‘True Detective: Night Country’ Episode 1 Recap: Cold Case Files

Don’t call it a comeback: True Detective has been good for years. Here in 2024, now that various hype and backlash cycles have come and gone, I feel comfortable saying I like all three seasons of creator Nic Pizzolatto’s star-studded crime anthology series, to one degree or another. I like Season 1 not so much for its dorm-room metaphysics as for its atmosphere of creeping dread, its high-wattage performances by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, and its ability to induce actual nightmares. (I once had two nightmares about the show in one night that season!) Season 2 is much better than you remember it, a byzantine California noir that forecasted America’s Trump-era descent into naked, grubby kleptocracy. And Season 3 is just a straightforward Good Season of TV that treats the central “a girl is dead” premise with rare moral seriousness.

So when Season 4, subtitled Night Country, comes along — now under the reins of creator-showrunner-writer-director Issa López — and happens to whip ass in its initial outing, I’m not so much as surprised as satisfied. Ah, good, another season of sad cops investigating soul-destroying murders that expose the American underbelly starring anywhere from four to eight incredible actors with reliably gloomy cinematography. I’ll be happy to take as many of those as you’ve got.

This outing stars Jodie Foster as Liz Danvers, police chief in the Alaskan mining town of Ennis. Working alongside the extremely divorced Hank Prior (John Hawkes) and his son Peter (Finn Bennett), Danvers lands a very strange case: the entire eight-man crew of an arctic research station has vanished, leaving behind nothing but the severed tongue of a Native woman. 

This quickly attracts the attention of State Trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), who connects it with the case of a brutally murdered Native activist whose severed tongue was never recovered. Navarro’s obsession with the case led to her transfer to the state troopers, and to a personality clash with Danvers; their contempt for each other is so open that Danvers outright lies that there’s no connection between the cases, even as she has Peter retrieve the files from his grumpy father’s storeroom. These files connect the slain woman directly to one of the missing scientists via her stolen pink parka. 

But the investigation’s biggest breakthrough comes via what seem to pretty unequivocally be supernatural means. (And that’s far from the only supernatural stuff going on: multiple characters in multiple contexts and through multiple means hear the creepy phrase “She’s awake,” including via a visibly melting-down scientist just before shit goes down at the research station.) A local named Rose Aguineau (Fiona Shaw) is led to the frozen, screaming corpses of the scientists by the ghost of a man named Travis. 

Meanwhile there are sex subplots galore: Liz’s Native stepdaughter Leah (Isabella Star LeBlanc) gets caught shooting lewds with her younger girlfriend, Navarro tops the living shit out of her fuckbuddy Qavvik (Joel D. Montgrand), Peter is hot and heavy with his very busy wife Kayla (Anna Lambe). Hank is “importing” a bride from Vladivostok, apparently. Liz, it seems, lost her husband in a drunk driving accident, the kind of tragic backstory that really brings out that True Detective feeling.

The whole affair does, really. A Jodie Foster/John Hawkes/Fiona Shaw show? That’s enough to sign me up right there. But one of the pleasures of the premiere is seeing how boxer-turned-actor Kali Reis holds her own on screen in a role that requires her to go after Foster’s character head on. There’s nowhere to hide in a role like that if you can’t hang, and Reis hangs. I’ll bet more than a few viewers will think over the history of the franchise and just assume she’s famous from something or other, since she gives you no reason to think otherwise.

The concept is like a turducken of similar stories, in a fashion that’s shameless enough for me to respect it. “What if we turned The Thing and The Terror and 30 Days of Night and that one episode of The X-Files that riffed on The Thing into a season of True Detective starring Agent Clarice Starling with Sol Starr as her deputy?” You’d get a pretty entertaining introductory hour of television, that’s what. 

And it looks good, too. López ably directs for chilly atmosphere (literally and figuratively), and produces some genuine chills and scares in that deserted (or is it???) arctic base. There’s some fun, The Ring–style imagery of stampeding caribou and a one-eyed polar bear, and one real gross-out gore effect, and a classic monumental horror-image in the form of the ghost guy just standing out in the snow. But none of the spooky surrealism prevents López from capturing equally important mundane details, like the way each little home and apartment we enter exudes its own unique kind of sadness. 

At one point, Danvers says Ennis itself killed Annie Masu Kowtok, the murdered activist, a phrase very evocative of a similar declaration in Stephen King’s It — another story that blended supernatural evil with everyday misery. If this winds up being the first really openly and obviously paranormal season of the show, I’m fine with that, as long as it retains its focus on just how sordid and sad a business murder really is. That approach worked for Twin Peaks, to which this episode tips its cap in the form of that very Bob-like ghost. One way or the other, I’m excited to see them try. 

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.