💥True Detective Season 4 Episode 1 Recap: 10 Biggest Mysteries & Questions💥
1True Detective Season 4 Episode 1 Recap: 10 Biggest Mysteries & Questions
True Detective season 4's episode 1 kicks off on an exciting note, introducing mysteries and questions that are both novel and familiar because of their hinted parallels with season 1. Set in Ennis, Alaska, the fourth installment of the acclaimed HBO TV series introduces Jodi Foster's character, Liz Danvers, as its central detective. Continuing the series' trend of introducing two primary detective characters in each season, the show also brings in Kali Reis as Evangeline Navarro, whose complex dynamic with Danvers is almost reminiscent of Hart's relationship with Cohle in season 1.
Without wasting much time, True Detective season 4's opening episode delves into the action by setting the stage for its overarching mystery. Its opening arc reveals that a group of researchers working in a facility in Ennis have suddenly disappeared. As Navarro and Danvers set out to unravel the tapestry around what happened to them, they find more questions than answers that connect the mystery to a tragic event from their past.
True Detective season 4's episode 1 begins with a quote by Hildred Castaigne: "For we do not know what beasts the night dreams when its hours grow too long for even God to be awake." With what follows, the episode reveals it is unfolding in the backdrop of the last sunset of the year before an extended period of darkness engulfs the region. As a hunter prepares for the "polar night" and attempts to hunt down a deer, a herd of deer at a distance smells something in the air and suddenly, out of panic, leaps towards a cliff. While the show does not explicitly reveal what happened to them, the herd's reaction seems like a visual depiction of Castaigne's quote.
As the sun sets in Alaska before the long period of darkness, the deer sense the arrival of the metaphorical beasts who prevail when the "hours grow too long for even God to be awake." In many ways, the deer's reaction also foreshadows what might have happened to the researchers at TSALAL. All the researchers found frozen in the episode's ending moments seem gravely terrified of something, suggesting that they left their research facility after seeing something straight out of their nightmares. Like the deer in the opening scene, they probably could not help but panic and rush to their own deathbeds after seeing "what beasts the night dreams."
When Danvers (played by Jodi Foster of the Silence of the Lambs fame) shows up at the TSALAL facility to investigate the disappearance of the researchers, she grows increasingly anxious after hearing The Beatles' "Twist and Shout" and rushes inside to shut it off. While she tries to justify her intolerance towards the song by saying she is not a Beatles fan, her reaction suggests there is more to it than meets the eye. Much later in the episode, when Danvers nearly rams into Stacy's car, she briefly gets flashes of a traumatic incident from her past. In another scene from True Detective season 4's episode 1, Danvers' daughter says that they never talk about a certain drunk-driving accident.
Although the show's future episodes will likely offer more insight into how these events connect, Danvers' reaction to the Beatles' song might have something to do with the accident her daughter refers to. Maybe "Twist and Shout" was playing in the car during the traumatic drunk-driving accident that Danvers and her daughter were involved in. Listening to "Twist and Shout" might have reminded Danvers of the scarring incident, which probably made her react that way.
When Danvers asks Peter what the researchers were trying to find in Alaska, he says they were looking for the "origins of life." However, given the nature of their deaths and their possible connections to Annie Masu Kowtok's murder, their research could be a cover for something far more sinister. Annie's case file reveals that she had the same crooked spiral markings that Marty Hart and Rust Cohle found on victims of the Yellow King Cult in True Detective season 1. Therefore, if the researchers were somehow responsible for Annie's murder, they might have had connections with the Tuttle family's cult.
The delivery man who first notices the researchers have suspiciously disappeared also finds a disembodied tongue on the floor. Danvers later finds dents on the tongue and theorizes that it might have belonged to a local Inupiaq woman who used her tongue for licking threads for fixing fishing nets. Since Annie Masu Kowtok was an Alaskan native and her tongue was detached when she was murdered, Danvers might have found her tongue in the TSALAL facility. However, considering how Annie was killed two years before the disappearance of the researchers, it is strange how its discoloration suggests that it had been out in the open for only two days.