After last week's episode of "True Detective: Night Country," we theorized that Annie K. found something resembling a crooked spiral in the ice beyond Ennis, Alaska. Now, in Episode 4, the continued prevalence of two symbols—the spiral and the orange—present two answers for what happened to Annie and the Tsalal scientists. In the following "True Detective" Season 4, Episode 4 recap, we run through each new detail and put on our tin foil hats for some bonkers (but also well-supported!) theories.
This week, "Night Country" is a lonely hearts club at Christmastime. Danvers (Jodie Foster) pushes her stepdaughter to the brink as Navarro (Kali Reis) is beset by tragedy and...forces unknown? We think the answer to the mystery hinges on whether or not there's something supernatural afoot in Ennis. If, like "True Detective" Season 1, the show ultimately goes the natural-causes route, showrunner Issa López's hints about oranges could point to a vast public health conspiracy in Ennis.
Elsewhere, the all-important Otis Heiss is likely our last new character. Now that Connelly (Christopher Eccleston) is staying in Ennis, expect him to play a major role in the climax. With only two episodes left in the season, the clues are starting to congeal. Here's everything you might have missed in "True Detective" Season 4, Episode 4, plus two possible answers to the mystery.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for "True Detective" Season 4, Episode 4.
The Curious Case of Otis Heiss
Michele K. Short/HBO
On Christmas Eve, Danvers spots Jules having an episode and removing her clothes in the middle of the road. She calls in Navarro, who finally brings her sister to The Lighthouse, a voluntary mental health clinic. Jules seems resigned to hospital care at this point. "You knew that you were gonna stay here, didn't you?" Navarro asks her.
Captain Connelly, who we learn is running for mayor, is supervising the transfer of the Tsalal scientists' bodies to Anchorage for forensics. Given the hospital fight last episode and the developing mine protests, he's staying in Ennis to help (or hinder) Danvers' investigation. He wants her to keep the Annie K. video and case connection "on a need-to-know basis."
Prediction: Connelly is involved in the Annie K. cover-up or the Tsalal case, or both. He has friendly banter with Danvers and good reason for keeping both cases hush-hush given the political climate of Ennis, but we suspect that's meant to throw us off his scent. You don't cast Christopher Eccleston for nothing, and Connelly definitely needs the backing of the mine to win the mayoral election. We smell collusion.
Pete stumbles onto a massive clue: In Alaska in 1998, a German man named Otis Heiss suffered similar injuries (ruptured eardrums, self-inflicted bites) to the dead Tsalal scientists. The cause of his "accident" was never identified. He's been off the grid for the last 8 years, save for some B&E and drug charges. Maybe Heiss is in league with the still-missing Clark. Danvers issues an APB on Heiss.
A Tragic Ending for Jules
Danvers and Navarro reach some chilling conclusions about the Annie K. video. It looks like she found prehistoric whale bones (spiral-shaped, of course) in an ice cave and was killed on the spot. Her murderer then dumped her body in town "to send a message" to other mine (or Tsalal?) meddlers. Adam—the geology teacher and Danvers' former flame—says Annie could've been in a nearby cave system that was sealed off years ago due to perilous accidents. The man who originally mapped the caves? Otis Heiss!
Visions are still haunting Jules at The Lighthouse. An orange eerily rolls out from under her bed, where she also sees her dead mother reanimate. Later that night, she's at the shipwreck where Navarro found her last episode. She calls her sister one last time, then removes and folds her clothes and walks naked onto the ice to her death.
Navarro drops in on Rose, who's gone all-out for her lonely Christmas Eve. She's dressed to the nines, and she whipped up a spread of elegant hors d'oeuvres. We learn that Rose was once a prominent academic. She got sick of "making so much noise" writing "meaningless" articles. So she changed her name and skipped off to Ennis, which is blissfully quiet "except for all the f—ing dead."
Never thought we'd say this, but we're feeling very sorry for poor Hank this episode. He eagerly waits for his Russian mail-order bride to step off the plane, but she never arrives. It dawns on him that he's been conned, but he plays it off to Pete out of embarrassment. Previously, we cast a suspicious eye on Hank, but his mishandling of Annie's case might be just that — a mishandling and nothing more sinister.
Leah is caught vandalizing the Silver Sky Mine office, and Danvers has to talk Kate McKittrick down from pressing charges. Angry that her mother doesn't care about the water pollution caused by the mine, Leah storms out and spends Christmas Eve at Pete and Kayla's house.
Oliver Tugack is M.I.A.
