True Detective: Season 4, Episode 1 Recap

We have finally reached the release of True Detective’s Season 4, subtitled Night Country. The HBO anthology series was last seen in 2019, when we were immersed in Wayne Hays’ (Mahershala Ali) complex investigation of a haunting disappearance case, spanning 35 years of his life. Now, the crime drama returns with a more chilling story to tell.

Night Country follows detectives Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) in Alaska as they dip their toes in the mysterious vanishing of research station workers. The iceberg might go far deeper beneath the surface than they originally anticipated. 

Season 4, Episode 1, lays the groundwork for the dark journey we’re about to embark on. Here’s a summarized recap of everything that happened, highlighting the important plot points and tracing the unfolding events.

True Detective Season 4, Episode 1: Recap

The eerie atmosphere is established right away in the Tsalal Arctic Station, where the workers seem to be peacefully coexisting until one of them begins convulsing uncontrollably. He utters the sentence "She's awake," which lurks its way into the episode for the first time of many. We never see the men again, only a cut-off tongue found on the ground, and just like that, we are propelled into the mystery of their strange vanishing.

After Billie Eilish's "bury a friend" accompanies us through the opening credits, we are introduced to the two key figures in this story, Detective Liz Danvers and ex-Detective Evangeline Navarro. We are also introduced to their respective attitudes on the job, each with their own hard-headedness.

As Liz Danvers investigates the Tsalal Station with her ex-husband Hank and his son Peter in hopes of finding a clue as to where the men went, she finds a whiteboard on which the words "WE ARE ALL DEAD" are written. She also quickly recognizes that the tongue from the beginning is a native woman's tongue, a murdered native woman from a case that was never closed years ago.

A mysterious woman, named Rose Aguineau, reappears sporadically throughout the episode, alone in the dark, having visions of a mysterious Travis. Travis leads her into the dark.

In the police station, we find out details about Danvers and Navarro's strained relationship from a previous case years ago, the case of the murdered native woman with the missing tongue. Navarro was bounced off the case for becoming obsessed with it, progressively more forceful and pushy to get answers, even if it meant disobeying the law. That's a standout trait of her character, which we see on many occasions in the episode. She stands firmly for what she believes, at the cost of everything else.

Danvers is forced to pick up her daughter Leah from school after some controversial revealing videos of Leah are exposed. On the way home, they encounter Stacy, a woman driving under the influence, as her car slips on the ice and crashes into a street pole. Stacy is hysterical and crying, but receives a cold, disregarding shoulder from Danvers, who arrests her right away, alluding to this being a tedious routine.

We are briefly introduced to another character, a blue-haired girl named Jules, whom Navarro is taking care of. She is also a native woman, strongly implied to be related to either Navarro or the murder victim in the mysterious case. Navarro floats the idea of admitting Jules to a hospital of some kind, but Jules refuses entirely.

Peter steals the files of the mysterious case from his dad Hank's home without his knowledge so Danvers could take a look at them.

In true detective fashion, Danvers lays out the Tsalal station case and the case of the native murder victim, now given the name Annie K, hoping to find a connection, and she finds something strangely coincidental. In one photo, Annie and one of the men in the photos are wearing the same exact pink parka. It becomes increasingly apparent that the Tsalal station disappearance case is linked to Annie's brutal death from years ago.

The phrase "She's awake" comes back repeatedly: firstly, as a whisper in Danvers' ear while she sleeps, and after, as a whisper on the car radio as Navarro almost drives into a polar bear on the road. A polar bear with one eye.

Danvers and Navarro run into each other once again at the Tsalal station, both there alone, looking for clues. They reluctantly team up to look for the pink parka, but with no luck.

True Detective Season 4, Episode 1: Ending

As we approach the last minutes of the episode, we return to Rose Aguineau, who, thanks to her visions of a dead man named Travis, is able to discover a very valuable lead.

Vanders and Navarro make their way immediately to the scene of the crime, discovering the horrifying sight of the last shot we're left with before the credits. Claiming that Travis showed her where to look, Rose leads the two detectives to a pile of bodies in the snow, with mouths open wide, terrified but frozen still, buried under the ice.

Now that you're all caught up, all there is left to do is wait impatiently for the next episode.

Read our article about True Detective Season 4, Episode 2's release date and more here!