You were right to be suspicious about the third season of True Detective. The second season of the HBO crime show was a catastrophic disaster that burned up all the goodwill the (mostly terrific) first season had earned. But this third season, judging from the three episodes that have aired so far, seems to have corrected the skid, focusing on character and a single mystery, instead of the deranged, all-encompassing conspiracies of season two. Granted, it could all go wrong in the next five weeks, but for now things are looking promising.
I won’t get into any plot spoilers until later, so if you haven’t started the new season, you can read freely for now. Let’s start with the best aspect: Mahershala Ali as Arkansas state detective Wayne Hays. Ali’s extraordinary in this, playing Hays across the season’s three timelines: 1980, when the crime occurs; 1990, when new facts about the case come to light; and 2015, when a true-crime TV series interviews a 70-year-old Hays about the 35-year-old case. Under some surprisingly convincing makeup, Ali as the older Hays is positively astonishing, and he gives the character nuance and development over all three timelines so that you’re never unsure which time period we’re in.
Stephen Dorff plays Hays’ partner, Roland West, a hard-boiled but so far good-natured cop bedecked in Pendleton jackets. Dorff’s great, too, as is the remainder of the supporting cast, including Carmen Ejogo as Amelia, a teacher who becomes connected to the case and to Ali’s character, and Scoot McNairy as the father of the two missing children that the case centers around.
As is always the case with True Detective, the text is dense, able to be parsed through any number of fan theories. For this season, that kind of theorizing actually feels worthwhile—perhaps even more so than it did in the first season. The case touches upon a number of real-world historical events, without explicitly depicting or reinterpreting them. So far the most interesting is the “Satanic panic” that revolved around the game of Dungeons and Dragons in the 1980s; even though there are so far only a few small clues for careful viewers, the game and its reputation seem to be a pretty significant parts of the subtext. The other big one is the West Memphis Three: a trio of heavy-metal loving teenagers are introduced early on as suspects, although it remains to be seen what part they’ll play in the case.
However, it wouldn’t be a season of True Detective without some warning signs on the horizon. The first episode, directed by Jeremy Saulnier, is the best one by far. Saulnier is an excellent director who only worked on the first two episodes (his second episode was quite good, too, just not as good as the first, which was exceptional). Unfortunately, Saulnier left the project under undisclosed circumstances, presumably due to disagreements with the show’s creator and writer, Nic Pizzolatto. (Season one’s director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, also famously had a falling out with Pizzolatto, which led to Pizzolatto creating the character of a doofus film director in season two, supposedly a jab at Fukunaga.) Absent Saulnier’s talent for the final six episodes, one wonders if a drop-off in quality is coming. To be fair, episode three—directed by Daniel Sackheim—seemed more than adequately focused, and tonally of a piece with what we’ve seen so far. But be aware there may be storm clouds ahead, with Pizzolatto himself (an untried directing quantity) helming episodes four and five.
Indeed, Pizzolatto seems to be the show’s greatest liability. The chief criticism around him is that he’s really full of himself, as can be seen from the nonsensical attempts at profundity attempted by season two’s irritatingly labyrinthine plotting. One imagines Pizzolatto’s fallen back to earth after getting seriously lambasted for season two, but the truth is that he has yet to fully land a dismount for any season of True Detective. Season one’s mystery fell apart somewhere in the final episodes, and one can’t help but get the nagging feeling there could be some mismanagement of season three’s mystery, too—although, to be fair, every mystery that’s ever been written, from Doyle to Christie to James to Flynn, is never as satisfying in its revealing conclusion as it is during the beginning passages, when the chess pieces are carefully being set up.
Pizzolatto’s other problem is his depiction of women characters, and while season two’s Rachel McAdams performance went some way toward correcting that, it didn’t exactly exonerate him. Season three has Ejogo carrying that water, and so far she seems to be doing so admirably. And yet the mysterious aspects of her character mean that Amelia hasn’t been fully sketched in all dimensions. Indeed—okay, here comes a spoiler, at least a speculative one—the predominant theory of the Reddit and Twitter crowd, as of today, puts her at the center of the crime. I think it’s a good theory, but I have a different one, which I’ll share at the end.
Bottom line, True Detective’s third season is progressing pretty nicely. The mystery is spooky and involving while not overly reliant on shocks and switchbacks, and it has enough emotional hooks to elevate it beyond the basic whodunnit. The story, shifting back and forth through three timelines, is richly complex but not confusing (yet). And the supplemental materials the show hints at make it a fully involving experience, worthy of more attention than the one hour per Sunday you’ll spend watching the actual episodes themselves. (For weekly deep dives, the Ringer’s “Flat Circle” aftershow/podcast is a fun survey of everything the show’s been hinting at.) While I think it’s unlikely the show will rise back to the level of season three’s superb first episode, it’s worth keeping in mind that the fourth episodes of True Detective seasons are when things get really interesting. Hey, that’s next week!
Okay, now for my hare-brained theory—which includes spoilers for everything up through episode three. You’ve been warned.
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My theory is that the younger sister, Julie Purcell—the one who was presumed dead until her fingerprints showed up at a Walgreen’s in 1990—is the one who killed her brother, Will. I think she did this in self defense, although I don’t know exactly why, or what sort of bad things Will was up to. There is likely an adult involved, and this adult spirited Julie away from the small town after her brother’s death. I don’t think Julie is a villain, but I’m proposing she is the murderer.
A second theory: This one may be more obvious, but I think the Native American garbage collector is the patsy—he’s the one who was wrongly convicted in 1980, leading to the reopening of the case in 1990. It seems pretty clear that he’s about to go into full-on vigilante revenge mode on the rednecks who beat him up in episode three, and that will make it easy for people to assume he’s the guy they’re looking for. Of course, he had nothing to do with it.
Okay! I’m sure I’ll be proven wrong almost immediately. But as anyone who’s watched True Detective knows, that’s all part of the fun. See you on the message boards.