True Detective: Night Country recap: Ask the right questions

[Editor’s note: Episode five of True Detective: Night Country is available to stream on Max.]

We’re almost out of the darkness, folks. There’s only one more episode of True Detective: Night Country remaining and while I’ve been very cool with the arctic chill and existential dread that this season has offered up so far—the ice edge between the dead and the living, the gloom and the light, the mundane and the metaphysical—the amount of frosty ground left to cover has me very worried. I’ve given the mystical powers that be the benefit of the doubt, but have Issa López and her one-eyed polar bears bitten off more than they can chew? (Note: Though given all six episodes upfront, I’ve chosen to watch the series weekly to avoid spoilers and theories.)

After what felt like significant progress made on the Tsalal case in episode four, the fifth edition of Night Country—which dropped early on Max on February 9 due to Super Bowl Sunday—is stuck in the snow. We’re retreading over storylines that have seemingly little consequence where the fates of the researchers or Annie K. is concerned, from Leah (Isabella Star LaBlanc) agitating local law enforcement yet again with her protests against Silver Sky to Peter (Finn Bennett) navigating his umpteenth marital spat with wife Kayla (Anna Lambe). (BTW, young Prior’s trying to solve a sextuple homicide seasoned with a healthy sprinkling of the supernatural. Give the dude a break, huh?)

I love a whodunit mystery suffused with local color and character drama as much as the next true-crime-addicted TV fan, but those details and textures need a longer episode count than what they’re working with here. With little more than an hour left of season four (the finale next week will clock in at 75 minutes), there are far too many questions still left to mine (pun intended) about the murders to pause for a Prior family meltdown. How will all of these disparate figures—Raymond Clark and Rose Aguineau, Oliver Tagaq and Otis Heiss, microorganisms and mine workers—Corpsicle themselves together in the solving of these cases? Will the spooks lead to something substantial, or are they just there for eeriness sake? And, like Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) always pesters Peter, are we even asking the right questions to begin with?

Despite said questions, we do get some answers this week. Danvers learns the location of the ice caves’ entrance, thanks to Heiss (Klaus Tange), who will be guiding them through the cave system—after Liz tempts him with heroine lifted from the APS evidence room, naturally. However, when she and Navarro (Kali Reis) go to check out the entryway, which is located on Silver Sky land, it’s all too conveniently been dynamite-blasted shut.

And wouldn’t you know it, Silver Sky crops up yet again when Peter delves further into Tsalal’s financial records. The LLC that funds the station is apparently in cahoots with the mining company. “That means the mine bankrolls Tsalal and Tsalal pushes out bogus pollution numbers for them,” Danvers realizes.

It’s an accusation Liz poses when she’s called into a meeting with Captain Connolly (Christopher Eccleston) and mine owner Kate McKittrick (Dervla Kirwan). There’s security-cam footage of Danvers and Navarro trespassing on Silver Sky property earlier that day to check out the cave entryway, and Kate wants answers. (Get in line, girl.) Plus, she wants to drop some news: “This isn’t a murder case at all.” According to Connolly, “forensics” came back from Anchorage, determining that the scientists died in a sudden slab avalanche after they had gone out onto the ice to watch the last sunset before the long night began a week earlier. Liz is incredulous: “You’re saying the official word from Anchorage is that they froze to death?”

They’ve poked the old bear, who starts spewing expletives about the mine’s conflict of interests and insults about Kate’s husband. (“I’m sorry Bill is such a terrible lay. You have my sympathies!” Liz can be awful but she is funny.) Once McKittrick storms out, Connolly makes it clear that he knows what really happened during the Wheeler case three years ago, that there was no suicide in that murder-suicide. Danvers or Navarro killed Wheeler upon arriving at the crime scene and covered it up by falsely reporting his death. Connolly uses it as a bribe: the Tsalal case is now closed.

And Kate wants to make sure of it, so she ropes in Hank Prior (John Hawkes) to kill Otis Heiss before he can lead Danvers to the ice caves, and make it look like a drug overdose. It’s not the first time Hank has acted as Silver Sky’s hired hand. Though he himself didn’t kill Annie K., he did move her body for a price, but that money is long gone now. He tells Kate that he wants the position of police chief in return for Otis. “You do this and the job is yours,” she promises. We knew Hank was shady but multiple murder cover-ups feels like a swift about-face for the sad sack we last saw nursing his broken heart with an Elf rewatch.

Navarro gets some intel via Qavvik (Joel D. Montgrand) that to access the underground caves, they’ll need to crack down from above the system’s highest point. But it’s no use, and Danvers stuns her with the news that Connolly is closing the operation down. (Sidenote: Should Qavvik join the police force? Because clearly they’re in need of officers who aren’t batshit-corrupt and there’s only so much bad Peter can balance out on his own.)

Speaking of Peter, he’s been kicked out of his house by Kayla, so Danvers gives him the key to her back shed to sleep in for the night. (A real Airbnb Superhost over here.) Adding to his shitty day, Danvers works out that Hank had hacked into his son’s computer and found out the truth about the Wheeler case, which he then passed onto Connolly. (“How many times I gotta tell ya? Your father only seems like an idiot.”) Goes without saying but Petey is pissed.

On New Years’ Eve, it’s Hank, not the assumed Navarro, who shows up at Danvers’ door with word that he needs to take Otis in due to an outstanding warrant. Liz smells something fishy. How did Hank know Heiss was at her house? (She previously checked Otis out of the Lighthouse so that he could guide her and Evangeline to the ice caves.) When she says she’s gonna call Connolly, Hank grabs her gun. “I’m taking him. I’m gonna do this like you did Wheeler,” he tells her. But Otis makes a hasty move and Hank shoots him dead before turning the weapon onto Liz. The gunshots draw the attention of Peter from the backyard shed. He comes in armed and, though Hank reminds him “blood is blood,” when the elder Prior raises his gun to Danvers, Pete is tragically forced to shoot his father in the head.

There are two corpses to contend with by the time Navarro gets to Liz’s house, not to mention a distraught Peter. Danvers woefully comforts him and is horrified by his insistence on cleaning up the crime scene himself while she and Eve go search the ice caves. Navarro agrees: They’ll pretend Hank sought out and shot Otis, and then died in a car accident trying to hide the body, with the impending storm helping to cover their tracks. Peter will bring the corpses to Rose (Fiona Shaw), who will “take them to Julia,” a.k.a. the ocean below all that ice. (However, given how freakishly fast the Alaskan coast guard found Julia’s drowning body last episode, this might not be the foolproof plan Navarro thinks it is.)

Blood may be blood, but Danvers and Prior are family of sorts and now one bound in grief and guilt—she over her lost son, he over his lost parent, and both over decisions they’ve had to make in the line of duty. It’s a moving moment between the mentor and student but, again, we have no time to linger on compelling character beats. Danvers and Navarro are already racing for the caves and, hopefully, answers.

Stray observations

• Hank gets to sing his own swan song—literally. The failed musician is seen plucking an old acoustic and crooning a somber country tune: “There is no God, no hallowed ground. You’re forever bound to lose. So what’s the use?” A bit on-the-nose in terms of exposition, but Hawkes gives a haunting performance that we want added to Spotify STAT.
• After a few episodes that leaned more heavily on the Annie K. case rather than the Tsalal deaths, we are looking forward to heading down into the caves to finally find out what actually happened to the Corpiscle crew. Do you think what’s discovered will be biological, like an ancient virus unleashed from the ice, or supernatural, like a portal to another realm? Are we heading back to Carcosa?
• If sweet Alaskan cinnamon roll Qavvik ends up being evil, I’ll riot.