Part 2

Part 2 is the second episode of the fourth season of True Detective and twenty-sixth episode overall. It first aired January 21, 2024 on HBO.

Synopsis[]

As Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Prior (Finn Bennett) set out to learn more about Tsalal – and find an unlikely location for the physical evidence – Captain Connelly (Christopher Eccleston) threatens to move the case to Anchorage. Later, Navarro (Kali Reis) and Danvers (Foster) separately find a connection between one of the Tsalal men and Annie, prompting the former partners to agree to work the case together.

Summary[]

Danvers and Pete examine the corpses and take pictures. They wonder why they're naked. They have burnt corneas and ruptured ear drums. There's a symbol on their foreheads. One of them scratched his own eyes out. Denver says they should send it all back to Anchorage, where they have the resources, but then decides to keep it. Someone comes in with a chainsaw, but Danvers tells him to stay three feet away. She also stops Trooper Willson from taking pictures for personal use. She tells everyone to stop messing around because it's a crime scene.

Navarro and Rose watch the scene from a distance. Rose tells Navarro she should go home, but she can't because it's tied to Annie's case. Rose says she's screwed. She tells Navarro to come see her later. Navarro finds piles of clothing in the snow.

They work to free the corpses from the ice. Willson breaks off part of an arm and the corpse, Anders Lund, starts screaming, startling all of them.

Danvers learns that they're going to have to amputate at least one of Lund's legs. Danvers asks how soon they can talk to him and the nurse says he's in an induced coma, so it'll be at least a day. Meanwhile, Pete is struggling to move the bodies without damaging them. Danvers peeks through the window into a classroom.

Adam Bryce is teaching a class. One of his students, Haydn, answers a question incorrectly. Danvers comes in and dismisses the class over Bryce's objections. He's upset to see Danvers. She asks him to explain what Tsalal Station does. He tells her to go talk to the scientists there, but she informs him that that's not possible.

Rose tells Navarro that she doesn't see Travis often. He only comes when he wants something. He said goodbye before going into the ice. He knew he was dying and didn't want the leukemia to take him. He brought her homemade croissants, they ate them, sang together, had sex, and then he left. And Navarro found him dead. Navarro asks Rose when she started seeing the dead. She says it started with Travis, but she knows people who were born with it. Navarro asks how she stays okay when she sees them. Rose says sometimes the dead comes to visit and sometimes they come to tell you something you need to hear and some want to take you with them. You need to know the difference.

Bryce asks what happened to the scientists and Danvers says she's trying to figure that out and asks again what they were doing. He says as a geologist, it's not really his field, but they were made men, reclusive. They never came to town or rotated crews. No one went in or out. They were trying to sequence the DNA of an extinct microorganism that could potentially stop cellular decay. They could cure diseases with that technology. Danvers asks what was taking so long and he says it's extremely difficult and delicate. Lots of things can go wrong. The permafrost will prevent it from ever working. Danvers gets a call from Lulu telling her to come by the station.

Navarro explains that Julia sees people following her and she can't sleep. She says their dead mother is calling her. Navarro brought her to Ennis last year to keep her close, but she's worried. Rose tells her not to confuse the spirit world with mental health issues. It sounds like she needs treatment. Navarro says she doesn't want to go to The Lighthouse or talk about it. She went to a place in Nevada four years ago and they heavily medicated her and she hated it.

Rose walks out and asks if Navarro saw the symbol on Lund's forehead. She draws it in the snow. Navarro's seen it before and asks what it is. Rose says it's older than Ennis.

Davners walks in to find Hank discussing the case with Ted Connelly, who tells Danvers not to worry because he's moving the case to Anchorage. Danvers refuses, saying he can't take the case away from her. It's her job and she's going to do it. He sent her to Ennis and she's there to serve. He repeats that he's going to move the case and she quotes a crime manual that says frozen bodies can't be manipulated until thawed. They'll take two days to thaw. Connelly asks where she's going to put them.

Danvers arrives at the hockey rink and gestures for Leah to come talk to her. Danvers asks where the manager is just as Sheri Gillard, an ice skater, passes Leah to enter the ice.

Hank greets people as he passes, including Kate McKitterick, who asks about Pete. She asks Hank to get Pete to coach her boys privately. Hank promises to try. Danvers sits next to Kate, who realizes it's serious. Kate sends her son to get dressed and wait in the car for her. Danvers says they need a place to thaw the scientist's bodies and the rink is perfect for that. Kate says she'll do it because she loves the town.

