True Detective Season 4: What does APF stand for?

Season 4 of True Detective has just launched, and features much talk of the APF. But what do those letters stand for?

True Detective Season 4 – aka True Detective Night Country – debuted in the US yesterday on HBO and Max, while it hits UK screens today via Sky and NOW.

Episode 1 was a tense affair, kicking off with a team of scientists disappearing from a research facility in a place called Tsalal, which is 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

You can read our spoiler-free review of True Detective Season 4 here. While to find out who or what the APF is – and how those letter play into the story – scroll down. Though be warned, there are SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 1 ahead…

True Detective Season 4: What does APF stand for?

Tsalal is in Alaska, and APF stands for ‘Alaska Police Force,’ the body sent in to search for the missing persons at the start of Season 4.

Jodie Foster plays Liz Danvers, an APF Detective investigating the case of the missing men, who sets up the mystery – somewhat poetically – when she arrives at the research station and states: “It’s like they went to take a leak and never came back.”

Danvers is a realist who doesn’t believe in magic or mysticism or spirituality, and she’s all about asking “the right questions,” which becomes a running theme throughout Night County.

Which is the opposite of Evangeline Navarro – played by Kali Reis – her former partner, who believes the dead can talk to the living, with their guidance driving her throughout the season.

Mismatched cops investigate macabre mystery

During Episode 1, it becomes clear that Navarro used to be an APF Detective, but due to an event we aren’t yet privy to, has been demoted to State Trooper. There’s also a fair amount of tension between her and Danvers, which seems to be connected to that issue.

But a severed tongue found at the scene of the disappearance links Danvers’ investigation to a cold case that Navarro is obsessed with, involving the brutal murder of a local Native American woman, who was stabbed 32 times.

So as mystery and murder start to merge, it’s clear that these mismatched cops will have to team up, thereby providing True Detective Season 4 with its central conflict.

True Detective Night Country is available on HBO and MAX in the US, and Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK.