Season one of True Detective was one of my favorite television shows of all time. I was disappointed by the second season but thought the third was a return to form—not quite as good as the original, but a worthy successor. The fourth season, True Detective: Night Country was no longer being run by the original creator Nic Pizzolatto, so my expectations lowered, though I was still optimistic it could be good. I love the general format of True Detective, with each season being a self-contained miniseries following new detectives who investigate a murder case. I hate TV shows that go on forever, so the best thing about True Detective is you are guaranteed an ending. 

Night Country had an intriguing premise and location, set in the icy tundra of Alaska during a month of total darkness. I liked the addition of more overt supernatural elements throughout the season, evoking cosmic horror reminiscent of John Carpenter’s The Thing and H.P. Lovecraft‘s At the Mountains of Madness. Jodie Foster as the lead detective is a great actress, but her character was extremely unlikeable. Night Country had a great setup, with the scientists from a research facility found dead frozen on the ice, but the ultimate pay-off was a major let-down—like laughably bad. Of course it was never going to be as good as season one, but with that setup, cast, and budget, it could have been much better. 

After the disappointing season four, I went back to re-watch the original True Detective to see if it was as good as I thought. I only watched the season once when it originally aired in 2014. Ten years was long enough that I couldn’t remember all the details, plus I had since read Thomas Ligotti and Robert W. Chambers, two of the main influences on Pizzolatto in writing the series. I generally prefer to watch something new than re-watch something I already saw, but re-watching season one proved to be a much better use of my time than watching season four. The original True Detective remains one of my favorite TV shows of all time—and an absolute masterpiece. 

[Spoilers for True Detective season 1 follow]

There are three things that set True Detective season one apart from the other seasons—and from just about every other TV show in general. One is the writing of Nic Pizzolatto, who was originally a novelist. He writes great dialogue and rich characters, layered with subtext and deeper meaning. Rust Cohle’s philosophical musings are still quoted today¹—though the true credit for that may be more deserved for Ligotti than Pizzolatto. Then again, as Picasso said, “Good artists copy; great artists steal.”

The second great thing about True Detective is the direction of Cary Joji Fukunaga, who is an auteur director in his own right. He brings a visual flair to the material that elevates it from ordinary television to pure cinema. Fukunaga’s virtuosity is highlighted by the scene of Rust undercover with a biker gang. The exhilarating heist of a stash house was filmed entirely in one shot. It ranks up there with some of the great single-shot action scenes from Children of Men.

Pizzolatto and Fukunaga worked so well together (though they apparently had some creative clashes on set) with Nic doing all the writing and Cary doing all the directing for every episode. This way, they were each able to devote their full effort to their domain—the writing versus the directing; the story versus the visuals. Art is best when it is created through the vision of a single individual. In the medium of movies that is usually the director—though in television the showrunner is often a writer. A miniseries like True Detective is a sort of hybrid between movies and television. Despite being broken up into eight episodes, it’s ultimately a single story—like one long movie. I think True Detective was so exceptional because it contained the creative visions of two auteur artists combined, fusing into a greater single vision. It is extremely difficult for two auteurs to set their egos aside and compromise aspects of their individual visions for the benefit of the artwork as a whole—which is why we may never see a season of True Detective as great as the first ever again. 

The third element that elevated True Detective season one was the acting. Pretty much all the actors in the miniseries are great, but Matthew McConaughey in particular gives one of the all-time great performances as Rust Cohle. He basically plays two different characters—it is the same person, but Rust has changed vastly over the 17 years between the two timelines in which the story takes place. Which brings me to another great thing about the show and Nick’s writing—the way he tells the story through flashbacks of the old case, with the two detectives telling their stories independently in slightly different ways. They’re both unreliable narrators and lie to the detectives in the present day about what actually happened at certain points in the past. 

When watching True Detective for a second time, I forgot that there was a false ending midway through the season. It appeared the detectives had caught and killed the serial killer and the case was solved—but there were still three episodes left. This is a non-traditional way of telling the story, as it seems like they’re just dragging out a show that already ended. But Rust starts to suspect that there might have been another killer, that they never caught everyone involved. As more women and children continue disappearing, the show gets interesting again, especially as everyone else gives up on the case. Yet Cole remains fixated. Working the case destroys his life, basically driving him to the brink of insanity. Everybody else thinks he is indeed insane, including his former detective partner, Marty.

That is, until they team up again and Rust is vindicated when they catch the real killer. However, in a dark noir twist, it’s hinted that there are still much more powerful people involved (those masked men in the occult ritual video), that even the monomaniacal Rust Cohle will never be able to catch and bring to justice. That brings the story full circle², as not just a detective mystery, but as a horror story fitting of the dark work of Thomas Ligotti and Robert W. Chambers. It’s a true cosmic horror ending, because evil—the true evil—was not defeated, and it never will be.

The ending is also ambiguous about whether there is a true supernatural element. Is the “Yellow King” real, or just a figment of the human serial killer’s demented imagination? It is unclear if the story ties in with the Lovecraft/Chambers mythology and if some supernatural entity is behind all the evil in the show. Or perhaps the masked cultists mistakenly believe in a pagan god that does not actually exist. My theory is that there must be some supernatural element relating to Hastur, aka the King in Yellow, a Great Old One from the Lovecraftian mythos. The fact that the “Yellow King” and “Carcosa,” as well as other elements from Chambers’ stories are mentioned, but the detectives never connect any of that to the author, which would have easily been done by googling “Yellow King” and “Carcosa”, means the story must take place in a world in which the Chambers’ “King in Yellow” stories do not exist as fiction. Instead, True Detective must be set in the same fictional world of Chambers’ stories, where the supernatural entity known as the King in Yellow exists. 

Ultimately all this extra Lovecraftian lore doesn’t matter—True Detective can still be enjoyed and understood on a straightforward non-supernatural level. But for those who enjoy cosmic horror, like myself, the King in Yellow mythology adds a deeper dimension to the show. The ambiguity enhances the story, leaving it open to interpretation, but not too much so. Despite not tying up every loose end, the show still has a satisfying ending. The final conversation between Rust and Marty outside the hospital epitomizes the major theme of the series. They are looking at the sparse stars in the night sky, representing the battle of light versus dark, good versus evil—an eternal war that will never end. Evil can never be fully extinguished. But good can continue fighting and win more battles than not along the way. Some pat ending where the entire conspiracy was uncovered and all the men in the video were unmasked and arrested would not have rung true to reality—at least not in a world where Jeffrey Epstein is killed in prison and his client list remains sealed. In real life the bad guys behind the bad guys get away with their crimes. And great art reflects reality.

1. “Time is a flat circle.” ↩︎
2. “Time is a flat circle.” ↩︎