They drop the corpses off on the ice rink. Kate is horrified when they're uncovered and leaves. Pete sees teeth marks and says he thinks they bit their own hands. Leah walks up and is horrified. Danvers tells her to get out of there, but she just came over to tell Danvers that she was leaving. Danvers tells them to check for similar injuries in autopsy reports. They try to identify each body. They see five heads and nine feet. The rest are buried. The way they are positioned looks like something was chasing them. Danvers says hypothermia can cause delirium. Danvers tries giving directions, but Pete walks away, saying he has an idea. Navarro comes up to Danvers and tells her Kate hates Danvers more than she hates Navarro. Danvers says she might have dated Kate's husband. Navarro asks if that was before or after the divorce. Danvers doesn't answer, just asks what Navarro wants. Navarro shows her a picture of a tattoo that was on Annie's body, the same symbol that was on one of the corpses. Navarro wants them to work together to figure it out, but Danvers never wants to work with Navarro again. Navarro says no one can stand Danvers, except Pete, but that'll end soon. Danvers tells Navarro to leave. Danvers shows the picture to Pete, who uses Molina's corpse to unlock his phone using facial recognition.

Navarro enters Qavvik's, where Julia is working. Julia offers her lunch, which she declines. Navarro greets Qavvik as she passes him on the way to see Ryan.

Outside, Navarro shows Ryan a picture, but he doesn't recognize Clark. If Annie was seeing him, she never introduced him to Ryan. Chuck Mosley comes outside and interrupts. He's upset with Navarro for bringing up the case again. Navarro says she's trying to find out who killed Ryan's sister. She shows Chuck the photo and he denies knowing Clark. They hear a fight break out inside Qavvik's.

Qavvik breaks up a fight between a miner and another guy. Chuck gets involved and then runs out without paying his tab.

Pete watches a video of the Tsalal crew singing together, then he gives Danvers the lab results. They found a hand print on one of the shoes, but there were no matches. Danvers lays out the photographs and tries to explain what happened with hypothermia. But that doesn't explain why they went outside in the first place. Pete says maybe a polar bear came in. They ran outside in fear, then undressed due to paradoxical undressing. Now they have to explain the sign on Lund's forehead, but Danvers says the real question is when it was drawn. If it was before, it could be part of a prank. The clothes they found don't match the bodies. They have five pairs of pants and three shoes are missing. Maybe they weren't fully dressed when they ran out. Pete wonders why that would be, but Danvers says that's not the right question. Pete asks how scared you have to be to run onto ice without shoes. He also wonders why the clothes are folded. Maybe the killer folded them. Danvers questions why a killer would fold them. Danvers thinks they're still not asking the right questions. Lulu radios to say the station supply guys and the cleaning ladies are ready for questioning. She tells Pete to take the supply guy while she does the cleaning ladies. Pete shows Danvers a video of Molina from the day the scientists died, making the sandwich. Then they spot Clark in the background.

Qavvik tends to his dog and tells her to stop picking fights with other dogs. Navarro comes in and asks if he has his homebrew there. He denies and says the fight was over the water, not illegal spirits. The water thing is getting bad. It's turned black in some places closest to the miner. There's talk of protesting again. He tells Navarro her sister is doing all right working for him. As Navarro leaves, he asks if he'll see her tonight. She tells him no and ignores him asking about his toothbrush.

Danvers talks to Bee, who does the cleaning at Tsalal. She says it's two shifts per month. She never saw Annie Kowtok there, but why would she be there. She was a midwife. Danvers shows Bee the symbol. Bee doesn't recognize it, but shows it to Blair Hartman, who is nearby. Blair doesn't know it either.

Bill Wallis says the scientists were weird. You have to be to do what they were doing.

Janice says they were quiet and played video games. They were obsessed with their work. Lund once screamed at her for moving his notebooks.

Bee says the scientists never spoke to the cleaning staff.

Bill says Clark was always weird, but the last few times Bill was there, he was talking to himself and staring at nothing. He doesn't think Clark was right. Bill once saw him hanging out nude.

Janice says Clark would hide in his room when they came to clean and never came out and wouldn't let them in to clean. Danvers asks what the other men would do when Clark acted like that. She says they ignored him.

Bill thought he saw someone when he got to the station and found that they were all missing, but he doesn't think that's possible. He says it's Ennis, so sometimes you just see people who have died. Pete shows Bill the symbol and he says that Clark had it on his chest.

A trooper says Navarro's looking for Chuck, who is in block 16c, room 43 at the Silver Sky Mining Barracks. Navarro turns on the radio and Wannabe is playing, so she calls her sister, telling her their song is on. When she hits a patch of snow, she drops her phone. When she reaches to pick it up, she comes back with a necklace.

Young Navarro watches as Mrs. Navarro, her mother, shakes and points a finger.

