How True Detective: Night Country Easter eggs connect to the original season

True Detective: Night Country’s premiere final week signaled a return to kind for the sequence, introducing a chilling (pun supposed) thriller in type of the disappearance of a bunch of arctic researchers and a compelling pair of protagonists in the type of Chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis). Their case is miles away — each linearly and actually — from the one True Detective handled in season 1. And but, the present retains echoing key particulars of that season, full with all these supernatural parts, and naturally, that goddamned creepy-looking spiral. What does all of it imply? Follow me into my Rust Cohle-shaped gap as I obsessively connect the dots.

[Ed. note: spoilers for True Detective: Night Country episode 2.]

The first and most outstanding reference to the earlier seasons of True Detective is the crooked spiral, an emblem tattooed on the brow of one among the Tsalal victims discovered frozen in the ice by Chief Danvers and her staff. The image is a direct reference to the occasions of the first season, tied to a Louisiana-based intercourse cult being investigated by Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Rustin “Rust” Cohle (Matthew McConaughey), and options prominently in a number of key photographs from the official trailer for Night Country.

A trio of frozen heads buried in the snow in True Detective: Night Country.

Episode 2 locations its connection particularly with that of homicide sufferer Anne Masu Kowtok, who had the image tattooed on her, as did her boyfriend Raymond Clark, the solely member of the Tsalal analysis crew believed to be alive (and the present major suspect behind the killings). And, in fact, we positively see the image once more when Danvers and Navarro examine Clark’s trailer, the place it’s scrawled in black and pink marker on the ceiling above an effigy wearing what seem to be Anne’s garments.

As revealed in True Detective’s first season, the crooked spiral is an emblem strongly related to teachings of the Louisiana intercourse cult, who worship Hastur, or “The Yellow King,” an entity speculated to bestow boons in trade for sacrifices in the type of younger youngsters. So far there hasn’t been a lot of any of that in Night Country, however who is aware of what’s on the market on the ice.

The second reference comes afterward in the episode, with Danvers asking Peter “Petey” Prior, one among her subordinates and the son of Ennis Police Captain Hank Prior, what he was in a position to give you by way of monitoring down who funds the Tsalal Arctic Research Station. Petey tells Danvers that the station is funded by an NGO, which in flip is funded by a sequence of shell corporations linked to a company often known as Tuttle United.

Kali Reis as Evangeline Navarro standing in front of a partially erased wiped board with the words “We are all dead,” in True Detective: Night Country.

Fans of True Detective ought to acknowledge that identify instantly: It’s a reference to Billy Lee Tuttle, the Louisiana reverend and entrepreneur whose household was revealed to be the ringleaders of the aforementioned intercourse cult that Hart and Cohle had been investigating in season 1. The cult is believed to be largely defunct by 2012, with the sole remaining member thought to be Errol Childress, who was killed by Rust in the finale of season 1. Then once more, it’s doable the assassin is someway related to the Tuttle cult and for some cause is carrying on some type of their twisted rituals and teachings.

As members of the True Detective subreddit have identified, even the identify of the analysis station itself could also be an implicit nod to the connections between this season and season’s previous. As specified by a submit by u/Magehunter_Skassi, the phrase “Tsalal” is Hebrew and roughly interprets to “to be, to become, or to grow dark.”

Kali Reis as Evangeline Navarro shining a flashlight in a dark room filled with animal skins in True Detective: Night Country.

It’s an apt identify right here, provided that the occasions of the present happen in a area of Alaska that’s experiencing an prolonged interval of darkness colloquially referred to by locals as “the Long Night.” But the phrase has additionally appeared all through a number of examples of fashionable horror fiction — most prominently in “The Tsalal,” a brief story by Thomas Ligotti. Ligotti is a cult determine amongst horror authors, identified for his distinctive type of philosophical horror which sequence creator Nic Pizzolatto has cited as a key affect in growing the worldview of Rust Cohle.

So what does all this add up to? I don’t know — a decades-long conspiracy, a enjoyable nod, a flat circle. True Detective could possibly be pulling direct comparisons as clues, or they could possibly be doing it as Easter eggs. It’s value mentioning that manufacturing designer Daniel Taylor confirmed to Polygon that the police station has season 1 connections as set dressing. It’s additionally value mentioning the actual circumstances of how Danvers and co. had been first tipped off to the location of the our bodies — specifically, the ghost of a girl’s useless husband pointed the approach. Ready for a good greater mind-fuck? The identify of that ghost is Travis Cohle, who occurs to be the deceased father of, you guessed it, season one protagonist Rust Cohle.

Could or not it’s that Danvers and Navarro are contending with a risk that’s past felony, however in reality supernatural? That reply feels simply as seemingly as the former, and if both are even partially true, it signifies that Night Country has the potential to change into one among the most fun and terrifying mysteries of the sequence but. And hell, even when it’s not, I’m nonetheless locked in at this level and alongside for the trip.

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