True Detective is set to return in a few weeks for its fourth season. Because it’s an anthology series, we’ll see big changes from when we last left off including a new cast and setting. One of the biggest changes is that Nic Pizzolatto, the show’s creator, is not involved as a writer (He still remains as an executive producer).
Stepping into the lead creator role is producer, writer, and director, Issa López. She serves as showrunner and wrote and directed every episode. López is best known for her film Tigers Are Not Afraid, which earned numerous awards and recognitions. Recently, she spoke with the media to discuss the new season which is called True Detective: Night Country.
López expressed her enthusiasm for the series, and she feels excited to be a part of the franchise. In particular, she was impressed by the first season. “It was such a joy to say what I loved about that first season was a whiff of the supernatural. Was the relationship between these two men who carry so much horror that they experience and see and they’re trying to find a little light around them. Instead they find more horror and they’re trying to stop it,” she said. “I loved the idea of the backdrop of a world, a landscape, of a side of America, that we don’t often see. Full of secrets. Full of ways of life that are not close to what we get in the rest of the country.”
López continued with how she hoped to put her own stamp on True Detective. “If I took that and I put it together, I could change everything and make it my own. And I also thought it was a brilliant look into the male psyche and the things that upsets the male mind. I wondered if I could bring, as a woman, an equivalent for the female experience. Like the same questions from the female point of view, hence Night Country.”
As previously mentioned, she wanted to incorporate supernatural aspects similar to season one. “I have learned that we’re not alone. We walk and we carry the people we have lost. I believe that, you know. I saw that in the first True Detective. Cohle had a daughter and we see her. I thought it was the perfect environment. This town at the end of the world where reality is coming apart at the seams, and sometimes we can peek through the fabric of things and you can see the dead walking with you.”
Despite the mystical themes, viewers will find Night Country still grounded in it’s narrative. “The thing with this series, as was the case with Tigers, there’s a wreath of the events of the series, same as the original True Detective by the way, that absolutely sticks with reality. There’s a real explanation for every single event in the series that doesn’t require the existence of the supernatural.”
López also added she likes how things are open to interpretation. “But there’s a wreath where every event is related to what I call a wider world. And it’s up to you, like an ink blot test, to decide which series you’re watching. Or maybe it’s mostly of one with touches of the other but it’s your decision. So, in that way, it’s a really interesting position and wreath that this world, this town, exists right at the edge between here and whatever is beyond.”
To further emphasize her appreciation for season one of True Detective, she incorporated several references and Easter eggs into Night Country. “There are a bunch of winks to the first season from characters that are related to characters in that first season to the beer they drink to the long drives where the two characters explore their visions of the universe that are completely opposed to some things that happen in episode six that you will see in time. It is a love letter to all those things that worked in that first season.”
True Detective: Night Country premieres January 14 on HBO.
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