Summary
A more grounded penultimate episode adds some welcome urgency to the case, though loses a little quasi-supernatural dread in the process.
True Detective has spent the last few weeks teasing the supernatural, but Episode 5, which was released a few days early for Max subscribers, is deeply grounded. It’s probably the most personal that any of Season 4’s episodes have been, with no one-eyed polar bears and ghostly apparitions – or less of them, anyway – to distract its characters from the questions they need to ask of themselves and each other. We finally get some of the right questions and, as a result, some of the right answers, though not enough to assuage concerns that the finale has altogether too much to unpack.
It does leave some stuff from the wonderfully weird Episode 4 a bit undercooked, though, not least of which was Navarro’s last-minute trance that left her sitting childlike in front of a Christmas tree. There’s no further mention of that, and her grief is put to bed with a lovingly framed opening sequence in which Julia is cremated. Navarro later pours her ashes into a crack in the ice, and soon after enters another trance in which she tries to march into the frozen depths like her sister did, but so little is made of it that I genuinely have no idea if we’re supposed to forget about Navarro’s wavering sanity or not. I guess we’ll see.
Anyway, let’s get to the meat and potatoes. In a nutshell, Danvers and Navarro are getting too close to the truth, so the Silver Sky mining company, represented by Kate McKittrick, and the police higher-ups, represented by Ted, start getting overtly involved, to the point that it blatantly exposes that there is a conspiracy at play after all. Of course, we knew this as the audience anyway, or could at least intuit it, but it’s important news to Danvers and Navarro.
What this all achieves functionally is adding a ticking-clock element to the drama, which raises the stakes a lot. I’ve enjoyed this season of True Detective all the way through, but it has sometimes felt meandering in a way that “Part 5” doesn’t have time to. The mine is desperate to prevent Danvers and Navarro from exploring the network of ice caves outside of Ennis, which it turns out is the “Night Country” that people have been referring to, so they apply pressure and make missteps that result in a major death at the end of the episode and a race-against-time setup being established for the finale.
How is Silver Sky connected to Tsalal Station?
Prior, who seems to be the only character in this cop show who reliably does genuine police work, turns up a crucial file in Episode 5 which solidifies the relationship between Silver Sky and Tsalal Station. The former was funding the latter in exchange for rosy pollution reports that covered up the profound effect the mining was having on Ennis’s water supply (among other things, presumably.)
Drinking water running black has been brought up multiple times throughout the season, and I do still wonder if it’s something to do with the “otherworldly” stuff that has happened thus far without being explained. Either way, this is a little trump card for Danvers to stick in her back pocket, which it turns out she needs since Kate and Ted summon her to a meeting at the mine’s offices for what is clearly an ambush.
How does Ted know about the Wheeler case?
The forensics team at Anchorage has finally offered up a cause of death for the Tsalal researchers – exposure caused by a freak weather event. Since it was the last bit of daylight before the long night, the theory was that they were out watching the sunset. Of course, we already know from the vet’s examination and everything else going on that this is nonsense, and so does Danvers, but her attempts to counter with the file Prior found and a few barbs in Kate’s direction about her husband’s sexual prowess are met with resistance.
Crucially, Ted knows that Danvers and Navarro staged the Wheeler case to look like a suicide when in reality one or both of them murdered him, so he suggests in no uncertain terms that they better drop the Tsalal case posthaste lest this secret be exposed. Danvers is inclined to listen, but Navarro isn’t having any of that. Through Navarro’s frank description of the responsibility the two of them have to Annie K and a later conversation with Leah that reminds Danvers how many babies in Ennis are stillborn because of the mine’s activities, she rediscovers her sense of justice.
How does True Detective Season 4, Episode 5 end?
In the short term, the biggest obstacle that Danvers and Navarro face is Hank Prior, who it turns out is a known associate of Kate and Silver Sky and has helped them out before, namely by moving Annie K’s body (though he’s clear he didn’t kill her.) His latest assignment is to kill Otis, the German half-blind smack addict, before he can show Danvers and Navarro how to access the Night Country caves. As payment, he’ll be made police chief, which he was promised before Danvers showed up. Once again, he falls for it, but this is also a guy with a fake Russian girlfriend, so it’s hardly surprising.
However, Hank overcommits to the role and everything goes pear-shaped. He arrives at Danvers’ place, having followed her, and tries to snatch Otis – who is doing heroin that Danvers supplied him with in the bathroom – at gunpoint. However, Pete, who has been kicked out of his own house by Kayla, is staying with Danvers and interrupts the argument with his gun drawn. One thing leads to another and Pete shoots his father dead.
This leaves our erstwhile heroines with a quandary. They can’t call the crime in, since it’ll get back to Kate, they’ll be strung up as an example by Ted, and the mine’s activities will be swept under the rug. So, they decide to cover it up, just like they did with the Wheeler case. Pete stays behind to clean up the evidence while Danvers and Navarro head out to Night Country.
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