‘True Detective’ Season 3 Episode 5 Recap: “If You Have Ghosts”

When Episode 4 of True Detective Season 3 ended with Brett Woodard’s door being kicked in toward a Claymore mine, a resulting boom, and a sudden blackout, I assumed that this episode would reopen into the existing chaos. After all, Season 1 gave us that series-defining six minute single take in Episode 4, and following another (staged) shoot out in Episode 5, the central suspect Reggie Ledoux was dead. But as it turns out, despite all its surface-level similarities to Season 1, the story of Detective Wayne Hays’ lifelong investigation into the Purcell case is giving us a different kind of story entirely.

Episode 5 doesn’t open with the shootout. Instead, it unravels as a play on memory: how the present is warped by the past, is warped by the further past, is decided by the future…and so on. The shootout and its aftermath are certainly featured, but the most exhilarating thrusts of episode 5 come with sorting through language and time: the way that words can be defined and redefined over time, revealing new definitions as the dust of years passed obstruct and recolor them….

And most importantly, Old Man Wayne finally comes face-to-prosthetic-face with Old Man Roland. So let’s get that pesky shootout out of the way so we can get to those much more exciting old men and word clues, shall we?

The moment the head-hillbilly-in-charge kicks Brett Woodard’s door in, his body is decimated, exploding out onto Wayne Hays, Roland West, the two FBI agents who accompanied them, and the other locals who came rolling up to a bomb fight armed with shotguns.

The barrel of Woodard’s gun bursts through a window and begins shooting, seemingly with abandon; it might be easy to miss the two shots that hit just in front of Wayne Hays, but they’re why Woodard tells him later: “I never miss unless I mean to.”

So, the locals Woodard shoots dead out front? On purpose. The next batch he gets with a rigged grenade in the back? On purpose. The two FBI agents he takes down? Seemingly unplanned, but intentional nonetheless. That shot Roland takes in the leg. Definitely on purpose. And Wayne making it through the combination of bullets and explosions mostly unharmed—an intentional sparing by Woodard, a fellow Vietnam vet, and maybe a little luck too.

Wayne approaches Woodard from behind, telling him to put down the gun. Wayne asks to return the favor of not shooting him by letting him walk Woodard out of there unharmed. But Woodard has other plans; he tells Hays that he’s going to count to three, then blow him away. The second Woodard starts to turn around, Wayne puts a bullet in his head.

That’s the memory Wayne is reflecting on in 1990, when Tom Purcell walks into the station. He was coming to let Roland know that the Attorney General wants him to go on TV to talk about Julie’s reappearance, but he didn’t plan on seeing photos of his wife Lucy’s dead body pinned to the investigation board, nor the surveillance camera photo that Wayne believes to be grown-up Julie. Tom doesn’t handle it well, but he pulls it together to go on TV and plead with Julie to get in touch with the police: “I love you forever Julie—we just want to know that you’re okay, and for you to know that you can come home.” Attorney General Gerald Kent and his lackeys stand right behind him; Roland and Wayne, off to the side observing. That’s when Alan Jones approaches behind the reporters.

We’ve heard from the very beginning of the season that in the 1990 timeline that Alan is representing the children of the man convicted for the crimes against the Purcell children, and now we understand that conviction to be a posthumous one, and those children to be…

“David and Josie Woodard want their father’s name cleared,” Alan calls out once Tom is done speaking. “We all understand the violence Brett Woodard committed, and view it as the reaction of a man persecuted by the violence of others,” Alan tells the listening press. “We contend that his posthumous conviction was fraudulent and a significant dereliction of duty on the part of the prosecuting attorney’s office.” The tact of Alan’s guerilla takeover of Tom Purcell’s press conference is up for debate, but the accusation that the prosecution didn’t put much effort into exploring all the evidence proves throughout the episode to hold plenty of water.

The investigating detectives made a few questionable decisions too, as we’re reminded when West and Hays visit Freddy Burns all grown up in 1990. It soon becomes clear though that 10 years hasn’t been long enough for Freddy to forget how Wayne treated him (“shit-heeled twerp” and threats of prison rape ringing any bells?). But Wayne isn’t there to make apologies; he and Roland are there to see if there’s any new information to wring from Freddy’s memories of the night Will was killed and Julie went missing.

