True Detective: Night Country (Season 4), Episode 5: 5 episodes traversed within the desolate snowy landscape of Ennis, Alaska, and Issa Lopez’s directorial season finally feels like it is progressing in terms of the plot while also managing to close the ties on familial strands as well as the backstories of Navarro and Danvers. It also leaves the episode with a cliffhanger that hopefully teases a suitable endgame. Because even if the show is leaving you with clues pointing towards where the show is ultimately going, it is still pretty elusive in its denouement.
True Detective: Night Country (Season 4), Episode 5 ‘Part 5’ Recap:
How is the fallout of the main events of the last episode resolved here?
The episode opens somewhat with a somber tone, as we see the ashes of Julia’s body being pressed, then finally filled up in an urn and handed to Navarro, who had requested to stay during the whole process. It makes sense that she would be involved during the process of the final moment of division from her sister as she passes into another realm. Ennis isn’t a place where the dead are given much space for respectful passing.
Considering the case being investigated and how death is handled, the respectful and evocative handling of Navarro towards Julia is appreciative, especially in how Navarro chooses to break thin ice and spread the ashes in the water below that ice. What is noticeable, though, is how the frequency of the visions of Navarro has increased. It is never explained, but the last episode’s confrontation between Navarro and the dead might be the cause.
It also makes sense that Otis Heiss might have returned to reality, not remembering the comment about being in the “Night Country,” but again, this is an episode where events of the past or remembrances of the past are informing the present. “Screaming” in the present leads to Otis sustaining similar injuries as the ones found amongst the Tsalal scientists.
But again, the only one who had taken an interest in him had been Raymond Clark, who had asked about the circumstances of his injuries before disappearing into those caves, repeating, “She is awake” and “I have to hide.” Otis offers his services to guide both Danvers and Navarro, but only at the cost of giving him his fix, which Danvers strictly refuses. Both Danvers and Navarro instead follow up on the location, which they believe is the entrance of a cave at a faraway Sky Mining property that had been blown up and shut down deliberately.
How is Sky Mining involved with the case?
Episode 5 is also where director Issa Lopez’s emphasis on connecting with the markers of the first season comes full circle. The young Prior brings in a result of financial investigations because Prior is fully delving his attention into the case instead of self-actualizing his behavior with his girlfriend, which leads to him being kicked out of the house and having to crash at his father’s place. His plan worked because Prior had finally concluded that Tuttle and Co. had bankrolled Tsalal, and they effectively also control Sky Mining. So, two plus two means the mining company is involved quite directly in the Tsalal case.
But Sky Mining is also intricately and inexorably connected with the lifestyle in Ennis, Alaska. And the protests against the mining operations, along with Leah’s activism, also reached a boiling point. The Sky Mining administrators call in the troopers, and Navarro has to join the troopers in her swat gear and riot shield to break the protesters apart. As is customary with trigger-happy troopers, one of them manhandles Leah, which angers Navarro. She attacks the trooper directly, leading to the protesters being distracted and cheering the fistfight.
Leah thus finds a rescuer in Navarro, whose relationship with her and her frustration at empathizing with Danvers clearly show the close connection the two women must share. And while Navarro is trying to be tough on the outside, she wants Leah to be sent home and left alone. Danvers, on the other hand, wants Leah to face punishment, so she has her taken into custody. Quite harsh, even for tough love, but then again, considering the amount of side-eye and anger Danvers is getting not only from her daughter but also from being called into Sky Mining, one can understand.
However, Danvers is excited to finally stand in confrontation with Katherine Mccetrick, the CEO of Sky Mining, and Ted Connelly. But she also feels blindsided as she meets the two of them because she asks herself about her and Navarro’s trek near the cave-in. She is questioned about the details of the case and, most importantly, about Otis Heiss, before being dropped a bombshell by Connelly. The forensic team at Anchorage has decided the death was caused by a freak weather event, leading to hallucinations.
It is, according to Danvers and us, a coverup by Sky Mining because Tsalal was involved in bringing up bogus pollution numbers and keeping Sky Mining’s name from the ledger when, in reality, they had been responsible for spoiling the water supply and the environment. While McCetrick tries to brush it off and Danvers tries to get a rise out of her by bringing up her affair with McCetrick’s husband, Connelly shuts the case down by reminding her that the Wheeler case had been declared a murder-suicide, but in reality, it wasn’t a suicide. That shuts Danvers up.
How is Hank involved?
Hank Prior has been shown throughout this season as the reluctant second-in-command of Danvers, and he is very much not appreciating his post in the force. That becomes abundantly clear when we see him meeting McCetrick in secret, and the viewers learn that he had been responsible for moving Annie’s body when Annie had been murdered, under the promise that he would be installed as the police chief of Ennis, Alaska. McCetrick now wants Hank to ensure Otis Heiss disappears before Danvers follows them to the caves, and if he is successful, his dreams might be fulfilled.