Navarro swerves to avoid a truck. She throws the necklace out the window.

Navarro goes to see Chuck, who says he didn't recognize the guy. Navarro threatens to arrest him for skipping out on his bill at Qavvik's. She shows him the picture again and he says Clark bought his cousin's trailer. He paid $10,000 cash for it. That happened about seven years ago. He can't ask his cousin the exact date because he died of bone cancer. Navarro has him write down a description of the trailer and his cousin's name. He says he didn't tell her when she first asked because he doesn't like her. Navarro thinks it's really because he didn't like Annie. He's okay with what happened to her.

Hank texts Alina, who says she's worried about her mother. He offers to send her cash for her mother's medication. She asks him for more pictures of himself, so he takes a picture of an old picture of himself. Then he notices an open cabinet and finds it empty.

Pete tells Danvers what Bill said about Clark's tattoo and about Clark walking around naked. They're not sure why the other guys would put up with him. Pete also spoke to Clark's mother in Dublin and she hasn't seen him in ten years and he's dead to her. Danvers says he's actually dead now. They talk about the station's funding. The NGO that funds it traces back to a shell company called NC Global Strategies, which belongs to Tuttle United, a company that does everything. Pete asks Danvers what Navarro did to her. Danvers asks if he's worried he's going to mess up, too, and just warns him not to. She's going to pick up Leah at Pete's and then she's going home. She tells Pete to watch the corpses, but he needs to get home. He promised he'd put Darwin to bed. Danvers tells him he's not going home tonight.

Danvers enters Pete's place as Kayla is on the phone with him, hearing the news that he's not coming home. Danvers goes to Darwin, who is building a house. Kayla's upset that Danvers is taking her husband for another night. Danvers says she's doing Kayla a favor. She'll be sick of having a husband around soon enough. Kayla tells her to save her favors for her own family. Leah's in the kitchen with Kayla's grandma.

Danvers enters the kitchen to find that Kalik has painted kakiniit on Leah's face. She tells Leah to go wash it off, but Leah refuses. Danvers sends her to the car and tells Kalik she can't doodle on her kid's face. Kayla says she's 17 and wants to understand her heritage. Kayla tells Danvers to leave when she insults them.

Navarro and Julia are grocery shopping together. Julia laments the high Arctic prices. Navarro asks Julia about going to The Lighthouse, but Julia refuses. Navarro says it's not a hospital. It's a community center and she thinks Julia should check it out. Julia says she's not their mom and begs her sister to let her live like a normal person.

Leah looks at herself in the mirror. She gets a text from Sheri saying she's at the store. Leah tries to sneak out, but Danvers calls to her, asking her to help put up the Christmas tree. She races back up the stairs and tells Danvers to do it because she's in bed. Then she goes out her window.

Danvers pulls out Christmas decorations.

Leah meets up with Sheri, who likes her kakiniit. They start kissing.

Danvers looks through the boxes and finds a stuffed polar bear.

Danvers and Holden play with the polar bear as "Twist and Shout" plays.

Danvers looks at the paper with the design on it.

Pete slowly brushes away melting ice. He is startled when his phone rings. Danvers wants him to send her Clark's credit history. As he hangs up, Hank comes up to him and hits him, scolding him for stealing. He tells Pete that Danvers doesn't own him. He has a family and Danvers isn't part of that. He encourages him to remember that blood is blood.

Danvers goes to see Ted Connelly for sex.

As they're having sex, Connelly says he can't and tries to stop, but she tells him not to. A few minutes later, she climaxes. She tells him it'll be the last time they do this, but he says they've had fifteen years of that. She corrects that it's been nineteen years. He says he'd just gotten married nineteen years ago and she was with Jake. She says they were on a break, one of their breaks. She repeats that it'll be the last time they do that. He asks her what she's really doing with the Tsalal case. He knows she doesn't want the case. He thinks she's only taking it to mess with him. She says she's just doing her job. He's the one who sent her to Ennis. She asks why he's so determined to keep a lid on it and he says he doesn't want it to become a disaster. It's a weird case. He asks her again to send it to Anchorage. She insists she can keep control of it, though he doesn't think she can. She gets upset when he starts to threaten her.

Danvers leaves and gets an email from Pete with Clark's credit records.

Danvers reviews a charge for a tattoo. She talks to the tattoo artist, who remembers Clark as a weird guy. He cried when she finished the tattoo. He was alone and she doesn't remember if he told her what the tattoo meant. She sends Danvers a picture of the tattoo and another of the model for it.

