True Detective: Night Country slowly reveals its icy secret in Episode 2

The central secret in True Detective: Night Country Seems easy when the credits roll for Episode 1. It’s not like viewers already have the answer, but it at least feels like we can see all the pieces of the puzzle in front of us. That is, until the second episode. The second, even better episode of Nightland deepens the season’s central mystery with clever world-building and the most disgusting and disturbing ice sculpture on television.

If True Detective: Night Country It’s all about Ennis so far. Ennis is more than a small Alaskan town with nights that last for days, it is a place that is simultaneously peaceful and frightening. Rose’s (Fiona Shaw) description of the city for Navarro (Kali Reis) seems almost perfect: a place where the universe goes out of control. It’s a description that gets to the heart of the strangeness of this world, but also hints at the softer side of the city: the dead find their way back to Ennis (sometimes because they want you to join them). But Ennis is also the kind of town that feels careful and handcrafted; The stitching wears like a well-loved toy and doesn’t rip like cheap factory stitching.

It’s a beautiful and layered description, but it also gives us a clue as to what the show is doing. Things here are certainly supernatural; Something is clearly afoot. But that doesn’t mean there are zombies running around Ennis or that a quick seance will sort out all the chaos. The dead in Ennis are like the ice: it’s always there, but sometimes it shifts a little so you notice it. And neither of them gives away their secrets so easily.

Episode 2 begins with the unveiling of the season’s central mystery: a frozen pile of Tsalal scientists’ corpses, an introduction that is accompanied by a pitch-black comedy about a grisly broken hand that you have to laugh at to break the tension. True detective has a great tale of gruesome crime scenes that are gorgeous in their own dark way, but this is easily the masterpiece of the series so far. The frozen body is as grotesque as it is beautiful. It is disfigured and horrific, each body has its own bizarre, self-inflicted wounds, equally inexplicable and crying out for a detailed reveal that could show us how it all happened. The whole thing, set in the middle of an ice rink, a triumph of set and design, looks as if it could hold endless secrets and details if you were unfortunate enough to stare at it for too long.

Photo: Michele K. Short/HBO

However, one of the series’ most brilliant and subtle pranks comes outside the new, forever-cursed rink, when Danvers (Jodie Foster) interrupts a classroom to ask her former butt what exactly Tsalal is doing. For these scientists’ deaths to merit something as extreme and seemingly otherworldly as their frozen remains suggest, it seems perfect that their investigation focused on something as utopian as the description Danvers receives. A panacea hidden beneath millions of years of ice. A perfectly solvable puzzle, if only the ice would reveal its secrets. To Danvers, the explanation makes perfect sense; After all, it is also their new burden.

And fittingly, she too turns to science to solve her frozen puzzle. She and Pete (Finn Bennett) introduce all the classics that scientists have used to explain the Dyatlov Pass Incident: paradoxical undress, wild animals, some kind of invisible but natural force like gas or radiation. Not a single one gets stuck.

But the show is too smart to let Danvers not have an answer. She’s stubborn enough to stick with the case and fight for it, but she’s not too stubborn to admit that she needs Navarro’s help to figure it out. And with mysterious tattoos of spirals older than ice and a trailer full of creepy dolls, the series finally has its two lead detectives working together.

Technically, True Detective: Night CountryThe second episode is mostly about setting the table, getting our detectives together, laying out the facts and their complications, the oddities and their half-hearted explanations. But the show plays this whole setup as if Ennis is finally boiling over. It is a city on the edge of both the spiritual and physical worlds, and now it is gradually unraveling under the weight of toxic water and mining protests. And True Detective: Night Country is clearly eager to show us the secrets beneath the fragile ice of Ennis.