True Detective: Night Country S4E6 “Part 6” — Post-Episode Discussion Thread — Dibs Texts

We’ve often finished an episode of television and looked for a discussion thread online, only to be disappointed. Either no such thread exists, or all the oxygen is taken by puns and references that have been posted a thousand times. We wanted to be able to have some good jokes, some good analysis, and some good times.

That’s why we decided to take matters into our own hands (not unlike a hardened detective trying to crack a spooky case) and create the discussion threads we want to see in the world. So we asked writers, comedians, and filmmakers to hang out for a bit after an episode and make our own comment section. Welcome to the Dibs Texts Post-Episode Discussion Thread for True Detective: Night Country EPISODE SIX! THE FINAL EPISODE!!!!

All the news on this site is “real,” but this stuff is really real. SPOILERS AHEAD.

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• we finally have the answer to what was behind all the supernatural horror and murders and deaths: women
  • we always are
  • beyonce called this years ago
    • this is why we should always listen to beyonce

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• Am I the only one that wasn’t following the set up for the digging for mitochondrial DNA that could potentially “Save the world”?
  • did they say how it would save the world? i think i missed that entirely
    • That is the part that I feel like I am missing
    • it was mentioned in a previous episode i think, something about not being able to use the dna or whatever
    • and Danvers literally says “we know, everyone knows” immediately after it
      • USE THE DNA FOR WHAT
        • you know, science stuff
          • If I have to watch this whole show again, I swear to goddd
        • i don’t believe she ever mentions. i was really trying to pay attention to the tsalal stuff because i was really curious how it would pan out, and they just sort of swept it away with that one comment?
  • the guy who was tied to the chair and froze to death said something about the mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell

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• Is Navarro dead?
  • i hate to say it, but i really love how they resolved her plotline. i don’t think she’s dead or alive but sort of something in between, and it feels like it’s the one real hard supernatural concession they made with how they tied everything up at the end
    • don’t hate to say it; I love a reading where she didn’t kill herself and become a ghost. I’m jumping on board this interpretation
      • i’ve been reading this incredible horror anthology lately that has this theme of, like, things being both alive and dead when you can’t verify them as one or another? so reading the plot that way really resonated with me
        • I think it was deliberately ambiguous, but I like embracing both at the same time over either other interpretation
    • i really liked that she got her name in the end, but the name was very on-the-nose
      • “My aunt had that name.” “What does it mean? “True Detective Season 6 Finale 5 Stars”
      • i loved that she got her name, and i loved that she was finally at peace once she was able to reconnect with her identity, but i do agree that it did feel a little too on-the-nose

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• proud of clocking the lady in the background throughout the season as being important. that is not a topic for discussion, really, just putting it out there
  • no you deserve to be recognized for this
  • it’s a shame you said it after the article went up. i almost wanna go back and edit it in
    • this is what is wrong with journalism today
    • just post it twice at the top of this next article and we’ll call it good

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• specific things aside, how do we feel about the season? positive negative? somewhere in the middle?
  • personally i never really connected with it. a lot of it felt rote to me. i could give a bunch of specific criticisms but honestly i can forgive anything if a show has a vision
    • the whole thing felt very corny to me. I understand that supposedly the show was kinda forced to be related to True Detective after being pitched as a standalone thing, but it just felt drawn out and all over the place to me
  • i was honestly holding out hope for this episode but it did not feel great to me :\
  • i wanted it to be better, especially now having seen the finale. i love a good “marginalized community realizes nothing is going to be done by authorities so they take justice into their own hands” plot, but the season meandered enough in the middle that the finale didn’t really work for me
    • the ending very felt wish fulfillmenty to me. a bunch of punk rock native women murdering polluting scientists SHOULD be really cool but it came completely out of nowhere and was totally unearned.
      • yeah the buildup to that scene was just a bunch of people popping into the kitchen out of nowhere
        • they were having a board game night in the other room
      • i think it was hinted at a bit, like with the focus on the stillbirths and the general depiction of the strong sense of community among the indigenous women, but i think it needed a few more moments here or there to really drive that home
      • i’d need to go back and rewatch it, but i think part of what confused me is that they seemed to focus on Annie’s death as the catalyst for the women deciding to murder the tsalal guys, with the “encouraging the mine to pollute more” thing just being mentioned briefly in a flashback as the older woman is doing her Exposition. it seems like those should’ve been mentioned with more equal weight?
        • I feel like they could have completely cut the “pollute more” twist and lost nothing
          • i think they needed that to give the women a reason to kill the tsalal guys. it really felt like they had a strong start and a strong finish, and then sort of madlibbed it in the middle, which is a shame

