True Detective Season 4: What happened to Otis Heiss?

True Detective Season 4 Episode 4 introduced us to a new character – Otis Heiss. But what happened to him and how is he connected to the Tsalal case?

The fourth chapter, officially titled True Detective: Night Country, has been as dark as its Alaskan setting. So far, detectives Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Navarro (Kali Reis) have been sent down a mysterious rabbit hole to find out what happened to the nearby Tsalal researchers after they were found dead in the snow. 

A number of clues – from a missing tongue to the spiral symbol first seen in True Detective Season 1 – implicate researcher Raymond Clark, who is connected to the cold murder case of Annie K. However, we’re still far from having any concrete answers. 

Episode 4 introduced us to a potential new suspect, leading to a sinister confrontation in the old oil dredges. Warning: Spoilers ahead!

True Detective Season 4: What happened to Otis Heiss?

Otis Heiss (Klaus Tange) is a German national with seemingly no trace or records. At the end of Episode 4, he’s found wearing Annie K’s coat, squatting at the abandoned oil dredge to take drugs. Clearly he knows something about Raymond Clark, although he’s not of sound mind. Otis suffered similar injuries to the Tsalal researchers back in the ‘90s, suggesting that whatever killed them is not a new threat. 

Otis is first introduced in True Detective Season 4 when Danvers and Prior (Finn Bennett) come across his file while looking for patients with similar injuries to the Tsalal researchers. In 1998, he was found to have burns on both corneas, a ruptured eardrum, and self-inflicted bites. But finding out anything else about him is tricky. 

HBO

Although he’s from Germany, there’s no record of employment, no credit card, no bank account numbers, his social security’s been inactive since November 2006, and there’s no registered address for the past eight years. He also has no wife or kids to speak of. The only thing they do find is that he has a long history of disorderly conduct, including breaking and entering, petty theft, and he’s been in and out of rehab – but all of this is since the accident. 

And here’s the kicker – there is no cause of accident, meaning there’s no indication how the Tsalal researchers sustained their injuries either. 

Otis is also connected to the Annie K murder, which sees Navarro and Danvers studying the distressing footage she captured just moments before her death. After spotting what appears to be an ice cave in the background, they seek the help of Ennis High School teacher Adam Bryce (Donnie Keshawarz). He tells them that there is an ice cave system nearby, but it’s a “death trap” and was shut down for safety reasons.

Even if they wanted to visit it, they’d need an expert to guide them through. Bryce finds the person who mapped the cave system… and it just so happens to be Otis. This suggests he may have been used as a cog in a much larger plan, although we’re still not entirely sure what said plan entails.

Later on in the episode, Danvers and Navarro are sent a tip from local fishermen after they capture a photo of a man near the local abandoned oil dredge. He’s wearing Annie K’s pink coat, leading them to believe it’s Clark. However, when they head over there, they discover Otis instead. 

He’s wearing the coat, indicating he’s been in contact with Clark. Surrounded by drug paraphernalia and a Christmas tree hooked up to a generator, it appears Otis has been squatting there. Danvers asks Otis where Clark is, to which he replies, “He’s gone. He went back down to hide… He’s hiding in the Night Country. We’re all in the Night Country now.”

HBO

As this conversation takes place, Navarro is distracted by visions of a dead woman – seemingly her sister – floating through the water stream beneath the dredge. She starts hearing a ghostly voice calling her name before discovering the Christmas tree. As she turns around, she’s confronted by the ghost of a woman. 

Navarro had equally chilling visions in Episode 2 when visiting Anders Lund, a scene that raised the same questions: are there supernatural forces at play? Or is she hallucinating, having inherited the same mental health struggles as her sister and mother?

As for Otis, is he a victim or a perpetrator of what happened to Annie K and the Tsalal researchers? Perhaps he helped Annie’s murderer to navigate the ice caves. Whatever the case, we’ll have to wait to find out more, with Episode 5 dropping next Sunday (February 11). 

True Detective Season 4 Episodes 1-4 are available on Max now, which you can sign up for here.

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