Is True Detective Season 4 based on a true story?

True Detective Season 4 revolves a head-scratching central mystery, but is it based on a true story?

The first three seasons of True Detective were the brainchild of writer/director/producer Nic Pizzolatto, with Season 1 playing out in Louisiana, to much critical acclaim. Season 2 a California story that no one much liked. And Season 3 a return to form that was set in the Ozarks.

And while aspects of their plots might have been ripped from headlines or inspired by true crime, each season was very much an original story.

Season 4 of True Detective – subtitled Night Country – has a new showrunner in the shape of Mexican writer-director Issa López. While the setting is Alaska. As for story inspirations, read on to find out. Just beware of Episode 1 Spoilers ahead…

Is True Detective Season 4 based on a true story?

The specific mystery at the heart of True Detective Season 4 is not based on a true story. But it is inspired by two real-life incidents that have confused and confounded the world for decades.

First is the Mary Celeste, a ship that was found floating 400 miles from the Azores on December 5, 1872. A boarding party was sent, and this is what The Smithsonian describes them finding: “Belowdecks, the ship’s charts had been tossed about, and the crewmen’s belongings were still in their quarters. The ship’s only lifeboat was missing, and one of its two pumps had been disassembled. Three and a half feet of water was sloshing in the ship’s bottom, though the cargo of 1,701 barrels of industrial alcohol was largely intact. There was a six-month supply of food and water – but not a soul to consume it.”

“To this day, we don’t know what happened to the 10 people who sailed aboard the Marie Celeste. Which feeds into the mystery at the very start of True Detective Night Country, where a group of scientists working at a research facility in Ennis, Alaska, simply disappear without a trace. Or as one character says, “It’s like they went to take a leak and never came back.”

The second inspiration come from the 1959 “Dyatlov Pass Incident,” in which a group of Russian explorers were found outside their tents in the Ural Mountains, frozen to death. Some blamed an avalanche. But Issa López isn’t having it.

“An avalanche doesn’t explain a lot of the details I think,” López explained to Vanity Fair, “Even if it did, I prefer the strange, incomplete answer. I think there is a fascination with puzzles that are still missing a couple of pieces, and that obsess us, and make us angry, and make us not stop thinking about them.”

That mystery inspires what happens later in Episode 1, when the scientists are found frozen and naked in the Arctic wilderness, forming a terrifying “corpsicle.” With the rest of the season concerned with how, and why.

True Detective Night Country is available on HBO and MAX in the US, and Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK. Click here to read our review of Season 4.