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• it stinks that the only way to soften ice is mine pollution. if only science could figure out some sort of method to soften ice that doesnt involve encouraging a mine to create pollution
  • the twist that the scientists are evil and that they want to pollute more so their science project is easier was so funny. like what are you talking about
    • and what does “pressure them into polluting more” even mean? turning a big knob that says pollution and looking back at the audience

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• I think a big issue with the show is that 30% of the story happens in episode 1 and 70% of the story happens in episode 6, leaving the rest of the episodes to be kind of about nothing at all. They should have stumbled on the secret lab at the end of episode 2. we should have learned about Danvers’ son a little bit each episode all season

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• i want to give them credit for righting this wrong in the end and i don’t think they should get any more criticism for it
  
  • i did like the spongebob toothbrush closing for qavvik
    • qavvik rocks and should have been in the show more
      • Qavvik deserved better at every turn

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• Navarro? (walks into insanely whistling winds with no visibility)
  • there was a scene where both main characters almost die and the reason they almost die is that they were just feelin kinda wild and went outside. that whole thing felt so detached

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• this episode has clear aesthetic parallels with Ice Station Cool, an EPCOT attraction from the 90s that featured an ice tunnel and a bearded man frozen in the ice — it also featured a collection of soft drinks from across the world, which True Detective does NOT have
  

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• cross necklace in her hair?!?!?!?!?
  • The cross necklace showed up in an earlier episode with one of the ghosts, but I’m not sure which one. Perhaps it was Annie’s?
    • yeah navarro hurled it out of her car i think in episode 2

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• WHAT WAS THE POLAR BEAR????? WHY DOES NAVARRO KNOW ABOUT IT??????
  • nah she doesnt. there was the scene where danvers threw the polar bear toy out the door. navarro got it back apparently and left it for danvers
  • I think Holden has it when he visits her
    • wasn’t there like a literal one-eyed polar bear walking through town at one point? or is that just like the spirit of Holden?
      • I think that was a little more Danvers being haunted. not by her son, just by the loss
        • ok I can buy that

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• so i guess it was just a coincidence that otis had the same injuries? i guess injuries of “being left out in the cold”

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• “i got no mercy left” ah darn i was really hoping to partake in some of that excellent mercy you have displayed over the course of this miniseries
  • jodie foster really killed it in that scene

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• it seemed like the “she’s awake” mystery, the anchor mystery of the whole series, was that clark thought annie was going to kill them and the indigenous ladies thought a separate lady was going to kill them, but they all used the same phrase to refer to their own things
  • did i read that correctly
  • I think Navarro and/or Danvers also hears it at some point. Maybe one of them while driving?
  • yes, still unclear who she is
  • it’s one of those things I really hate being picky about because normally I like ambiguity but the vibes were simply off and it was unsatisfying for a lot of reasons imo
  • bear with me here, but i think the “she” in this case is actually sort of all meant to be the same one? i interpreted it to mean various manifestations of the same anger of women experiencing violence and cruelty. like “she” is annie’s rage, or “she” is some sort of unspecified manifestation of the mother earth trope, or “she” is the anger of all the mothers experiencing stillbirths
    • I agree with that and like that interpretation but I wish the “she’s awake” thing was, itself, less specific. Because it’s clearly meant to be a procedural-ly mystery and the result feels like a shrug
      • yeah, that’s a very good point! i think they sort of hand-wave that away by going “eh it’s ennis it’s spooky up here” — which i don’t love
        • the show has a lot of good ingredients that just didn’t mix up well together. apparently there was some studio interference. i’d believe it!
    • I totally think you’re right @anica I think what’s weird about it is that all of the characters seemed to be in on it’s thematic usage when only the women at the end and maybe Navarro are really operating from that framwork. Like it feels like Clark just means Annie, but the show know that Annie is a part of something bigger
      • i’m going to call that ludonarrative dissonance because i can’t remember the right term for it and that’s close enough, but yes, you said it perfectly. as i was typing that out, i was like….this….is almost…..right. i guess it’s yet another thing they hand-wave away going “eh ennis is spooky. clark heard it and danvers heard it because ennis is weird, everyone else heard it because it means something bigger”