Though he’s reluctant in telling them much about the past he’s tried to forget, the detectives catch something in Freddy’s recollection of the night he saw Will at Devil’s Den: “He was all nervous, like, ‘I can’t find my sister, I don’t know where they went.”

THEY. While Wayne dwells on being called out for his inappropriate interrogation tactics by a former teenager, Roland correctly concludes that the need to re-run the prints found on the Purcell children’s secret toys from 1980 and see if they can figure out the “they” Will might have been referring. But when Wayne digs out all the old pieces of evidence from the Purcell case later, the fingerprints are gone…and no one seems to know where they are.

Needless to say, things do not seem to be going so well for 1990 Wayne Hays. Even though he’s back in the field as a detective like he wanted, that field seems to involve a lot of unnecessary smoking and hours away from home. He does at least look like a stone cold fox in a caramel sweater and leather bomber jacket (yes, these are important details when you consider that they’re on Mahershala Ali, a bonafide expert clothes-wearer) when he and Amelia arrive at Roland’s house for dinner in 1990. However, things quickly go downhill following the removal of the bomber jacket…

Roland has apparently been dating Laurie, the woman who we saw him meet at St. Michaels church, on and off for the last 10 years. They all chat amiably at the dinner table until Amelia asks about the Purcell case; per usual, Roland plays it cool while Wayne bristles like a porcupine. But Wayne has some motivating forces behind the intensity: he’s grown impatient with Amelia’s constant investigations into the case, and as we soon find out, the last straw was last week’s reveal that she told a Salisaw detective that her ex-husband was a police officer.

After dinner, Wayne and Amelia return home for what’s become one of their signature verbal brawls. The thing about the Hays’ relationship that’s revealed with brighter and brighter clarity each week is that these are two people who know how to hurt each other in deep and distinct ways. After confronting her about Salisaw, Amelia says Wayne just wants to control her because he’s mad she’s not content to simply sit at home making house. He says that she lifts herself up on others’ bad luck: “I think you use people. Like we’re all stories to you, and you use them to make yourself bigger than us.”

She says the he’s using the case to avoid home; he says she’s never gotten him right; she says he’s never gotten himself right; and so on and so forth until Henry and Becca come downstairs because Becca doesn’t feel well. Wayne and Amelia quickly go into loving-parent mode—part of that seems to be continuing to try and love each other. “What do we not?” Becca asks her parents, prompting a Hays family saying.

“We do not say goodnight without I-love-yous,” Wayne and Amelia say together. “I love you.”

The whole family gets in bed to read The Jungle Book, and it makes for a quaint scene…riiiight up until the ghosts and hallucinations start. As they read in 1990, we see 2015 Wayne walking around his dark house becoming confused, asking out loud where his family is. He opens the door to his former bedroom with Amelia, and it’s as though he sees the whole family in the bed reading. In 1990, it’s as though Wayne sees the bedroom door opened by his future self…

As Amelia continues reading in 1990, Wayne looks out the window and sees himself looking just as he did after his shot Brett Woodard in the head in 1980.

Past. Present. Future. All combining to create one story and one very unreliable narrator. In 2015, Wayne sits at his desk, reading Amelia’s first book about the Purcell case and hearing her voice in his head: “There surely exists an area of the soul where grief is indistinguishable from madness. Standing above the children’s things, she wept.” We know that Amelia is describing her informative—then quickly disastrous—encounter with Lucy Purcell from last week. The one where she said, “Children should laugh…there wasn’t much laughter around here.”

As Wayne reads, a look of recognition falls over his often confused face. He digs in his files for the not-ransom note from the Purcell’s house: “CHILDREN SHUD LAUGH.” And then he says what might be my favorite line of the series: “The fuck?”

Perhaps these connections were missed in 1980 because there was so much else to be distracted by. Wayne frets outside of Roland’s operating room as he has surgery on the bullet wound in his leg, and when Amelia arrives desperate to comfort him, he pushes her away. But she persists, telling him they should go somewhere and get him cleaned up. He finally looks at her…very slowly. Amelia takes Wayne back to her apartment and they disrobe wordlessly. Sex is as thorough a distraction from the present for these two in the past as it will be in the future, it seems.

