In the rawest part of winterTrue Detective is back HBO. A return that occurs ten years later of the premiere of its first season and when the platform was starving for new releases due to the long Hollywood strikes that have had filming paralyzed for months since this summer. After the setback that was its second part, each new installment of True Detective has been received in a climate of skepticism and distrust. Those memorable first episodes were placed on an altar and it seemed that nothing could surpass them again. Those responsible for this new installment seem to have assumed that for a large part of the public and critics it was going to be like this no matter what they did. But the key was to do something better than the sequels and reinvent themselves. Have radical changesbut preserving the essences that elevated the classic. With one episode left before this new season ends, we can take stock of what this return has been like.
One of the first innovations has been to bet on a radical change of scenery. Except for that second season of unfortunate memory, the previous installments were set in Deep America. In this new installment we leave aside the swamps of the American southto go to the cold Alaska lands. A scenario that shows us much more snow than we could find in Fargo, another series that began at the same time as this one and with which it has had a curious parallel life. With the subtitle Polar Night, The plot begins when one of those long nights is about to begin in which you cannot see the sun rise and that has a duration of 65 days. The ideal environment to preserve all that atmosphere of pessimism that True Detective has always had. As they would say in one of the house’s most successful television series, “winter is coming.” Winter is coming.
The mystery that the protagonists have to investigate revolves around a scientific station. Scenario that reminds us more of a horror moviehow can it be The thing, than to a detective genre fiction. The disappearance of the base personnel and the connection of the case with an old unsolved crime is the trigger for the plot. The expectation for this new installment skyrocketed when it became public before the premiere that they would be found at the crime scenes. those strange spirals that the cult used behind which were the crimes of the first season. ¿The Yellow King strikes back?
The station is located in front of one of those towns where everyone knows each other, but where life is not as calm or peaceful as you might think. It’s been many years since we saw Twin Peaks and we are cured of horror. The tensions are the order of the day between indigenous community and the white population, especially because of a mining company which is the owner of everything, around which conspiracy theories of all kinds move, and which many accuse of being poisoning the population with practices that are far from being environmentally friendly.
This new season has a much more supernatural feel than the previous ones, to the point that there are scenes of ghostly apparitions that look like something out of a movie James Wan. With one episode left before the season ends, I would dare to say that these visions might not have anything spectral, but rather they are hallucinations caused by the poisoning of the mine. Behind everything there are very human monsters. In a few days I will check whether or not I have to eat this theory with chips.
Another of the big changes of this new season is to put two policewomen as protagonists. But be careful, they can be as macho and tough as the previous protagonists have been. The undisputed star of the cast is Jodie Foster in the role of the town sheriff. Her character is very far from that of that rookie FBI agent Clarice Sterling who launched her into stardom in The silence of the lambs. By the way, since we’re talking about Hannibal Lecter, is there some covert homage to the Hannibal series in the macabre scenario of the bodies of the station staff? There is an aura of loser around the mature detective, with a certain weakness for vodka and throwing herself at everything that moves. Maybe a consequence of having to work in the ass of the world. By the way, another meta-cinematic reference is the fact that both Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaugheythe unforgettable Rusty Cole from the first season, starred in the 90s science fiction film Contact
The other protagonist is the unknown Kali Reisactress from boxing world and who recently hung up his gloves to move into acting. Although North American series increasingly open the range of diversity to more groups, it is quite rare for indigenous communities to be in these groups and their reality is rather ignored. The two protagonists are at odds at the beginning of the series, but they must bury their quarrels in order to clarify the case.
The director of the mine is also a woman and outside the cameras, the person in charge of the season has been Issa Lopes, screenwriter, producer and director and who carries all the weight of these new episodes. In the opinion of the usual madmen, too many women with power. Therefore, before the premiere, the series suffered a negative reviews campaign on some of the main portals with the aim of trying to lower its rating. Reviews that were written before the episodes were broadcast, so, as you can see, they are overflowing with objectivity and a phenomenon that sadly continues to be a modus operandi.
Issa Lopes has represented another total break with previous seasons and an attempt to do something new. The first season was produced by Nick Pizolatto and Cary Fukunaga, although all the achievements of these already mythical episodes were attributed to the second. With Pizolatto alone taking the reins of the series, the debacle of the second season occurred. At least, with the third Pizolatto, that thorn could be removed, although the idea had already germinated that like the first, none. She was too similar to the other one. This fourth season arrives without any of the original creators of the series behind it, so there is a clear intention to do something new. And from the cold winter to the warm spring. Maybe the path is to find independent authors who know how to give their particular style to the ingredients with which the series has always worked.