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• So, how Annie K’s tongue got into Tsalal isn’t part of their story, and I feel like maybe it’s just supposed to feel mystical that it’s there, but we also established in this episode that Hank was probably the one who cut it out and her was there when they found it….
  • yeah okay the lack of resolution on the tongue really bothered me. i thought maybe i was just too Dumb to get it? if it was meant to be a supernatural thing, then i don’t understand why this spirit would cut out her tongue and put it under a table to warn….???
    • If they hadn’t explicitly told us Hank moved the body last episode and then explicitly told us the cop who moved her must’ve cut out her tongue this episode, it would feel totally metaphysical (as you said, Annie being a part of some greater mother earth energy embodied by the women who avenged her death). But when you specifically give me those puzzle pieces I’m now over here like, so why did Hank hang on to her tongue and plant it at the crime scene? You were absolutely not too Dumb to get it
      • oh man, now i’m so upset we didn’t get that resolution. if hank just put it there to be a monster, then they didn’t do a good job of establishing his character to be the type of person that would do that
        • I don’t think the implication is that he did, I just think it was distracting to give us that information if it wasn’t pointing to something

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• i feel like one of the strengths of the season i saw, season 1, was leaving the supernatural things unexplained / hinted at, but drawing attention to them as unexplained. i feel like this season felt like it was either explaining them fully or kind of pretending they never happened– like, why did those animals jump off the cliff? that’s the opening scene of the series, and it had no effect on anything, nor was it mentioned again. thematically, it could be relevant to the navarros walking out on the ice, suicidal impulses, but it’s much more violent, sudden, and deliberate. i dunno! a lot of the supernatural stuff felt like that to me
  • phil the animals jumping of the cliff was just a vibe. let it go
    • 
  • lean into the vibes then!! it was cool!! stop doing dead end police work!
    • thats right
      • it felt like they got a note to do more vibes stuff and they said “fine. but then im doing my police procedural.”
        • they really hammer us over the head with the supernatural stuff, to the point that the characters are arguing about it, but yeah i don’t think they really took it anywhere. lotta talking

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• Another thing I think is just a bridge too far for me is all of the scientists immediately deciding to stab Annie to death. I know some people who have arguably immoral jobs. but they aren’t like murdering people at the drop of a hat lol
  • software dev at the research station going caesar mode on a stranger at a moment’s notice
    • i am interested in the idea of a bunch of isolated scientists getting so into their work that they think they are saving the world by killing someone who gets in the way. but that’s reading a lot into it
      • I agree; I think it’s an interesting idea that wasn’t quite earned
      • i do think there are a lot of interesting threads throughout the show that could have been a very cool thing to focus entirely on. likewise with the native women killing everyone — would be a really interesting place to start from and watch the town deal with
        • i tend to agree. a lot of really cool individual ideas, both natural and supernatural, which did not coalesce in a satisfying manner
          • probably too many ideas for 6 episodes
        • yeah i think to make good tv you gotta commit to a vision. any time it felt like there was momentum it would get cut off by some unrelated thing

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• i think the conclusion on the supernatural stuff is it is unquestionably Real now. the most critical piece of info being rose could not have known where those bodies were otherwise. but it feels like the bets were hedged otherwise
  • it’s still kindaaaa ambiguous because the murders have a very straightforward explanation
    • but rose couldn’t have known where the bodies were, right?
      • yeah maybe that’s true

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• the cathartic moment where navarro tells danvers what her ghost son said, i feel like it would have more weight if they hadn’t just fought about it immediately beforehand — like maybe if an episode passed?
  • and he should have said something funnier
    • “he said … ligma”
      • “ligma what?” “hold on he’s reaching out again”
        • hahahaha

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• if HBO gives another season of True Detective to a new director/writer, who do you think would be good? I was thinking Kiyoshi Kurosawa would be a fun season while watching this
  • Luna Dunham mumblecore detective season
  • Hiro Murai seems like an obvious choice to make a season of this kinda thing too imo
    • i opened the thread to say this lol. i had to look it up to make sure he hasn’t already done an episode at some point
  • they should hire me
    • i’d watch that
    • True Detective: Hamlet Factory. a dark turn for the beloved animated webseries
      • Phil and Jeremy take on the case of Why Birmy Brought That Gun To The Office (this is only funny if you watched the web series that Phil and I made two years ago. sorry to everybody else)
  • Sam Levinson
    • very down for Detective Zendaya