Though Wayne’s late hours and frazzled mind aren’t boding well for his marriage in 1990, endless staring at the murder wall of clues and the public announcement that Julie Purcell may be alive are at least yielding a few discoveries.

First, a man comes forward saying that he recognizes the girl in the surveillance photo from a crew of runaways he used to hang around with. He says she called herself Mary July, and she seemed a little nutty—like she was on drugs even though he never saw her use any. “Like she couldn’t ever get straight on what year it was,” he tells the detectives. “Tell some story like she a secret princess or something … a princess from ‘the pink rooms.'” Any True Detective fan knows to be on the lookout for the mention of all color-related royalty, but Hays and West are much more distracted by the kid’s reveal that this Mary July said she had lost a brother.

Roland seems hesitant to jump to any conclusions, but Wayne is sure Mary July is Julie Purcell. In 2015, he tells Elisa the documentarian that they spent the next few days talking to runaways and working girls all over the area but either nobody knew anything, or they wouldn’t tell them. “Were you aware that one of the officers who processed the Woodard scene, Harris James, went missing in 1990 during the second investigation?” Elisa asks. If Wayne ever knew about Harris James, we can’t be sure yet, but it doesn’t register with him at all in 2015.

But in 1990, we see Wayne working on an investigative thread that certainly involves Harris James and the crew who processed the shootout aftermath at Woodard’s house. Because that’s where Harris’ team found the a sweater of Julie Purcell’s in an outdoor fire pace and Will’s red backpack stashed underneath the porch. But there’s a little more to it than that…

As Wayne stares at the wall of Woodard-related clues, brow furrowed, he rips down a photo of the red backpack and the exploded porch, marches over to West’s office, and slaps the photos down. “It’s planted, it’s bullshit” he exclaims. Since Woodard was dead, no one looked too hard for another culprit, but if they had, they might have noticed that while the entire porch and surrounding area were a bloody, ashy mess, the backpack found just under it was in pristine condition. Processing the scene took three days—plenty of time to plant some false evidence. But while Roland is starting to think of how to move forward with the information, a much more complicated discovery presents itself.

In the next scene, Tom Purcell, West, Hays, and a number of people on the other side of a two-way mirror including A.G. Gerald Kent listen to a call that came in on the hotline the night before. It’s a caller who starts off, “You’re looking for me, I saw on the television.” From there, it’s best to quote the caller claiming to be Julie Purcell directly, because any word—any pause, and intonation—could be a clue.

“I saw him on the television. Leave alone, make him leave me alone.” The officer on the phone asks if she has information about Julie Purcell. “No, that’s not my real name.” The officer asks her real name. “Tell him to leave me alone! I know what he did.” Who? “The man on TV acting like my father!” Can she say where she’s calling from. “Where’s my brother, Will? I don’t know what he did with him.” What who did with him? “We left him resting.” If she tells them where she is, they can protect her. “No you won’t, you work for him. Tell him to leave me alone! He took me and I’m never coming back. Just leave me alone.”

It’s hard to keep up with all the male pronouns the caller is throwing around, but Tom’s heartbroken reaction to being accused of “acting like [Julie’s] father” would not suggest he’s the “he” that took Julie. Lieutenant West’s pained reaction, however, suggests that he can’t necessarily rule that out as a possibility.

And finally, the Woodard shootout may not have ended being the set piece I assumed it would be, but maybe that’s because they were saving the real showdown for last.

In 2015, Henry Hays takes his father to see Roland West, and Old Man Wayne finally meets up with Old Man Roland (both in probably the best old man makeup to ever come across our screens, not to mention the old man performances of Stephen Dorff and Ali). Wayne can’t believe that his social, dog-hating former partner would live in a cabin in the woods with a kennel full of furry companions. But a lot seems to have changed in the 24 years since Wayne last saw Roland…even if he has no idea that it’s been that long. Inside, Henry warns Roland that his father will be a little shaky remember things. “He remember why I’m pissed at him?”

He most certainly does not! Once on the porch with some spiked coffee, Wayne immediately brings up the documentary and how Elisa seems to want everything to come back on them. “Everything?” Roland asks. “Like killing a man?” Roland doesn’t seem to be thrilled to be talking about the case, but he’s definitely not pleased to hear that his memory-impaired former partner is talking to a camera about a case that clearly revolves around a number of big secrets: “How you gonna talk to these people when we done what we done? You don’t know what you might say…or might remember.”