Navarro comes home to find Danvers in her house. Danvers shows her the picture Clark gave the tattoo artist. It's of him holding Annie, who has the same tattoo on her back. He got the tattoo four days after she died. They've also confirmed that the tongue was Annie's. The tissue has some weird cellular damage, possibly from freezing. Danvers starts to put away the groceries as she tells Navarro their cases are the same case. Navarro knows Annie better than Danvers can learn from files. She asks if Navarro wants in. Navarro tries to defend herself on the Wheeler thing, but Danvers tells her they're not doing that. They're just going to work together, close both cases, and then that's it for the two of them.

Leah walks toward the ice rink.

Pete watches a video on his phone and is startled by Leah's arrival. She asks him about the corpses, but he tells her not to look, saying she doesn't want that picture in her head. She sees the mark on his face and realizes his father hit him. Leah hears the music from Pete's video and says her dad and Danvers used to dance to that song all the time. Pete doesn't believe it.

Danvers and Jake Peterson dance together.

Leah explains that her dad as a free spirit, wannabe artist. They loved to dance together. She's pretty sure Danvers even smoked weed, but Pete doesn't believe it. Pete says Hank was a musician. He played guitar in a band, but Pete has never actually heard him play. Pete's mom said he wasn't good enough to have a career, but she really felt he wasn't good enough period.

Qavvik is taking a bath when Navarro comes in and startles him. She changed her mind and asks if he wants to have sex. She teases him about him masturbating. He asks if they can watch a movie and then tells her to get out.

Navarro tells Qavvik about Danvers and the case. Qavvik says Danvers wouldn't want her if she didn't have anything, so she must have something on the case. Navarro says she knows everything about Annie, but somehow didn't know anything about Clark. She kept it a secret. He asks why, but she says it's not the right question, something Danvers would say. The question is how. She realizes that's why he got the trailer, to keep the relationship secret. He kept the trailer at the nook. She leaves.

Navarro searches the nook and finds the trailer buried in snow.

Danvers looks through Clark's research and wonders about him. She finds handwritten scribbles on top of some pages. She gets a call from Navarro, who has something she needs to see.

Danvers and Navarro enter the trailer. There's a pile of animal bones on the table. There are the same kinds of scribbles on the cabinets. Danvers asks how she found it and she says her Spirit Animal showed her in a dream. Danvers finds Annie's phone, which wasn't with her when she died. At the back of the trailer, the spiral is drawn on the ceiling. There's a body-shaped mass in the bed, with one shaped like a baby next to it. Pete calls Danvers and tells her they have a problem.

At the ice rink, the corpses have thawed enough to show only six bodies. Danvers names them off and finds that Clark is missing. Navarro thinks he's alive and out there somewhere.

Quotes[]

Cast[]

Starring[]

Guest Starring[]

L'Xeis Diane Benson as Beatrice "Bee" Malee
Aka Niviâna as Julia Navarro

Co-Starring[]

Dan Cade as Trooper Willson
Johnathan Anderson as Trooper Davis
Davíð Þór Katrínarson as Officer Cooper
Þorsteinn Bachmann as Anders Lund
Donnie Keshawarz as Adam Bryce
Erlen Ísabella Einarsdóttir as School Student
Erling Eliasson as Dead Travis
Grace Anderson as Lulu
Eloise Thomas as Sheri Gillard
Dervla Kirwan as Kate McKitterick
Phillip Blanchett as Ryan Kowtok
Edward Fletcher as Chuck Mosley
Adam Bowman as Miner
Abraham Franklínsson as Miner
David Shackelford as Kenny
Joel Montgrand as Eddie Qavvik
Ben Watt as Shorty
Tim Van Eyken as Ralph Emerson
Adam Burton as Lucas Merens
Jeff Mirza as Veer Mehta
John Albasiny as Anton Kotov
Nicholas Goh as Li Jie
Pablo Anibal Frana as Facundo Molina
Owen McDonnell as Raymond Clark
Kathryn Wilder as Blair Hartman
Darren Foreman as Bill Wallis
Mary Lou Asicksik as Janice
Lisbeth Poulsen as Mrs Navarro
Ulloriaq Caquineau as Young Navarro
Aili Rosbach as Young Julia
Anna Lambe as Kayla Prior
Xavier Osmanson as Darwin Prior
Doreen Simmonds as Kalik
Inuik Lee Nielsen Shapiro as Holden Danvers
Svend Hardenberg as Jake Peterson

Notes and Trivia[]

Advertising and marketing[]

Promotional Photos[]

True Detective: Night Country (2024)
401. Part 1 402. Part 2 403. Part 3	404. Part 4 405. Part 5 406. Part 6

See also: S1 • S2 • S3 • Night Country • S5