coming in from outside, with Navarro standing by Clark’s body outside after he walked into the snow and took his own life. Now they’re trapped by a blizzard in a freezing lab with no power, and Navarro has visions of a dead body while Danvers hallucinates a hubcap rolling down the hallway. Is the madness getting to them? They huddle together by a fire for warmth, and Navarro tells Danvers she had a vision of her dead son Holden, the little boy with the stuffed polar bear. Danvers snaps at her: “You leave my kid out of it! Or I will rip you apart. I am not merciful. You understand? I’ve got no mercy left.” That night, Navarro has another vision that leads her to walk out onto the ice (and finally learn her true Native name), and when Danvers tries to bring her back, she falls through the ice, flailing helplessly in the frigid water until Navarro reaches in to pull her back to the surface.
While Peter takes the dead bodies to Rose, who helps him slide them into the ice, Navarro nurses a shivering Danvers back to life by the fire. Danvers has visions of the car wreck that killed Holden, and when Navarro tells her to keep breathing like she’s blowing out a birthday candle, she sees Holden blowing out candles on his own cake. Danvers finally wakes up, asking Navarro what Holden told her. “He says that he sees you. He sees you, Liz,” Navarro tells her, sending Danvers into sobs. The blizzard finally ends, and Danvers tenderly tells Navarro that if she ever does disappear, like she said she wanted to, “try to come back, OK?” But then Danvers has a moment of inspiration, pouring chemicals on the top of the hatch and looking at it with a UV light. She can see handprints, including one with two missing fingers — like Blair, the abused girlfriend who worked at the seafood processing plant at the start of the season. A-ha! “We weren’t asking the right question,” Danvers declares.
They head to the home of Beatrice, the old woman who worked at the plant and also cleaned the Tsalal lab, and Blair is there, too. Beatrice found evidence that the men at the lab killed Annie K. when she discovered the hatch while cleaning, and she knew the cops wouldn’t do anything about a dead Native woman. So “we told ourselves a different story, with a different ending.” She and the other women stormed into the lab with guns, taking the scientists hostage, all except for Clark, who escaped down the hatch. They herded the men into a truck at gunpoint, drove them out onto the ice, had them strip naked and walk out into the cold — and let Annie’s ghost decide what to do with them. “I guess she wanted to take them,” Beatrice decides, but “it’s just a story.” More women stand behind her as she asks what happens next, and Danvers says they just came by to inform her that the scientists died due to a slab avalanche — and the case is now closed. (Oh, and they claim they didn’t put Annie’s tongue in the lab. So maybe Annie did that herself?)
Danvers later testifies about Hank’s disappearance, telling the cops that Otis Heiss’ body was found in Hank’s trunk and theorizing it was a drug deal gone bad, with Hank suffering some kind of accident. They ask her about Clark dying the same way that the Tsalal men did, and she concedes it’s odd, but: “Some questions just don’t have answers.” They ask her what happened to Navarro, and we see Danvers going to Navarro’s place and just finding a bare mattress with a stuffed polar bear on it. She also found a phone with video of Raymond Clark making a full confession about the mine’s pollution and how it caused the cancer and stillbirths in the Native community. The mine was later shut down, and she claims not to know Navarro’s whereabouts, but “I don’t think you’ll find Evangeline Navarro out there on the ice.” Then we see her and Leah driving and laughing together, and Danvers standing on a patio and looking out on a picturesque lake — where she’s joined by Navarro. “This is Ennis,” she tells the cops. “Nobody ever really leaves.”
True Detective: Night Country‘s case is officially closed, but what did you think of the finale? Give it — and the season — a grade in our polls, and then hit the comments to give us your thoughts.
Great Season! Loved the unique setting they chose for this story and how the characters dealt with it. I hope it can be renewed to see more different anthologies arcs!
Me too.
I thought Issa Lopez, her team, and actors did a great job this season despite the circumstances of being the first season without Nic Pizzolatto’s involvement. They balanced to make a great unique story and also create some nice connections to previous seasons. Nic Pizzolatto talked mess about this season, but in all honesty it’s like he gave up on the show because he could never top season 1, and I think he was just mad that HBO moved on without him and this new season was getting people excited again for True Detective than Season 2 or 3 ever did.
Those men got what they deserved. I cried seeing what they did to Annie.
Glad the plant got shut down
Happy Danvers got her happy ending and hope Navarro does too, I think she’s off discovering her native roots.
Really enjoyed this season. The main characters were all compelling and so was the setting. I only had watched the first season prior to this and wasn’t hooked. This hooked me. I wish we had a bit more of Pryor in the last episode I felt like his storyline got dropped a bit. The end of Navarro was the only thing I didn’t enjoy. It was too amibigous. I felt like after she learned her native name and had the answer of Annie K she had found peace but apparently not. Felt bad for the guy who clearly loved her.
Awesome article. You are a very good author. It was a pleasure to read.
You’re doing great. It was a pleasure to read. Awesome article.
Jodie Foster was the only reason I stuck with this. The finale was rushed, the answers to mysteries unsatisfying. Then there’s the whole supernatural angle they just abandoned and the forced references to Season 1 were mind-boggling. An orange peel?!
The supernatural element didn’t disappear. It was in the finale. Navarro accepted her rebirth, the sun emerging from the darkness. She’s connected to the spirits. Danvers still hasn’t processed her son’s death. Hears him. Feels him. When she nearly dies and Navarro tells her what her son said, it’s a spiritual release she needed. She released the anger and finally learned to live again and be happy. The orange peel was all about Navarro’s mom. Danvers was peeling the orange and didn’t make it all the way around. It was clear she was trying to do it like Navarro said her mom did. The shape, well that was the central theme of the show. We don’t know if Annie K killed those men or not but those men believed she was after them.
True Detective: Night Country was by far the best TV Series! I couldn’t wait from week to week to see what happens next. I hope it wins all awards ! Loved the 2 main ladies characters Danvers and Navarro…….those 2 ladies were so smart along with young Pete. Great cast, great show!
Danvers’ Hawaii mug at the end made me chuckle.
And her struggling with trying to turn “Twist & Shout” off was pretty funny, too! 😁
The first season was the only good season of this show, but I’m glad some of you enjoyed this.
The first True Detective had me on the edge of my seat and was easy to follow. But ever since, it seems like each season gets more convoluted and hard to follow, as if useless straying into other mini storylines are more important than the original crime.
1-3-4-2
Boy, am I glad that I quit this season after about three episodes, now that I’ve read this recap. What a waste of time.
This was my favorite season! I never really got the hype about S1, but I thought they nailed this. Great finale.
what a total waste of money and time this season was. even the writers knew it wasnot good enough, that’s why they only made 6 episodes. but honestly, the whole story could be told in one hour. what is the point of adding extra hours getting to know characters, when they are so superficially constructed and have a one-line story anyway?