Shocking Deaths Push ‘True Detective: Night Country’ Toward the Finish Line

I’ll admit that when I implored True Detective: Night Country to get its ass in gear by revealing some of the long-held plot secrets last week, I did not expect the next episode to be a full-on avalanche of narrative progress. Whether or not that’s a good thing is yet to be determined. We won’t have a sense of whether showrunner-writer-director Issa López was panicking to tie up loose ends with only one episode of the season left, or if this barrage of intersecting plotlines is part of her grand scheme, until next week. What I do know is that this episode’s final 10 minutes were this season’s most shocking yet, and my audible gasps were enough to make me suspend my simmering apprehension, at least for now.

Episode 5 opens at the Ennis morgue, where Navarro’s sister Julia (Aki Niviâna) is being cremated. The show has jumped forward to a week after Julia’s suicide, from Christmas to New Year’s Eve; there have been no new breaks in the cases of the frozen Tsalal Station scientists or Annie Kowtok, just a whole lot of grief.

The morgue employee scoops Julia’s ashes into an urn and hands them to Navarro, who requests to watch over the process despite it being against morgue protocol. “Careful, it’s hot,” the staff member warns. Navarro picks up the urn and brings her sisters’ remains close to her chest for one final, warm embrace. I was so taken by how unexpectedly tender this moment was; a character feeling the physical heat of their loved one for the last time, in this way, is a rare, heartbreakingly beautiful sight.

Read more at The Daily Beast.