True Detective season 4: Night Country was announced a few years after season 3. Interestingly, a new showrunner and writer named Issa López would write and direct all the episodes, who was responsible for a very good horror film called Tigers Are Not Afraid about ghosts and the Mexican drug cartel. This new season would star Jodie Foster as Detective Liz Danvers partnered but feuding with a Native American detective named Evangeline Navarro, played by former champion boxer Kali Reis, investigating the disappearance of male scientists at a research station in Alaska. There would also be a supernatural horror element and share faint connections with season 1. Suffice it to say that all this was very intriguing, but there was the downside of no creative involvement from Pizzolatto (He even denigrated it on Instagram. The guy really gives no ****s which isn’t all that surprising given some of the stuff he’s written haha).
While each season should be judged on its own merits, it’s still strange to have one with no involvement from the showrunner and writer of all previous episodes. In that sense, can Night Country really be called True Detective? Or is it just something that’s been fashioned into the series for name recognition? I suppose it’s all subjective. Sure, the atmosphere and subject matter kind of fits, but there are also clear indicators that this is a different creative voice from Pizzolatto. I feel like it should’ve just been its own series. In any case, Night Country has a decent spooky mystery plot and an expectedly great lead performance by Foster, though it clearly isn’t on the intellectual or psychological level of season 3, let alone season 1. It’s kind of on the level of 2 more or less, being plenty flawed but still interesting with some noteworthy elements. I didn’t really buy the revelations about the case, which were less than satisfying and don’t really make sense when you think about it, and I’m not entirely sure what the point was for all that. It ended up being surprisingly safe and kind of familiar with how it ended, especially these days. Night Country didn’t totally work for me and had lots of problems, but managed to stand out a bit in the modern television landscape due to the unique setting, creepy atmosphere, and some decent character development. I really have no desire to ever watch it again though, whereas I find revisiting the other seasons to be worthwhile. What is in store for the future of True Detective is a mystery, but it’s certainly been one of the most memorable and provocative series in television history.