It is important to understand that Hank’s insecurity also stems from the closeness the younger Prior has with Danvers, which gets at his craw. Considering that Hank had been responsible for rescuing his kid when he had unwittingly broken through thin ice and had fallen in the icy cold water, and Hank had to break the ice with an ice pick, one can understand that Hank wants that same amount of respect from his son—perhaps compensating for the lack of respect he perceives that is being thrown towards him.
But it’s Hank’s involvement and Peter’s closeness with his father that ultimately screw Danvers case. Danvers tries to tell an excited Navarro (who had finally figured out that the stone with the spiral used to be markers urging people to stay away from these ice caves called “night country) that their case is closed because Connelly is aware of the Wheeler case. But Navarro, too, has finally given up. She transfers the blame for the Annie K. case to Danvers, proclaiming, “You carry her now,” and, as a final act of rebellion, releases Leah.
Meanwhile, Peter is confronted by Danvers, and we see Danvers again play “Ask the Right Questions,” but this time pointed towards her. And Peter is a smart cookie. He figured out that Wheeler had been left-handed, that all the bruises that were planted on the girlfriend’s face and body were from right to left because all the pictures had been inverted, and that the gunshot wound at Wheeler’s neck had been to the right. Peter had figured out that Navarro and Danvers had covered up the murder of Wheeler to look like a suicide, while Hank, through Peter’s investigations, had done as well and submitted it to Connelly for leverage. Truly, “his father only looks like an idiot.” Danvers gives Pete the key to the shack in her backyard because Peter is unwilling to go back to his father after this betrayal.
How is Danvers going to carry the guilt?
Danvers’ troubled relationship with Leah always feels like touching the edge. We see her driving up to Kayla’s house, where Leah usually goes (much to Kayla’s justified disapproval), and she sees her daughter’s bruises while Leah is washing herself up. She also learns that there have been nine stillbirths so far in Ennis, Alaska. This is now becoming personal, and while Leah still hasn’t given up on her, Danvers driving up to the morgue and finding tiny coffins stored in a warehouse (because the cold makes it impossible to cremate them) makes her reach perilously close to the edge of giving up. She can’t carry the guilt. The only way out is to solve the case and, for that, enter the caves.
True Detective: Night Country (Season 4), Episode 5 ‘Part 5’ Ending Explained:
While Navarro drives up to Qaavik’s place and just crashes for the night, hugging him and putting her hands over his lips, unwilling to answer questions for the moment, Danvers is unwilling to sleep. She instead breaks Heiss out of the lighthouse, brings him to her shack, and gives him heroin to “wake him up” while she readies herself. Unbeknownst to her, Hank had been following her, and before she could prepare herself, Hank had knocked on the shack door. Danvers thinks it is Navarro (whom she had called because it is time for this case to finally close), but she is surprised after opening the door.
She is also confused because Hank apparently knows that Heiss is with Danvers and is here to bring Heiss into custody. Heiss comes out of the bathroom to see two officers, panics, and tries to run, only for Hank to shoot him twice in the head. Hank then points the gun at Liz, while Peter, listening to the commotion, comes to the room, sees his father raised with a gun, and points his gun back at his father.
It’s a standoff, with Hank confessing to moving Annie K’s body. Danvers, meanwhile, is urging Peter to think and not do it. What is going on in both Prior’s heads at that precise moment? For Hank, it might be to kill Heiss, and because that is done, kill Danvers for good measure, and include Peter in cleaning up the scene and hiding the body because, as he proclaims before raising the gun to presumably shoot Danvers, “blood is blood.”.
For Peter, his allegiance to the Danvers had been without reproach, but at that point, he might have been waiting for his father not to do anything foolish. But even as he moves his gun and pulls the trigger, shooting his father point blank in the head, he couldn’t believe that he could do so—kill a man, much less his father. But it is loyalty, and at this point in the world covered by darkness, threatening to be covered by biting cold and snow freezing up the blood in their hands, it is about what is right, as tenuous as that sounds.
Thus, as Navarro enters, there is no time. She witnesses the bloody scene and stops Danvers immediately from calling Connelly. This is a man perfectly content with letting the half-baked conclusion clear his cases and letting Prior and McCetrick brush the bodies off. A better story would be that Hank snatched Otis and, in the inevitable scuffle, killed him. Hank is then found nowhere, and after a couple of days, his truck will be found, presumably laid over by a slab avalanche, and his body lost in the snow.
This is Ennis; the dead aren’t given much respect, and considering Hank would only ever be invoked by Peter, there is a high chance that Peter is in no hurry to look past his father’s shortcomings. He is instead willing to take on the responsibility of cleaning the crime scene (much to Danvers’ dismay) and take the bodies up to Rose (as instructed by Navarro), who would teach him how to make bodies disappear.
The episode ends with Navarro and Danvers driving towards the ice caves. The only way to confront the “Night Country” is to go through it, and if that means risking falling through the thin ice while breaking the ice at the topmost peak and entering the caves, so be it.
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