(This story contains spoilers for the season four premiere of True Detective: Night Country.)
Within its first important sequence, True Detective: Night Country it loudly and proudly bellows its mission statement: “Shake it, baby!”
The fourth season of HBO’s crime anthology series comes from a new team led by director Issa Lopez, with stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis taking on the titular detective duties. A new lineup of talent on and behind the screen completely revolutionizes the real detective Formula, which offers something that feels completely new, while also providing a chilling narrative that feels more aligned with the first season starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson.
Emphasis also on “chilling,” considering the premise of night country is that it is set in an Alaskan town in the middle of a long sleepless night. The sun is setting for the winter months, and amidst the permanently dark permafrost, an evil lurks.
The premiere sets up the season’s mystery on a couple different fronts, beginning with the disappearance of a group of scientists, discovered at the end of the episode in a twisted tableau of frozen death. What happened to these men? Who or what is responsible? The task of finding out falls to, well, us, at least in a way. Half the fun of a new real detective The season attempts to unravel the mystery along with the characters, and the premiere gives Reddit sleuths enough ammunition to start putting together important pieces.
Equally important, however, are the two real detectives at the heart of the title: Foster as Liz Danvers and Reis as Evangeline Navarro, two law enforcement officers with little love for each other, for reasons not yet entirely clear.
“She’s very interesting, deep, tough and has a big heart,” Reis says. The Hollywood Reporter about his opinion of Navarro, a former indigenous and Dominican military officer who is new to the town of Ennis, Alaska, at least relatively speaking. “She is very connected to the spiritual side of him. She also has a dark side, but it is actually part of the light side of her. She is very calculated, but also unpredictable. There are so many contradictions when we meet her.”
Kali Reis as Evangeline Navarro.
Michele K. Short/HBO
Danvers, meanwhile, is a bit more of a meat-and-potatoes cop or, more accurately, a Tinder and fantasy football type cop. Initially, Foster was reluctant to join the cast of real detectivenot for anything that has to do with the quality of the piece.
“It wasn’t an easy yes,” says Foster THR. “I loved the script. loved the script, but I didn’t feel like it was right to play Danvers. The character was written very differently, not for someone my age, and I felt like there are some changes that happen at that age that need to be addressed.”
According to showrunner and director Lopez, Danvers’ initial concept was to present “a woman on the verge of breaking down, because I’d never seen Jodi do that: a woman on the verge of losing control and then regaining strength.” But when the shot didn’t completely match Foster’s vision, Lopez remembers the way they closed her creative gap: “I turned to her and said, ‘Okay, so you want me to make her into an asshole?’ And she said, ‘Yes!’ And I said, ‘I love that mission.’”
“I thought about all the prestige television and all the male antiheroes that are so iconic,” Lopez continues, “the Walter Whites, the Tony Sopranos, and I thought, why don’t we have a bad bitch?”
“At first, she was vulnerable and tearful and had a hard time adjusting to the pain,” says Foster, speaking of the past traumas that surrounded Danvers, in particular the still unexplained deaths of members of her family before the start of the series. . “We ended up going the opposite way. She is a closed person who does not access her pain at all. She is half asleep and we have to wake her up. There’s a lot of pettiness, arrogance, and a bad sense of humor that’s not really funny. All of that comes from this place of pain that she hides. It is more interesting and better serves the story of Navarro, who is the central voice of the piece, the indigenous voice. He wanted Danvers to fulfill that.”
Jodie Foster as Liz Danvers.
Michele K. Short/HBO
“Danvers and Navarro absolutely hate each other,” Reis says, “but they work very well together. It fits the real detective umbrella. At one point, they had a good relationship. They loved and respected each other very much. But something went wrong. With relationships, really good relationships, that happens, in these deep connections. But they respect each other’s abilities and know that they need each other to solve this case.”
López adds that he watched the original season of real detective as inspiration for the dynamic between Danvers and Navarro, saying: “If you look at Hart and Cohle (Harrelson and McConaughey) in the first season, you have one of them who is a nihilist and reads philosophy, and one of them who is like, ‘ Man, please stop talking.’ He wants to get home to his wife. So that’s what I couldn’t do. (Navarro and Danvers) couldn’t be that. But still the idea of them discussing the nature of the universe was absolutely essential to maintaining it. real detective. So what were the visions that could be in conflict? “We could have fun with that.”
Finn Bennett as Peter with father Hank Prior, played by John Hawkes.
Michele K. Short/HBO
While Danvers and Navarro are the central figures that clash and collaborate in the fourth round of real detective, are surrounded by an eclectic cast of characters, including, but not limited to: Fiona Shaw as Rose Aguineau, a mysterious woman with a possibly supernatural connection to Ennis; John Hawkes as Hank Prior, a less-than-stellar cop who waits patiently for his long-distance girlfriend to come to town; Finn Bennett as Peter, Hank’s son, also a cop, who depends on Danvers’ every word and order, at the expense of his family life; and Christopher Eccleston as Ted Corsaro, who makes his debut in episode two as another law enforcement official with old ties to Danvers.
Could any of them be responsible for the season’s central mystery? Could further Will more than one of them be involved? Without spoiling anything, know this: a very close look at the premiere episode of night country provides all the clues needed to put this puzzle together.
You just need to ask the right questions.
True Detective releases new episodes Sunday at 9 pm ET on HBO and Max.