Warning: This blog post consists of looters for the finale of True Detective: Night Country.

By completion of True Detective: Night Country, the period’s largest enigmas have actually primarily been fixed. But the program takes a great deal of spins, transforms, and (rather unclear) exposes to reach that factor.

After a painful penultimate episode that saw Danvers (Jodie Foster), Navarro (Kali Reis), and Prior (Finn Bennett) back themselves right into a do-or-die edge for obtaining to the base of the interconnected Annie K (Nivi Pederson) and Tsalal instances, the finale supplies what Bennett has actually called a psychological strike.

“[To make a really good detective show,] you need to be satisfied by the ending,” he informed the Hollywood Reporter. “Sometimes, endings can feel lazy, and this really didn’t feel that way. It stays true to the piece. I remember watching the finale for the first time and bursting into tears, because I was so proud of what we created, but also because the ending is just so beautiful.”

Read a lot more: True Detective: Night Country Episode 5 Ends With Many Questions for the Finale to Answer

What occurs in the True Detective: Night Country finale?

After finding that missing out on researcher Raymond Clark (Owen McDonnell) has actually been hiding in a secret below ground ice cavern laboratory that attaches to the Tsalal proving ground, Danvers and Navarro recognize the laboratory was where Annie K was killed. They after that pressure Clark to splash all his keys.

While dating Clark, Annie K had actually discovered that Tsalal was not just misstating poisoning numbers for Silver Sky yet paying the mine to create a lot more waste since the contamination softened the frozen ice to the factor where the scientists can efficiently remove a clinically cutting-edge bacterium from the ice. Horrified by what they had actually done, Annie snuck right into the laboratory and damaged years of their job prior to she was assaulted and stabbed over 30 times by the various other researchers as Clark viewed. Despite claiming he would certainly never ever injure her, Clark was eventually the one to complete the task by surrounding Annie. However, he asserts it was the police officer sent out by the mine to relocate her body—i.e., Hank (John Hawkes)—that removed her tongue.

Clark takes place to claim that Annie returned from the dead to eliminate the various other researchers. But after he gets away outside to devote self-destruction in the tornado, Danvers and Navarro at some point believe to examine the hatch to the below ground laboratory for hints regarding what might have occurred the night the Tsalal guys vanished. There, they locate a handprint missing out on the leading fifty percents of its last 2 fingers—similar to the hand of Blair Hartman (Kathryn Wilder), the neighborhood lady operating at the Blue King crab handling plant whom we fulfilled in episode 1 when Navarro appeared to explore a battle in between, Blair, her violent ex-spouse, and Blair’s colleague Bee (Diane E. Benson). Both Blair and Bee have actually because turned up numerous times throughout the period.

Danvers and Navarro head to Bee’s home, where Blair is remaining, and Bee informs them her tale. In recall scenes, we see that while functioning as a cleaner at the Tsalal centers, Bee uncovered that the researchers were the ones that killed Annie K. She, Blair, and a team of various other neighborhood Indigenous females after that got into Tsalal with weapons, rounded the guys up, and transformed them loose right into the frozen wild nude. When Navarro asks if they were the ones that eliminated the guys, Bee reacts that, “They did it to themselves. When they dug in her home in the ice. When they killed her daughter in there…If she wanted them, she would take them. And if not, their clothes were there for them. They’d be half-frozen, but they’d survive. But they didn’t, though. I guess she wanted to take them.”

Given a variety of tips that have actually turned up throughout the period, the evasive “she” concerned appears to be a referral to Sedna, the Inuit siren of the sea (the very same mythological number that Prior’s boy Darwin illustrated of in episode 1). There are numerous versions of the Sedna tale, yet the tale typically goes that Sedna was sunk in the sea by her papa, that removed her fingers to maintain her from climbing up back right into his watercraft. She after that returned as a siren looking for vengeance on those that mistreated her and that disturb the equilibrium of the environment.

“There’s a read of the events in the series, same as with the original True Detective, by the way, that absolutely sticks to reality,” showrunner Issa López claimed throughout a roundtable meeting in advance of the period best. “There’s a real explanation for every single event in the series that does not require the presence of the supernatural. But there’s a read where every event is related to what I call a wider world, and it’s up to you, like an inkblot test, to decide which series you’re watching.”

