After two postponements (one of them because the strike of writers and actors meant that HBO Max needed to review the schedule to maintain the frequency of releases without gaps), True Detective: Night Country premiered – finally – in January 2024 (it was scheduled for early 2023!). With a female team and stars, the series has now left the southern United States, or Los Angeles, to go to the mysterious and cold Alaska, one of the American territories with the highest crime rate.

But critics are critics on principle. The True Detective franchise went through three phases, with the last two undergoing strong complaints about the ‘drop in quality’ not of interpretation, but of text. Behind the scenes, showrunner Nick Pizzolatto was known for being the only one to be bothered by the success of the first season, openly credited to the director, Cary Fukunawa. Nick assumed greater influence on the other two, especially the worst of them, the second, and now the franchise no longer has his contribution and was completely rewritten by Issa López, who is also the director. I open it like this because anyone who watched True Detective: Night Country noticed the change, and, of course, there were people complaining. Nonsense, the first episode promises.

The plot maintains the tradition of mystery, but avoids the non-linear narrative of the previous seasons (the 1st and 3rd), which I also appreciate because it’s tiring not having anyone else telling a story with a beginning, middle and end. In a ‘traditional’ way, we follow in the footsteps of the new detectives.

The action takes place in Ennis, Alaska, where the polar night – the period in which there are just a few hours of sunlight and darkness remains much longer than just 12 hours – interferes with people’s lives even more than we imagine. . The supernatural is immediately hinted at: at the Tsalal research center, the team of male scientists mysteriously disappears one night. We see them calm until one of them faints and announces: “she’s awake”. Three days later, the place is abandoned as it was, but with no sign of the men. On the floor lies a cut human tongue. The credits roll to the sound of Billie Eilish (post coming on the topic!).

In keeping with the series’ proposal, we have two detectives who hate each other trying to solve the mystery, with one of them insisting on bringing up an unsolved crime from the past on the ride. Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) is in charge of the investigation, accompanied by father and son police duo Hank (John Hawkes) and Peter Prior (Finn Bennett), much to the irritation of Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), the state police officer (after fight with Danvers) who is of Inupiaq origin and still hasn’t gotten over a case he never managed to close. This past that separated the two also unites them now.

The crime that also secretly troubles Danvers is the murder of a native woman, midwife and activist Anne Masu Kowtok (Nivi Pedersen), who was found stabbed and with her tongue cut out. The current language does not appear to be hers, but Navarro believes that may be the case. As if the tongue was only a few days old and the woman disappeared years ago? So it is…

Then we see two personal information about Danvers and Navarro that will have an influence on the dynamic: Danvers maintains cynicism as a shield, but has a painful past with a teenage stepdaughter who is clearly traumatized by losing someone in a car accident. We also see her dream (and be visited?) by a child called Holden, who tells her “she’s awake”. Navarro, on the other hand, has a sister who suffers from some type of paranoia-inducing mental disorder, an illness that appears to have also affected her mother. Whether they both know about each other remains unclear. Danvers has a stuffed polar bear with one eye, just like the real bear that Navarro sees roaming the town, and Peter’s son has made disturbing drawings of a human-like creature that appears to have a tongue in its hands and his wife explains to him that if It’s about a being from a local legend, Hello?

Although she laughs at her former partner’s deduction, Danvers reopens files on the Kowtok case and begins investigating possible connections to the disappearance of the Tsalal men, quickly identifying that there is a possibility. The two bump into each other again at the installation, but they don’t find anything on their own. The one who really advances is Rose Aguineau (Fiona Shaw), a kind of hermit who communicates with the dead (someone called “Travis”) and locates the bodies of scientists.

In other words: mystery and terror. Critics missed the original’s philosophical dialogue, but director Issa López ensured she maintained that signature in True Detective: Night Country. I thought the premiere was good, the series had a different feel, a clear necessity for anyone who saw the previous seasons. See how it develops!

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