True Detective Season 4 theory convinces fans they “nailed it”

With True Detective Season 4 Episode 1 out now, the theories are coming in thick and fast – and a couple have fans convinced they’ve “nailed it.” 

Jodie Foster and Kali Reis take the place of Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey in Season 4 of the hit HBO crime series, officially titled True Detective: Night Country.

The latest chapter takes us to the dark, harsh landscapes of Ennis, Alaska, as mismatched detectives Liz Danvers (Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Reis) come together to try and solve the mystery of the Tsalal Arctic Research Station – where eight men vanished without a trace. 

With five episodes left, there are plenty of questions surrounding the various details of the case – including how it might be connected to the murder of a local Iñupiat woman. Now, a few fan theories claim to have solved the puzzle. Warning: Spoilers for Episode 1 ahead!

True Detective Season 4 theory has fans convinced

Although Danvers initially shuts down Navarro’s suggestion that the death of the Tsalal researchers is linked to the unsolved murder of anti-mine activist Annie, she can’t help but connect the dots – and some believe they are all intrinsically linked with Annie’s protests and the organizations behind them. 

Taking to Reddit, one person suggests that Tsalal paleomicrobiologist Raymond Clark – who Danvers spotted in a photo wearing Annie’s pink jacket – “was involved in the murder of Annie, along with a few of the other researchers. The tongue was kept as a souvenir. The mine was subsidizing TSALAL.”

They theorize that Clark’s “seizure was a result of paranoia and a guilty conscience f*cking with his head. Maybe he went berserk and chased everyone out.” The Redditor then highlights the opening scene in which a herd of caribou jumped off a cliff for no apparent reason. “The reindeer jumping off a cliff were running away from the men racing across the ice,” they explain.

This theory is made all the more convincing by a rather interesting yet sinister easter egg – Raymond Clark appears to be a reference to Raymond J. Clark III, a real-life Yale laboratory technician who murdered doctoral student Annie Le in 2009.

In response to the post, one says: “There’s native Alaskan mythology about polar bears that they ‘jump into the sky’ to evade being hunted. I think everything with the animals will likely draw heavily on Native stories and beliefs.” Another comments: “That’s a good pull on the caribou. They are definitely a big clue. But I said the caribou have gone crazy like the townsfolk. The ghosts are hallucinations from something in the ice.”

Which brings us onto the next theory – that the mine generated some sort of contamination, causing the researchers and others to hallucinate or act strange. “The scientists discovered the mine people have been contaminating the water supply, so the mine sent goons. Everyone is tripping balls due to the water,” comments another Redditor. 

“Or, I don’t know HOW exactly that everyone comes to trip balls, I just know they are, in fact, tripping balls. I think Rose has dementia – ‘Travis showed me’ sure, but to me, that looks like someone who was wandering out in the snow for a long time and just eventually came across the men.

“I think insinuating the scientists had self-inflicted wounds is a great shoutout to Dyatlov, and I wonder if we’re seeing mass delusions due to mining contaminants and the characters influencing each other – Jodie Foster’s memory is triggered by the car accident plus coming in contact with Navarro and vice versa; they happen to see the same polar bear with a missing eye?”

For the uninitiated, “Dyatlov” refers to the Dyatlov Pass incident, a mysterious event that occurred in the northern Ural Mountains of the Soviet Union (now Russia) in 1959. A group of nine experienced hikers, led by Igor Dyatlov, set out on a skiing expedition to reach Otorten Mountain. However, they never completed their journey, and their bodies were discovered weeks later under puzzling and eerie circumstances.

The hikers’ tent was found cut open from the inside, and they appeared to have fled in various stages of undress. Some of the bodies showed signs of severe trauma, including fractured skulls and chest injuries, while a number of them had missing eyes and eyebrows, and one man’s tongue was missing – but there were no signs of struggle. What’s more, some of the clothing worn by the victims was found to be radioactive.

Various theories have been proposed to explain the Dyatlov Pass incident, ranging from natural disasters to military or governmental involvement – and even supernatural explanations. The official Soviet investigation concluded that the hikers died due to a “compelling unknown force,” but in 2020, it was put down to an avalanche – but True Detective Season 4 creator Issa Lopez isn’t convinced.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, she said: “An avalanche doesn’t explain a lot of the details I think. 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 obsesses us, and makes us angry, and makes us not stop thinking about them.”

Thankfully, it seems Lopez isn’t going to leave us guessing after the end of Night Country – although it will take some detective work. “Not all of the details, not all of the questions are clarified at the end,” she said, the outlet adding that there are “enough hints that even the questions it doesn’t expressly answer can be resolved by a viewer who’s willing to comb through the first five episodes for clues.” Given the strong theories being put forward by the online community, it appears the True Detective fans are certainly willing to play along.