The finale of True Detective Season Three wasn't full of hard truths. No, answers were more amorphous, with the fate of Julie Purcell left open ended. And while we'll never know for sure if Hays was standing next to that grown kidnapped little girl and her happily ever after, there was another nagging question at the end of the episode.
What happened to Hays's wife Amelia?
Throughout the series' 2015 scenes, we know that Amelia has somehow died and Hays is left alone suffering from the early stages of dementia, being taken care of by his son. Hays is haunted with memories of his late wife. Her books and research litter the house as reminders of the crime they never solved, and she also literally haunts him in hallucinations (one of which leads him to the adult woman who might be Julie Purcell).
And although Amelia was a major part of this story—and some might argue the real True Detective—we never actually learn what happens to her. How did she die?
In an Instagram comment after the finale, creator Nic Pizzolatto explained that Amelia's fate was cut for time. But he also revealed what happened to her:
Amelia and Wayne living their lives in 2013, planning and extended vacation around the world. It culminated in Amelia's death (peaceful, but sudden, in her sleep). Nothing nefarious, just sad.
Another question fans had after the finale was if this death was somehow what caused the distance between Hays and his daughter. Pizzolatto answered this one, too, in the same comment:
Extended scene with Wayne and his daughter, Becca, indicating what her life is like, that she and Wayne don't have any problem other than neither of them is good at reaching out (Amelia was the parent who always called every week), and they've both been lonely without the other.
It's good of Pizzolatto to answer some of these nagging questions that linger after the finale, but it would have been better to leave them in the actual show—especially when gaps like this lead to a lot of inaccurate fan speculation. Remember when Pizzolatto cut a scene between Amelia and Wayne and it led fans to believe she was the murderer all season?
