Is anybody mad that Issa López will be helming another season of True Detective?

Given that the fourth season of True Detective received a warm critical reception and franchise-high ratings, it’s not at all surprising that HBO has decided to renew the series with this season’s showrunner Issa López at the helm. But what would normally be a run-of-the-mill newswire feels a lot more pointed in the midst of True Detective’s creator, Nic Pizzolatto, having some decidedly ungenerous reactions to López’s work. Pizzolatto may have found López’s references to the first season “stupid,” but HBO is signing up for more!

In a press release, HBO’s Head of Drama Series and Films, EVP Francesca Orsi, praised López as a “one-of-a-kind, rare talent” who “never once [faltered] from her own commendable vision” while making True Detective: Night Country. (That’s her own vision, not some other guy’s True Detective vision…) “​​From conception to release, Night Country has been the most beautiful collaboration and adventure of my entire creative life,” López said in her own statement. “HBO trusted my vision all the way, and the idea of bringing to life a new incarnation of True Detective with Casey [Bloys], Francesca and the whole team is a dream come true. I can’t wait to go again.”

As an anthology series, every season of True Detective is completely different (barring a few Easter eggs that connect each story under a shared umbrella). We can only speculate what the fifth season will look like, but López teased some of her thoughts in her post-Night Country media blitz. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, the writer-director said she appreciated being “free to tell the stories that I care about as long as I respect those elements and I use the same grammar” as the previous entries in the franchise. She added that it would be interesting to create a mystery “also as a playing game with the people who interact and dissect a mystery. You create this relationship with the audience. I put something into the world and they received it beautifully, and I saw them interact with it.” To Variety, she said she would “for sure” like to keep making True Detective: “The luxury that this particular series presents is that what makes it is a tone, and a certain way of looking at the world, and to America. And it allows for an exploration of the dark and macabre that I love.”

And so, Nic Pizzolatto will have to sit through another season of someone else running his show. Fortunately for him, he’s still listed as an executive producer, so he’ll get the money and the credit no matter what he does (even if he’s actively complaining about the product). And fortunately for Night Country fans, López seems not at all deterred by Pizzolatto’s petulance. “[All] I can say is I love True Detective and I love Night Country, and they’re in that same universe, and if you jumped on the boat with me and came for the ride, you’re going to enjoy the fact that the language is the same language and the mythology is the same mythology and the elements are shared,” she told THR. “But if you didn’t jump on the boat with me, you’re not going to like it. So I hope you jumped on the boat with me and gave this chance.”