Michele K. Short/HBO
Fueled by vodka, Danvers realizes that in both the Annie K. and Tsalal videos, the power goes out just before the video cuts off. That means there was a generator in the cave where Annie was killed. Danvers suspects Oliver Tugack, Tsalal's equipment engineer, installed that generator. Pete and Navarro go to Tugack's place, but it's abandoned. They find a stone inscribed with the spiral symbol. The other men in the nomad camp say Tugack left the day after he learned about the Tsalal killings.
A drunken Danvers goes to Connelly's motel room for a hookup, but the pair end up fighting. Connelly admits that Danvers was always a better cop than him, but he didn't transfer her to Ennis to get rid of the competition. After her husband and son died, Danvers' anti-social tendencies worsened. No one wanted to work with her at Anchorage P.D., so he sent her to Ennis. Driving home, Danvers nearly hits the one-eyed polar bear — a reminder of her dead son's polar bear plushie.
In the car with Pete, Navarro gets the call from Alaska Coast Guard that her sister committed suicide on the ice. She's numb at first, then she rampages. She goes to The Lighthouse and demands to know how they let her mentally unstable sister walk out of the facility. Then she picks a fight with the man who assaulted his wife at the crab factory in Episode 1 and loses. She goes to Kovick's bar and he dresses her wounds.
Navarro Is Marked
The next morning, Christmas Day, Navarro heads to Danvers' house and tells her about Jules' suicide: "She just walked into the sea. Kept going until she fell into the freezing ocean and drowned." Jules was diagnosed with schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder, but Navarro thinks either her family or all Native women are cursed: "My mother had it, too. Something calls us and we follow, and it's calling me now."
A frantic Danvers is reminded of the Wheeler case. She thinks Navarro saw a "ghost" or a "spirit" in the room with them that day and, presumably, shot Wheeler dead due to the vision. In flashback, Navarro sees a reanimated woman (who wears the same white tank top as Wheeler's dead wife and Navarro's own mother) scream and point, probably at Wheeler. Navarro denies that she saw anything that day, and Danvers calls her a liar.
Some fishermen photographed a mysterious man wearing Annie's pink parka out by the "dredge," the abandoned barge used to dig up earth at the now-defunct gold mines. Danvers and Navarro investigate the dredge hoping to find Clark holed up there. They get separated when Navarro sees visions of her dead sister inside. Danvers finds Otis Heiss high on heroin and wearing the pink parka. He says Clark "went back down to hide" in the "night country," where they all exist now.
Danvers finds Navarro unresponsive and kneeling before a lit-up Christmas tree. Her ears are bleeding, just like Otis Heiss and the Tsalal scientists were found with ruptured eardrums.
What's Going On? Two Main Theories
Michele K. Short/HBO
We think the answer to Annie's murder and the Tsalal killings hinges on whether or not the supernatural really exists in Ennis.
The Crooked Spiral Theory: If the show doesn't shy away from the supernatural like previous seasons of "True Detective" did, then we think the whale fossil unleashed evil on Ennis when it was uncovered. What does that look like? Malevolent spirits blasting out people's eardrums (Otis, the Tsalal scientists, Navarro) and leading them to their deaths (Annie K., Jules).
That fossil could've driven Clark mad; it could've shown up in Annie's dreams as the crooked spiral, which she ultimately had tattooed on her back. Maybe Annie was killed by spiritual forces, or maybe someone wishing to keep the fossil a secret murdered her and made it look like a politically-motivated killing. One supporting point to this theory is the fact that Oliver Tugack's nomad buddies—who are all Native Alaskans—seem to recognize the spiral symbol and stay out of the Tsalal investigation entirely. It's as if they're avoiding an evil more powerful than corrupt suits at the mine.
The Orange Theory: If the supernatural is not in play, the only way we can make sense of "True Detective: Night Country" is if Ennis is literally under a mass hallucination caused by pollution of some sort. It sounds nuts, but maybe the poisoned water from the mine has led to illness that affects the mind. Or maybe the source of the disease comes from whatever microorganism the Tsalal scientists dredged up.
One clue that supports the disease theory is the recurring image of the orange, consumed by sailors to avoid scurvy and other diseases. On Twitter, showrunner Issa López hinted that we'd "learn more about" oranges in the series. Maybe a blast of Vitamin C is all it takes to ward off evil in Ennis. Is that why Hank's hillbilly search party had backpacks full of oranges?
New episodes of "True Detective" Season 4 premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and Max.
