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True Detective: Night Country came to an end tonight on HBO, following Ennis Police Chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Alaska State Trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) as they figured out the connection between the murdered activist Annie K (Nivi Pedersen) and the scientists of the Tsalal Arctic Research Station. Issa López‘s season of True Detective neatly wrapped up its major mysteries, while still allowing the audience to choose for themselves how big of a role the spiritual world played in this frigid drama.
So who killed Annie K? What happened to the researchers at Tsalal? And did both Danvers and Navarro survive the season?
**Spoilers for the True Detective Season 4 finale, now streaming on Max**
True Detective Season 4 Episode 6 begins with Danvers and Navarro trudging out into a blizzard to explore the “Night Country,” a series of underground ice tunnels where they believe Annie K was murdered. What they discover is the tunnels lead to a secret underground lab located directly beneath the Tsalal Arctic Research Station. They also discover that Annie’s former lover, Raymond Clark (Owen McDonnell), has been hiding there.
After Danvers and Navarro follow Clark into the abandoned station, they manage to finally overcome him and tie him up. Using the recording of Annie’s final moments to torture Clark, they succeed in getting the scientist to talk. He explains that Annie figured out that the only way the Tsalal scientists were able to dig into the permafrost to extract world-changing DNA was by pushing the local mine to destroy the environment to soften said permafrost. This horrifying realization set off a deadly chain of events that ended in the deaths of Annie K and all the Tsalal Researchers, including Clark.
So what happened? Who killed Annie K? What happened to the Tsalal Scientists? Do Danvers and Navarro surviving True Detective: Night Country? Here’s what you need to know about the ending of True Detective Season 4…
True Detective: Night Country Ending Explained: Who Killed Annie K? What Happened to the Tsalal Scientists?
The final episode of True Detective: Night Country reveals that the Tsalal scientists killed Annie K after discovering that she had destroyed years of their work. Lund (Þorsteinn Bachmann) flipped out first, stabbing Annie with the star-shaped drills used to break the permafrost. Annie’s screams drew the rest of the scientists down. After Annie strikes Clark in terror, the men gang up on her to stab her even more. Clark explains he watched them kill her. “I would never hurt her,” he says, before the show reveals that he smothers her with his t-shirt after she jerks awake.
Navarro is able to get Clark’s confession on camera before letting him die by suicide by walking into the cold. Clark also says that on the night the Tsalal scientists all disappeared, he saved himself by hiding in the underground laboratory by holding the hatch closed.
After narrowly avoiding their own deaths during the icy storm, Danvers and Navarro figure out that they can use a UV light on hand to find out who was trying to open the hatch. They find a handprint with two fingers shortened. It’s a match for Blair Harman (Kathryn Wilder), the crab factory worker Navarro saved from her abusive boyfriend all the way back in True Detective: Night Country Episode 1.
Danvers and Navarro realize the question they should have been asking this whole time wasn’t “Who killed Annie K?” but “Who knows who killed her?”
The duo go to the home of Beatrice (L’Xeis Diane Benson), one of the station’s cleaning ladies, whom they’ve already questioned. There, a whole group of domestic workers reveal themselves. They explain that even though they assumed the mine was behind Annie’s death, they soon learned about the hidden underground lab, complete with star-shaped murder weapon. Instead of going to the cops, who they assumed would change nothing.
“It’s always the same story with the same ending: nothing ever happens. So we told ourselves a different story, with a different ending,” Beatrice explains.
The women stormed Tsalal and rounded up all the scientists except for Raymond Clark, who was hiding in the underground lab. Blair tried to pry the hatch open, but couldn’t. The women push the men into a truck and drive out into the middle of the tundra. Holding them at gunpoint, they demanded they take their clothes off. Mother Nature did the rest. “If she wanted them, she would take them,” Beatrice says. “And if not, their clothes were there for them.”
Navarro ultimately decides to let the women free. Danvers backs her up, telling the women the official “cause of death” is a stab avalanche and the case is closed.
The only loose thread? No one knows how Annie’s tongue wound up at Tsalal.
Does Navarro Die at the End of True Detective: Night Country?
There’s one more slightly loose end for the audience in the True Detective: Night Country finale. We’re told months later that while our heroes successfully covered up Hank Prior’s (John Hawkes) death, there’s still uncertainty what happened to Navarro. She left her house empty and supposedly walked out into the frozen landscape, like deceased sister Julia (Aka Niviana). That said, she’s been spotted and the final shot of the series is of Danvers and Navarro enjoying a coffee together on the porch of a remote cabin.
True Detective star Kali Reis told Decider she liked that creator Issa López left Navarro’s fate up in the air.
“Throughout the entire show, you have a suggestion whether you want to follow the rational, logical [path] or you want to go with the intuitive, spiritual, magical. And I think that the ending is just that it’s still open for interpretation,” Reis said, before pointing out that the only person Navarro would come back to see would be Danvers.
“So, I absolutely like the way that you can interpret it how you want to. You know, she’s not gonna go start a family with Qavvik, that’s for damn sure.”