Danvers and Navarro take Bee’s tale in stride, making it clear that they’re mosting likely to sustain the description that a piece avalanche eliminated the Tsalal guys as opposed to transform the females in. Their response remains in line with what we have actually learnt more about both—that Navarro “has a thing” regarding physical violence versus females and Danvers, though in some cases even more hesitant to reveal it, shares the view.

What regarding all the referrals to True Detective Season 1?

From the jagged spiral to Tuttle United to Danvers’ rule regarding around not asking the ideal concerns, Night Country has actually used a lot of callbacks to investigators Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Marty Hart’s (Woody Harrelson) quest for the Yellow King awesome in True Detective Season 1. But when Raymond Clark says the line, “Time is a flat circle,” in the Night Country finale, it takes the link in between both tales to a brand-new degree.

Anyone that enjoyed Season 1 will certainly acknowledge “Time is a flat circle” as Rust’s catch phrase. First claimed to Rust by sorcerer meth chef Reggie Ledoux minutes prior to Marty fires him dead, Rust takes on the adage as his worldview—later releasing it while being spoken with regarding the Yellow King situation virtually twenty years later on. The expression is a referral to a principle promoted by 19th-century German theorist Friedrich Nietzsche referred to as “eternal recurrence,” the concept that since time is unlimited, you are predestined (or doomed, if you’re of a comparable mind to Rust) to duplicate your life a limitless variety of times in precisely similarly you’re living it currently.

In Night Country, Clark connects the concept that time is a level circle to Annie taking revenge on the Tsalal researchers: “She’s been hiding in those caves forever—before she was born, after we all die.”

But in the long run, Night Country, a lot more so than Season 1, appears to decline this approach.

What does the end of True Detective: Night Country indicate?

During their night at Tsalal, Navarro and Danvers are tormented by indicators from what we’ll describe as the past (the mystical world of the dead that has actually played a substantial duty in Night Country). In truth—along with the spooky looks of phantom oranges and damaged glass—both seem essentially haunted by the ghosts of their past (Danvers by her boy Holden and Navarro by her mommy and sibling).

With Danvers standing for “the non-believer that in moments of doubt believes, and [Navarro] the believer that in moments of doubt doubts,” according to López, the stress in between both over their varying overviews on fatality has actually installed throughout the period. “There’s something out there calling me,” Navarro informs a disappointed Danvers at one factor in the finale. “You need to know something. There’s more than this, Liz. There’s so much more than just this.”

And equally as the when unrepentantly anarchic Rust carried out in Season 1, Danvers eventually appears to have a change of mind. After Navarro saves Danvers from under the ice, Navarro informs her that when Holden showed up in among her visions, he informed her that he “sees” Danvers. This is a straight recommendation to the peek-a-boo-esque video game that Danvers and Holden have actually consistently been revealed playing in recall series, yet additionally attaches to the blind-in-one-eye meaning that has actually reoccured throughout the period (think about both the packed and living one-eyed polar bear, and so on.) On HBO’s authorities Night Country podcast, López claimed the video game is “a little bit of a metaphor” and “a reference to the fact that we see only part of what is around [us].”

When the Season 1 finale broadcast in 2014, TIME’s after that television movie critic James Poniewozik suggested that the program’s most surprising growth was Rust’s change in viewpoint after picking up the visibility of his late little girl throughout his near-death experience. “There was a twist ending, though, and it had nothing to do with the plot but rather the psyche, or dare I say the soul, of bleak-hearted Rust Cohle,” Poniewozik composed. “He sees meaning. There’s a story here, one story—the oldest—about the fight between light and dark. He and Marty were given their one bit of the dark to extinguish but, just as with the men in the masks, they’ll never get it all. But, he says, ‘Once there was only dark. If you ask me, light’s winning.'”

Considering this closing note, it fits that the last scenes of Night Country occur months after polar night has actually finished, on the initial lengthy day of the year. As Danvers is spoken with regarding the occasions that occurred bordering the Tsalal murders, we see in recalls that (after making certain Danvers would certainly locate the recording she constructed from Clark admitting to whatever the Tsalal guys had actually done) Navarro eventually strolled off onto the ice, probably to join her mommy and sibling in the past.

However, as the polices examining Danvers note, in the months because Navarro vanished, there have actually still been discoveries of her around community. With the mine shuttered and points in Ennis relatively on the up and up, Navarro’s symbolic visibility appears to harken back to the finale’s disclose of the significance of her Iñupiaq name: the return of the sunlight after a lengthy darkness.