The slowness of True Detective Night Country‘s script has its drawbacks: the last minutes of each episode feel like a foot on the accelerator until we end up not exactly understanding the clue revealed. The source of horror films, suggested by the shadows that appear in fractions of a second, etc. now went directly to the source of The Exorcist, quoting almost word for word the frightening warning given by the devil to Father Damien Karras in a similar scene from the scientist speaking with Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis). But calm down, we’ll get there.

The third episode maintains what we have already noticed: there is something rotten in the water in Ennis and it is caused by Mining in the city. The problem is that the mine is the source of work for more than half of the city, so anyone who dares to speak ill of the place runs a serious risk of retaliation. What exactly this contaminated water awakens is what will require overcoming skepticism as the implication is that it ‘woke up’ some very evil entity, which chased the scientists into the frozen lake, killing each one of them and briefly incorporating people. In other words: hard to catch.

Unfortunately, on the one hand, Navarro is right and the current crime is indeed connected to that of six years earlier, the brutal murder of midwife and indigenous activist Annie Kowtok. The case was divisive between her and Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster), chief constable of Ennis, and it’s a drag that they now depend on each other to close both investigations. Nothing new for us on this subject and the ‘mystery’ of what happened between the two, with both of them kind of twerking to justify it, is getting tiresome. Who cares really? Plus, it already seems a little more personal after they started judging each other more for the occasional affairs with men than the whatever came up in the investigation. We know this because as Annie had a secret affair with a still-missing scientist – Raymond Clark (Owen McDonnell), the only man not found among the pile of his frozen colleagues, both Navarro and Danvers fight about how usually people think they are having a secret affair and everyone is in on it, which was the case with Annie and Clark, apparently. Why keep it a secret?

Also, all along, Navarro is still worried about the streak of Depression that torments her family, which as we now know will be the topic used against her by the entity that incorporated the hospitalized scientist. The trooper is seeing things, she is worried about her sister, but we don’t know the extent of her fear, it might have something to do with the murder of their mother, we don’t know.

So, of the villains on duty, Captain Hank Prior (John Hawkes) fools no one. In command of the police task force searching for Clark, he acts as he pleases and does not follow Danvers’ exact orders. Toxicity is the name of the game in Ennis. He suggests that there is something more between the boss and his son, police officer Peter Prior (Finn Bennett), who let’s admit, is really obsessed with Danvers to the point of creating problems in his own marriage and falling for all the obvious lies told by the detective. For whatever reason, he is really keen on finding out about the fallout even more than caring for the corpses he has to investigate.

Together, Navarro and Danvers discover a little more about Annie and Clark, such as the young woman’s obsession with the spiral she had tattooed on her back (and found on scientists’ foreheads). The few people who knew about the couple were Hank, who omitted the information when Annie was murdered, and equipment engineer Oliver Tagaq, who disappeared shortly before Annie’s death, as well. Now the detectives are looking for two men who can solve the cases.

At least this time it’s less complicated, the two locate Tagaq, who now lives in a nomad camp and reacts disturbed by Tsalal’s news. Expected, right? What is strange is that he specifically asks only about Anders Lund (Þorsteinn Bachmann). Before the two understand the choice, they are expelled from the place. As Lund is in the hospital, they fly to the location in search of answers. He has multiple amputations, gangrene, and loss of vision, and still needs to be in an induced coma, but luck is on the side of the detectives, and, in the few lucid minutes he has they are by his side as he speaks. But he is enigmatic: “We woke her up and now she It’s on ice. She came looking for us in the dark.” And that’s it, he goes back to the coma. While Danvers is arguing with the nurses, Navarro stays behind and then Lund becomes like the girl Regan from The Exorcist, slowly and creepily rising from the bed to tell her: “Hello, Evangeline, your mother is waiting for you.” There is no time to react, Lund goes into cardiac arrest and his prolonged suffering ends. Our hearts stopped too.

Jodie Foster has already teased in her interviews that the season is about Navarro and her journey. In fact, everything seems to revolve around her, including not having solved her mother’s murder nor knowing what her own indigenous name would be. Danvers has the ghost of her son’s death tormenting her, we know, but it’s Navarro who’s having visions of people running in the snow, and having oranges thrown back at her from the darkness. Director Issa López said we can expect more from the oranges, and after slipping on the ice and hitting her head, the detective has a vision of a child dressed in pajamas and holding a stuffed polar bear, just like Danvers’ son. Now we wonder who is the child and why is his spirit around both detectives.

Somehow, the only one who realizes the danger of this awakened entity is Navarro, but instead of reacting to each clue we get, she becomes more shocked and paralyzed. Without mentioning what happened with Lund, she is with Danvers when Peter manages to hack Annie’s cell phone, which they found in Clark’s trailer in episode 2. In it, there is a video of the terrified activist in what appears to be an ice cave and she tries to warn: “I found it. If anything happens to me…” before being interrupted and screaming in terror outside the scene. Obviously, this is how the episode ends, and after The Exorcist, now we have a reference to The Blair WItch Project as Annie’s video is just like Heather’s in the horror movie classic.

I would say it would be going well, but there is Der Pass on the same platform which is far superior, so now we see that True Detective Night Country slips into clichés not as interesting as we hoped they would be. It’s still engaging, and it’s fun, but it’s apparently a version of an Environmentalist Exorcist as the mine destroyed the local water and awakened an ancient, murderous, and vengeful entity that possesses people. We have three more episodes, we won’t find out next week, but we’re getting closer.

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