Wayne tells Roland about his discovery about the not-ransom note, saying he thinks Lucy wrote the note because she was trying to make Tom feel better. “So what if she did?” Roland responds after a while. “We already knew she had a connection to—that guy whose name you just said before.” Given that Hays had also said Dan O’Brien’s name before, Roland could have been referring to Tom or Dan, but one thing’s for sure: he’s avoiding that name for a reason.

Wayne tells Roland that “Hoyt” came to see him “the day after what happened.” He made the decision to “let it go” because of his family but Hoyt “knew about what we done” and “seemed to be in the dark on some stuff too,” but Wayne can’t fully remember.

This is the kind of conversation where every line, every reveal, every accusation feels as important as a bullet wound, and once Roland accuses Wayne of coming out there to do “old man fantasy camp,” it’s a whole new level for these characters we’ve gotten to know during three distinctly different phases in their lives. We’ve seen Roland tolerate Wayne’s prickliness and stand up for his inability to work within the political landscape of the State Police Department for decades, but when Wayne shows up at his door without so much as a phone call, a beer, or a “fucking apology” in 24 years, Roland has had it.

“Fuck you, man!” he says when Wayne asks how much he’s had to drink. “I’m fine. Alone out here—no woman, no kids, and no old friends. … You don’t judge me, motherfucker! I know you, I know what you did…what I did. You talking about my drinking, I’d whip your ass if it wouldn’t kill you. And you still ain’t apologize!”

Two surly detectives grown surlier with age may have felt a familiar set-up coming into season 3 of True Detective, but the hurt, the vulnerability that Roland and Wayne share with each other—and because of each other—is something brand new to Nic Pizzolatto’s repertoire. And it is a welcome new showing.

“Roland, I don’t remember, I’m sorry,” Wayne pleads. “I don’t lie. I can’t…I can’t remember my life, man. I can’t remember my wife, I don’t know. Can you tell me? I did something wrong, okay…I’m sorry.” They’re both crying now. “It’s alright,” Roland whispers.

Roland tells Wayne if he wants to drink, talk, watch ballgame, he’s right there for him—but he doesn’t want to “dip so much as a toe back in that shit.” But Wayne tells his former partner that before he’s “A drooling fucking squash,” he wants to finish this. A battle of yes-no-yes-no ensues, but Roland hasn’t ever seemed to be able to refuse Wayne.

“Seventy year old black man going bat shit crazy running around with a badge and gun—don’t want to miss that,” Wayne says.

“Well…I could use a laugh,” Roland agrees

THIS IS A RECAP, NOT A REDDIT THREAD, BUUUUT:

So, the Hoyt family is still very much involved in this mystery, huh?

Have you watched Abducted in Plain Sight, that Netflix documentary everyone is talking about recently (this is not necessarily a recommendation—it is highly disturbing, and this is coming from a True Detective recapper!)? To me, the “the pink room” and princess references surrounding Julie’s life after her disappearance had hints of the alien narrative the young girl from Abducted in Plain Sight was brainwashed with.

Thoughts on who planted the sweater and backpack at Woodard’s house? Any chance it’s who we heard Lucy Purcell speaking with angrily on the phone when Amelia arrived at her house last week?

At this point, we know both Dan O’Brien and Harrison James disappeared in 1990. Are those disappearances related to each other? Are they the “what’s buried out in the woods” that ghost Amelia taunted Wayne with a few episodes ago?

What do we make of the tension between Roland on Laurie on the matter of marriage, and the later reveal that he never married or had children? The focus on it seems to suggest we’re supposed to make something of it…

I don’t know what’s going on with that car outside of Wayne’s house in 2015, but my feeling is that it’s just paranoia. (Which—heads up—is as good an indicator as any that it’s much more than that!)

WHO IS THE “THEY” WILL REFERRED TO IN FREDDY BURNS’ MEMORY?!?!?!

Jodi Walker writes about TV for Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, Texas Monthly, and in her pop culture newsletter These Are The Best Things. She vacillates between New York, North Carolina, and every TJ Maxx in between.

Stream True Detective Season 3 Episode 5 ("If You Have Ghosts") on HBO Go