This post contains frank discussion of Season 3, Episode 7 of True Detective titled “The Final Country.” Proceed with care.
There are a lot of revelations in the latest episode of True Detective as the threads of the mystery come together and actor Michael Rooker makes his (vocal) debut as Season 3 Big Bad Edward Hoyt. But two of the most important moments in the episode happen in-between the facts of the case. In other words, what the character get wrong may be even more important than what they get right.
Die-hard fans of True Detective have always had a bit of the Rust Cohle about them. In other words, we’re all often just a six-pack of beer away from our own conspiracy theory wall cross-crossed with red yarn, clues, and tinfoil-worthy conjecture.
But truth be told, when it comes to cracking True Detective, we’re often wrong. Though Nic Pizzolatto’s show always has an intentional aura of mythos about it, the mystery actually usually plays out like a very high-toned version of an episode of Law & Order where, reliably, the very corporeal villain is hiding-in-plain-sight at some point early on in the season. In fact, True Detective is at its best when it acts as a showcase for acting talent like Matthew McConaughey—who not-so-coincidentally won an Oscar the year his season came out—and Mahershala Ali—who is expected to win a second Oscar the year his season came out. The brilliance of True Detective does not lie in blowing our minds with a masterful plot twist.
But that doesn’t stop us from looking for wilder connections and, in Season 3, Pizzolatto played right into that very tendency introducing the character of Elisa (Sarah Gadon), a message-board-visiting documentarian with her eyes peeled for a wide-reaching conspiracy that, conveniently, would connect multiple seasons of True Detective together.
Maybe it’s unfair to accuse Pizzolatto of intentionally leaving a breadcrumb trail of Season 1 connections in order to throw True Detective theorists off the scent of the Hoyt Family and their involvement in the Purcell case. But how else do you explain touches like the spiral graffiti or yet another very significant cameo from a gardner in Episode 6? These elements sent some of the sharpest minds in the TV recap business scurrying down the wrong rabbit hole but in Episode 7, it’s Pizzolatto who has the last laugh.
When Hays and West float their it’s-all-connected pedophilia ring theory in 1990 to Harris James, they’re greeted with derision.
When Elisa does the same in 2015, she’s also dismissed—much more politely—by Hays himself.
In fact, Pizzolatto did some wild theory dismissing of his own this weekend on Instagram when he responded to a number of conjectures in the comments section of one of his posts. His most frequent response? Some variation of “nope.”
Will we learn our lesson by the time Season 4 of True Detective rolls around? Will we just sit back and enjoy the ride? Nah. Where’s the fun in that?
This story was originally published by Vanity Fair
via USAHint.com
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