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• opening a door and not closing it will always be insane to me, but especially so in alaska

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• also did Rose kill Travis? is that the implication? he was sick and she helped him kill himself?
  • that’s what i gathered, yeah.
  • yeah I think so
  • i liked rose, but she felt like sort of an underdeveloped deus ex
    • Fiona Shaw, chronically underutilized
    • she also was a professor of lung-cutting at Cutlung College
    • it felt like by making her white, they were trying to create a subversion of the magical native trope, while still having a character that served a lot of the same single-dimension purposes

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• as always, I do think all the actors killed it throughout. a lot of cheesy stuff (imo) was saved by particularly good acting. the native woman at the end had a ton of gravitas. rose’s convo with pete when they dump hank’s body was really well done. navarro’s vision on the ice with her sister was great
  • I don’t say this as a slight to the writing on this particular show, but I am always amazed by what good actors can make work
    • one of my favorite things about writing is watching an actor take a line i wrote and do it in a way that’s totally outside of what i expected and it’s way better for it
  • the actors all absolutely crushed it, 10/10
  • agreed about the acting — that scene with danvers yelling about her son in the finale too

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• why was kayla so suspicious of pete driving leah to her place that she hit his car until he stopped
  • why when she said “don’t lie to me” was him saying “I have to do something” convincing enough that she kisses him and lets him go his merry way
    • “Go. haha ive always wanted to say that. just like, say ‘Go’ romantically. anyway remember when you said we dont love each other and you regret having our kid”
  • kayla was a super underwritten character who was made at pete the entire show for investigation a 7 person murder that happened 2 weeks ago. she was just the classic “upset wife” trope
    • this is just a good point. the show needed like 15 fewer characters and 4 fewer plotlines and we’d be in great shape
      • did hank need to have a russian bride? did hank need to be in the show?
        • shut up I really enjoyed The Tragedy of Hank Prior. I almost quit watching this episode because he was dead. the rose petals!
        • i don’t think it was necessary at all. however, i agree with christine that i think it was maybe my favorite storyline? like overall
        • i do really love John Hawkes
        • GIVE HANK A SPIN OFF. WHERE IS HANK’S GHOST
          • he should have been holding hands with the russian lady as a ghost at the end, looking down on the town and smiling
        • i think maybe it was my favorite because it was actually neatly contained on all sides. he was a corrupt cop, an abusive father from what was hinted at being a long line of abusive fathers, who did love his son but was pathologically incapable of showing it, who wanted desperately to have an outlet for that love, didn’t receive it, sunk further into people willing to take advantage of that weakness, and died as a result at his son’s own hand. that’s sad! and it’s also cohesive and comprehensive
          • And also perhaps the most interesting arc
          • i like all of those themes, the russian bride stuff just felt like a very dated joke concept that went exactly the way we all knew it was gonna go. and i’m not like a big “subvert expectations plz!” guy but it just felt very out of left field. the father/son stuff was all very good, i agree. especially with the way Pete gravitates towards Danvers as an alternative parental figure
            • I think the fact that we all knew how it was going to go was a part of it
              • thats fair!
        • The Tragedy of Hank Prior
          • True Detective: Night Country or…
            • The Tragedy of Hank Prior

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That’s it! Thank you so much for hanging out with us while we discussed True Detective: Night Country. Click here for the rest of our True Detective discussion threads. Feel free to drop a comment below to keep the convo going! We really hoped you liked this, as it was an experiment for us. So please let us know in the comments or on social media if you’d like for us to continue this with different TV shows. Hell, let us know which upcoming (or past?) ones you’d like us to cover!

Participants:

• Anica, they/she, Comedian and TTRPG performer
• Leon Chang, he/him, Musician (Bird World, Return to Bird World, Leon Mode)
• Christine Nyland, she/her, Filmmaker (Summoners, Distress Signals, An Unquiet Grave)
• Andy Holt, he/him, Writer (Hard Drive)
• Phil Jamesson, he/him, Writer (Dibs Next Co-Creator)
• Jeremy Kaplowitz, he/him, Writer (Dibs Next Co-Creator)