It’s Christmas Eve in Ennis, Alaska, and things are worse than ever. On the seventh consecutive day of darkness, the lack of sunlight is starting to get to everyone. Ennis’ reputation for being a place where the dead keep their presence known long after they’re gone is well-founded, considering that almost everyone is up to their eyeballs in grief and despair. But perhaps the worst part of this consuming feeling is that the entire cast of True Detective: Night Country seems to have too much pride to ask for help.
With Episode 4 of the anthology’s fourth season, we’ve officially crossed the halfway point in this six-episode season. Mysteries are beginning to unravel themselves, leaving more details to be snatched up by us curious viewers who, frankly speaking, have spent much of this season in the dark. (And you thought Ennis was bad! Thank you folks, I’ll be here for two more episodes—tip your waiters.) The larger puzzle at play is still murky, but there are plenty of leads, some more gripping than others. But what remains crystal clear—as clear as the ice in the cave where Annie Kowtok (Nivi Pederson) recorded her last words—is that Jodie Foster and Kali Reis continue to hold this season together, even at its lowest moments. And there aren’t many of those in this episode, where Reis gives her most layered, affecting performance yet. It’s star-making stuff, and reason enough to stick with Night Country, even if our answers are still out of reach.
The episode opens with more of the static white noise that we’ve heard Chief Danvers (Foster) listening to while sifting through evidence. This time, she’s awoken by her noise machine and goes into the room next to hers to check on Leah (Isabella Star LeBlanc). Although their relationship is strained, it’s clear that Danvers only wants her stepdaughter to remain safe in a dangerous world—even if that means denying Leah access to her Iñupiaq heritage. We’ve seen Danvers’ natural maternal instinct throughout the series—I mentioned it coming into play during last week’s episode as well—and it’s what makes her so amiable despite her tough disposition.
We see this again moments later, when Danvers is trying to get to the ice rink to oversee the thawed corpsicle and make sure that Anchorage police forensics doesn’t screw up her investigation. On the way there, Danvers spots Agent Navarro’s (Reis) sister, Julia (Aka Niviâna), stumbling around in the cold without a coat. Julia’s mental health has been worsening after being plagued by visions of her and her sisters’ deceased mother. Danvers gives Julia her coat, pulls her close, and quietly, lovingly tells her, “I got you.” Foster is wonderful in this moment, and it’s upsetting that I have seen more criticism of this season than I have praise for her consistently solid performance.
Navarro takes Julia to The Lighthouse, a local mental health treatment center. As they say goodbye, Navarro tells her sister that she’ll be back tomorrow to celebrate Christmas together. She’ll bring virgin eggnog and the $20 cookies that Julia likes. They hug. I cry. Elsewhere, Officer Peter Prior offers Danvers a new ripple in the Tsalal scientist investigation: a man named Otis Heiss, who was admitted to an Alaskan hospital in 1998 for similar injuries as those of the scientists in the corpsicle. Otis had ruptured eardrums, burnt corneas, and self-inflicted bite wounds, which all came up in Pete’s medical record search. He, like former Tsalal scientist Oliver Tagaq, whom Danvers and Navarro questioned last week, has gone off the radar, now living as an addict moving from place to place.
Fiona Shaw and Kali Reis.
Michele K. Short/HBOWith this new information, Navarro and Danvers try to put some pieces together. “There aren’t any ice caves near where Annie was found,” Navarro says. “Which means she was killed in one place and dumped in another to send a message,” Danvers replies, noting the bones that can be seen in the walls of the cave behind Annie in her video. That part of the puzzle is further complicated by Ennis’ local geology teacher (whom Danvers has been relying on for some icy intel, literally). He tells Danvers and Navarro that there is only one ice cave system nearby, but it was closed after several accidents. The man who mapped the cave? Otis Heiss.
Meanwhile, Julia tries to settle into her room at the Lighthouse. She sees a vision of an orange rolling to her feet—like Navarro did out on the ice in Episode 3—and peers under her bed to find its source, where she sees another vision of her mother. Just a bit later, as Christmas Eve is winding down, Navarro calls Julia to see how her sister is adjusting. Julia, now sitting at the frozen dredge outside of Ennis, where Navarro has found her before, tells Navarro that she’s okay. Julia ends the call by telling her sister that she loves her. Then, she removes her clothes and walks out onto the ice and into the sea.
