True Detective Season 4 Episode 3 Recap – What has been awakened on the ice?

At its best, True Detective has always been coy about its relationship with the supernatural. Even when very human evil is revealed to be at the center of its occult iconography and ritualistic killings, there’s still always at the very least a suggestion that there might be something otherworldly afoot. All of Season 4 has been a bit like this, but Episode 3 takes it a step further by going full throttle on the one-eyed polar bears and demonic possessions.

We’ll get to this in due course, naturally, but like the previous two episodes, “Part 3” is jam-packed with telling backstory, leading dialogue, and tiny incidental details that help to flesh out Ennis, Alaska, and all its frostbitten residents. So, without further ado:

While we’ve known since Episode 1 that Navarro is particularly attached to the Annie K case, we didn’t know why. Well, now we do – or we know more, anyway. Back when Navarro was working with Danvers before their big falling-out, she was sent to arrest Annie for trespassing in the mines. When she gets to her home she hears distressing wailing but quickly realizes that it’s because Annie is running the town’s last birthing center, and a native woman is giving birth in the pool at that very moment.

Before arresting Annie, Navarro helps her deliver the baby, which emerges eerily silent and has to be resuscitated in what might be the season’s tensest moment so far. So, there’s a kinship between the two. Navarro knew Annie was fundamentally decent and they were united in bringing this tiny child into the cold world, putting all their other responsibilities on standby.

Why did Navarro and Danvers fall out?

As seems to always be the case, any so-called explanation only yields more questions, but for what it’s worth True Detective Season 4 Episode 3 does justify why Navarro and Danvers fell out. The audience is required to fill in some blanks, but the gist is pretty clear.

So, back in the day, the police would regularly receive domestic violence reports about a man named William Wheeler, but his 18-year-old victim wouldn’t file any official charges, so there was nothing they could do. They knew what was going on, and they knew how it would end, and lo and behold, eventually they were called out to Wheeler’s home, where they found the girl dead. Wheeler himself supposedly died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but in flashback we see him whistling a jaunty tune at the scene. The implication is that either Navarro or Danvers shot him dead and the other helped to cover it up, but keeping the secret caused an irreparable strain on their relationship.

Who pulled the trigger? We learn a lot about Navarro’s familial backstory in “Part 3”, how she fled to Boston to escape an abusive father and then returned to the wilderness with a mentally ill mother who eventually ran to her death out on the tundra, so she’s particularly sensitive to such matters. But it almost seems too obvious, so I’m going to take a punt and assume Danvers offed Wheeler.

Ariana Grande helps to solve the case

Anyway, the case of the dead researchers. Through some deductions involving Ariana Grande’s discography, Danvers and Navarro are able to deduce that Annie’s hairdresser, Susan, knew about her relationship with Raymond Clark. As it happens, she introduced them to each other while cutting the hair of the men at Tsalal. Susan herself was close to an equipment engineer named Oliver Tagaq who isn’t among the frozen tableau since he quit the station right after Annie was killed.

Someone else knew about Annie and Ray – Hank Prior, who completely failed to mention it to Navarro at the time. This isn’t the first thing he has covered up concerning the Annie K case, and it only validates Navarro’s theory that he’s part of a wider conspiracy involving protecting the mine. He isn’t winning himself any friends in the present day either, since he has assembled a ridiculous redneck militia to patrol the tundra for Clark, and when he makes a dig at Danvers about her being “Mrs. Robinson” to his son she throws a coffee in his face.

Navarro uses Qavvik – who adorably wants to learn more about her in exchange for the information – to find out where Tagaq is hiding out, which turns out to be a nomad camp even more in the middle of nowhere than the rest of Ennis. He chases Navarro and Danvers off with a gun but does creepily imply he knows Navarro, which I’m sure will come up again later.

The researchers didn’t freeze to death

Since all the Tsalal researchers are frozen in agony, we’ve all assumed that they froze to death amid some kind of horrible agony. This, though, wasn’t the case, at least not according to Pete’s veterinarian cousin Vince, who theorizes that they died of terror-induced cardiac arrest and then froze.

This isn’t an explicitly supernatural clue, but it’s certainly close to one. What could be so horrifying that it scared several grown men to death? Of course, a vet who “works on large animals” might be wrong with the theory, but I don’t think so. Something else is afoot here, and it’s probably tied to the final, horrifying sequence that caps off the episode.

How does True Detective Season 4 Episode 3 end?

On their way back from visiting Tagaq, Danvers and Navarro are called to the hospital. Anders Lund is awake, though in extremely bad shape, missing eyes and limbs, locked in an endless screaming agony. Even in his wails, though, he repeats a similar sentiment that we’ve heard since Episode 1 – that “she” is awake and is somewhere out there on the ice.

Danvers is pulled away from the scene by a commotion caused in the waiting room by Hank’s search party, so Navarro is alone in the room when Lund sits up straight and chillingly informs her, “Your mother says hello. She’s waiting for you.” And then he dies.

Is this a case of legitimate demonic possession? The clues suggest not. We’ve had a whole episode detailing Navarro’s fraught history with mental health and domestic violence, and we’ve thus far had a rational explanation for almost everything that we’ve been presented with, from dreams to eerie visions of one-eyed polar bears and such. “Part 3” made a point of keeping Danvers out of the way for this, which is usually a clue that the person who saw it can’t be relied upon (or won’t be believed after the fact.)

However, all this talk about “She’s awake” and people being scared to death is going to be difficult to explain in any way other than the supernatural, and in a video Pete finds on Annie K’s phone, she’s seemingly torn to pieces by an “it” that she finds on the ice. What is going on here? Well, we’ve only got three more episodes to find out.

What did you think of True Detective Season 4 Episode 3? Let us know in the comments. 

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