If ever there was a series that could afford to make a huge swing in the finale, this is it True Detective: Nightland. Finally, HBO’s fourth season Real detective The central mystery of the series involved a group of scientists who were all killed at the same time, their frozen bodies discovered together in the tundra. And those same scientists Remained frozen, their giant block of ice remained cool in the city’s community center. They called it a ‘little body!’ That’s wild in the best way: absurd, creepy and chilling.
For six weeks, Night country Made us wonder what on earth could have caused this terror on such a massive scale. Which is why it’s incredibly disappointing that the reveal of the scientists’ fate felt like the easiest possible solution, lacking the creative spirit that permeated the first five episodes.
What’s especially frustrating is that it felt that way in Sunday’s 75-minute finale Night country built something spectacular. Revelations came quickly as Detectives Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) and Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) tried to figure out what happened to the scientists, while trying to uncover the truth behind the gruesome death of Annie K., an Indigenous woman. track down. whose murder was never solved. They discovered the truth about Annie: she was killed by the scientists after she started attacking their research. But what on earth happened to the scientists?
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When they noticed a unique handprint with just three fingers, it led to a surprising discovery: there was a much simpler explanation for the scientists’ deaths than they thought. When they went to the home of Blair (Kathryn Wilder), the three-fingered woman, they discovered the truth: a group of native women discovered that the scientists had killed Annie and took it upon themselves to avenge her death. They stormed the research center, forced them to strip naked and took them into the frozen wilderness where they would inevitably freeze to death. The show treated this revelation as a girl-power revenge story, which would be much more interesting if Night country had done everything in the previous five episodes to lay the groundwork for it. But that didn’t happen.
Instead, this final twist made the show become a victim of its own success. A giant ice block of dead scientists was a fantastic, unforgettable invention, encouraging us to wonder what happened to them, and perhaps most importantly, who or what was responsible. But that meant the show created a lot of expectations for itself that would be difficult to achieve in just six episodes. Perhaps an escape was to be expected; You can’t possibly please everyone, so why please anyone at all? When they confessed to their crimes, the women made vague suggestions that there was a ghost that killed the scientists once they were left in the ice. But even that potentially fascinating nugget was delivered with a grin and followed by, “It’s just a story.” Uhm.
Liz’s reaction is the bigger problem. It made sense that Evangeline would be willing to overlook the truth of the murders, given her longstanding frustrations with the police and the reality that she is desperate to find those responsible for Annie’s murder so she can frame them for the crime. can bring justice. And since the women killed the scientists who killed Annie, Evangeline viewed the scientists’ deaths as the conclusion of the case that tormented her. Her turning a blind eye and her eventual dismissal from the police completed her journey in a satisfying way.
But how are we to believe that someone like Liz, who we knew was so dedicated to her job, would let an entire group of killers escape in Ennis? Sure, we’d seen evidence that Liz wasn’t following every letter of the law; she allowed Evangeline to kill Clark and helped her make a past murder look like a suicide. But that simply didn’t feel like enough to convince us that Liz would let a confession pass without hesitation. She was not one to forgive major transgressions, but her tacit acceptance of this revelation went against everything we had come to know about her. Worse, such a quick unmasking was an incredibly convenient bow to shroud what we thought was an extremely complex mystery.
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If anything, it would have made more sense if Liz had initially dismissed the findings – given the entire group of women staring menacingly at her – and reported the truth once she was in a safe environment to do so. She narrowly escaped death the night she discovered what happened to the scientists, so it seemed reasonable not to want to arrest a number of people hours later. But in the next scene we jumped ahead and saw Liz talking to investigators. Despite their (understandable) curiosity and questions, Liz couldn’t muster much more than: “Some questions just don’t have answers.” That nod to ambiguity would was a great ending Night country continued to lean on his harrowing unknowable affairs. But since we just discovered there was nothing mysterious about the deaths, it came off as if the show was trying to have its cake and eat it too.
The end result was a shocking last-minute change for our protagonist. She had a track record of saying some pretty nasty things about Native people throughout the series, and she had a rocky relationship (to say the least) with her Native stepdaughter. Liz also had a difficult relationship with Evangeline; at first it was pretty clear that they despised each other. They finally came to terms in the finale, but it still didn’t feel like enough growth to warrant Liz doing a complete 180, putting aside all her deeply held prejudices for the sake of girl power.
Revealing that there was no extraterrestrial element in the scientists’ deaths is at odds with the show’s own interests. If the supernatural elements were simply dropped in the last 15 minutes of the season, why lean on them so heavily in the previous five and a half episodes? Night country was full of things that cannot be explained. It’s a shame, then, that the show, instead of delving into its own universe, chose to end with a shrug.
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