Five years after season three, HBO’s blockbuster crime series franchise “True Detective” has belatedly returned. It’s back and better than ever but returned in a much different form. For one, the series creator Nic Pizzolatto parted ways with HBO several years ago, unable to come to terms on a new creative direction. While some thought that could mean the death of the series, HBO’s Casey Bloys was intent on keeping the series going. But as one of the crown jewels in the HBO coronet, not just any filmmaker would do, and the cable series determined to be patient and find the right fit.
And the right fit they found in Mexican horror filmmaker Issa López, known for 2017’s acclaimed “Tigers Are Not Afraid,” which soon compelled filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro to sing her praises. In creative, exploratory conversations with López, they realized one of the projects she was working on and had pitched to them, “Night Country,” a murder mystery set in Alaska tinged with frostbitten supernatural and horror elements, would make a pretty terrific edition of “True Detective.”
It almost seemed like fate. López said she had already been writing a Western set in the ice and had been contemplating the “impeccable” structure of murder mystery ideas, “geek obsessions with unsolved mysteries,” and notions about her childhood. “And I let that all brew in the background, and then I got a call from HBO,” she said. “I had no idea, but it turns out they had been for ages, looking for a way to revive ‘True Detective’ and they had talked to a lot of filmmakers. They wanted a filmmaker, and I said, ‘Well, I actually have an idea,’ and when I pitched them the story, they loved it.”
And when HBO asked what might define her take, she did not hesitate. “The first thing I said, I would bring back the supernatural!” she said emphatically. “And the feeling of dark Gods operating behind the curtain and people that know they are there.”
“It’s funny the gestalt of it all,” López said about the seemingly destined nature of the project and the way it came together. “In all the years that I have worked, I was never curious about writing a murder mystery, and then I was, and then a few weeks later I get a call about it, and I’m not like, ‘oh, it was meant to be, and the universe was—’ No, no, no. I think there’s a subconscious energy working in the environment and there was a curiosity about it that HBO felt. I was perhaps receiving all the successful murder mysteries around me, so it was just a confluence of interests.”
And as a fan of the series, especially the first, more mysterious and existential season with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, she soon agreed and began shaping the still-not-fully-formed “Night Country” around “True Detective.” Thus was born “True Detective: Night Country,” essentially season four, but the first installment in the anthology crime series to have its own distinct subtitle, which speaks to how unique and different it is (and yes, it was high on our 70 Most Anticipated TV Shows Of 2024 for a good reason).
Starring Academy Award-winning actress Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, a boxer turned actor who found major critical acclaim in her debut, “Catch The Fair One,” if you’ve read our review, you know that we thought “True Detective: Night Country” was masterful. We described it as a “hauntingly dark night of the soul [show that] returns the franchise to spellbinding Form.”
López cleverly realized she had already flipped the script of season one. Instead of two macho men set in the hot, sweaty, and sticky bayou of Louisiana, her story featured two female detectives and was set in the icy cold milieu of a fictional Alaskan mining town with a distinct indigenous population.
But many of the dynamics are the same: cop partners in conflict, a mysterious murder mystery that binds them together, larger forces of conspiracy all around them, and the unknowable, indescribable element of “Carcosa,” a term featured in season one from Robert W. Chambers’ book “The Yellow King,” which is a mysterious, ancient, and possibly cursed place, but to Lopez just represents the enigmatic worlds that lay beyond human sight, and comprehension.
So “True Detective: Night Country” brilliantly subverts and embraces the spirit and dark soul of “True Detective,” feeling unique and familiar simultaneously in a way that will dazzle new audiences and satisfy longtime viewers of the series.
If anything, López’s ‘Night Country’ leans even further into the phantasmal, the spectral, the hauntingly unknown, and the notion of spirits that are constantly calling those who are aware enough to listen.
Her ‘Night Country’ also leans into the creepier side of genre and eerie horror, taking some cues from David Fincher’s “Seven,” John Carpenter’s similarly chilly winter horror “The Thing,” Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” and yes, even Jonathan Demme’s “Silence Of The Lambs,” which also famously featured her star, Jodie Foster.
“No, I absolutely embraced it,” López said of all the horror and thriller influences that spoke to her, also describing the original series as a “child” of David Fincher’s “Seven,” so that effect carries over. “What better movie, and what better thriller of, ‘who is it around me doing this? other than ‘The Thing.’ And the [Antarctic science station at the center of the show], I conceived it a little bit like the Nostromo [ship in ‘Alien’] and feeling a little bit like the Overlook [Hotel from ‘The Shining’]. And the way the camera moves through it, it’s very much, at moments, definitely a reference to Kubrick.”
While the cryptic crooked spiral symbol, featured in season one of “True Detective,” was believed to be connected to pedophile rings—something that season three of the series tried to retroactively bake into ‘True Detective’ canon, to López the symbol remains more enigmatic and inscrutable. To her, it’s more of a representation symbolizing the otherworldly, things beyond human explanation and warnings to beware.
“Honestly, I just referred to the first season. And the symbol which is marked on the back of the women that are ritually murdered have nothing to do with pedophilia,” she insisted. “It has to do with dark rituals and the cult of Carcosa and the Yellow King. And Carcosa is the nether regions, the other worlds, that you can access through these rituals, through these spaces in the veil.”
“So that’s where I took,” she continued about the influence and meaning of the Carcosa crooked spiral. “The idea that there are places in the world where the barrier between these two worlds is thin, and you have to be careful because you can glimpse into things that are gone, and other time [periods], and things that are eternal and trapped in a circle of repetition, and for me, it’s the symbol of the beyond where it becomes those risk. In my series, it’s a warning of the nearness of those worlds.”
The dead play a big part in “True Detective,” seemingly appearing, warning, and calling to the characters. But not all of it is sinister, and there’s even an element of the dead that is crying out because it misses the living, which feels like a big reference to her Mexican culture and the way Mexico always celebrates and honors the dead. There’s even a line in the series that speaks to the notion that none of us are truly ever gone.
“That is absolutely Mexican,” López said of that influence. “When Jodie first read the script, she said, ‘Clearly this is a big deal to you,’” she recalled. “And number one, it is because of who I am and because I lost very dear to me when I was very young, and the idea of ‘maybe they are not gone,’ became very central to who I am. But other than that, I’m Mexican, and if you’re going to pick one salient feature of Mexico for the world, it’s our relationship with death and the way we dance with her and invite the departed to eat and drink with us. That’s how we are. While I’m proud that the series feels American and portrays a piece of true Americana, it is in its DNA very Mexican.”
López described herself as a “geek obsessive” several times, and honestly, the layered, myriad of influences that make up her own personal DNA and all that she weaves into “True Detective” is what makes it so spectacular, spellbinding, and engrossing. It’s a terrific series, it has a few Easter Eggs for fans throughout, but it’s also just her very own unique take on these worlds. My bet is that this is just the beginning of a new chapter for her where the entire industry becomes aware of all that she is capable of.
“True Detective: Night Country” episode one is available now on HBO and Max. It’s a gripping series that should have the audiences fixated—and discussing and obsessing over its enigmatic details—for its entire six-episode run. I can’t wait for you to see it all. In the meantime, it was a true delight to talk to López, and you can listen to the whole conversation from my Deep Focus podcast below.
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