Christmas is getting bleaker for everyone. Leah leaves Danvers’ house to spend the holiday with Pete, after Danvers tries to punish her for vandalizing the local mining offices. Danvers’ holiday quickly becomes a solo celebration, which means a few glasses of cold vodka and more evidence examination. Danvers drunkenly concludes that the light in Annie’s video was not her phone’s flashlight, but rather one supplied by a generator that was cut. She insists that Navarro and Peter go interrogate Oliver Tegaq, who has access to the same kind of powerful generators to fuel his home at the nomad camp. Only, Oliver is nowhere to be found. In his place is a rock with the cult-like spiral that was tattooed on Annie and her boyfriend-slash-missing Tsalal scientist Raymond Clark.
On their way back from the nomad camp, Navarro receives a call from the coastguard that Julia is dead. She tells Pete to go be with his family on Christmas, and angrily drives to the Lighthouse to take out her grief on the receptionist and a few potted plants in the waiting area. Afterward, she spots a local Ennis mine worker who flipped her off after she arrested him for assault in Episode 1, gets out of her squad car, and punches him. But Navarro is outnumbered three-to-one, and the man and his friends beat her and leave her in the cold.
Finn Bennett and Kali Reis.
Michele K. Short/HBOA few hours later, on Christmas morning, Navarro arrives at Danvers’ house with her wounds still fresh and her boss hungover. Navarro spots a polar bear plush toy and asks if it belonged to Danvers’ late son. Fearing that she’s going to go into a diatribe, Danvers cuts Navarro off. “The dead are dead,” she says, throwing the stuffed animal out into the snow. “There’s nothing except us. We’re here, Navarro—alone. The dead are fucking gone.” With no words left, Navarro tells Danvers that Julia killed herself.
“You want to know what was really wrong with her?” Navarro asks. “It takes us one by one by one. And you know who’s next. I failed her, Liz. You don’t understand. It’s a curse, my mother had it too. Something calls us and we follow. And it’s calling me now.” Danvers tells her partner that she can see Navarro’s lost in her own head somewhere, doing the same thing Navarro did on the last case they worked together years ago—the Wheeler case. “You’re seeing something,” Danvers tells Navarro. “You saw something in that room. I was there, and you saw something. It was a ghost or some kind of spirit.” Navarro tries to protest, but Danvers calls her a liar.
Understandably upset, Navarro tries to leave, before Danvers comes running back out with a new text message: a photo of Clark, wearing Annie’s parka, spotted by a fisherman as he was traipsing through the snow by the dredge. The two women head out to the massive ship and find another spiral painted inside. Danvers spots Clark, running away into the dark on another deck above them, and tries to apprehend him. But when the parka hood comes down, she sees that it’s not Clark, but Otis Heiss, who has apparently been given the coat by Clark.
In a corner on the deck below, Navarro sees a Christmas tree light up, and walks over to peer at it. When she turns around to go help Danvers, Navarro sees a vision of Julia, drowned and blue, staring her in the face. Just out of reach, Otis tells Danvers that Clark is gone. “He went back down to hide,” he says. “He’s hiding in the night country. We’re all in the night country now.” Danvers leaves Otis to retrieve Navarro, whom she finds sitting and staring into the lights of the tree with blood running out of her ear.
Another inexplicable ruptured eardrum has entered the chat, as they say, and it spells some wicked trouble for Navarro. If her claims that whatever came for Julia is coming for her too are true, then it seems that my early suspicions that this entire mystery is tied to Navarro are correct. But there are still so many questions—maybe too many. Did Danvers’ son Holden die in the car crash that killed Leah’s father? What is the significance of the oranges that the Navarro sisters see in their visions, or the one-eyed polar bear? What really happened during the Wheeler case? And can we get a little more Fiona Shaw wearing red satin and talking about Santa’s meth-head elves, which flew by far too quickly in this episode?
Time is running out for Danvers—and showrunner Issa López—to stitch these threads together before it’s too late. Let’s just hope that the final two hours of Night Country will be enough to make that happen.
