“A Different Supernatural, Different Big Questions, Different Characters & A Different Environment” Issa López On “True Detective: Night Country”

In 2014, Nic Pizzolatto released a distinct philosophical take on the traditional detective TV series with True Detective. One is a skeptic and the other a mystic. It’s an anthology series so the detectives change along with the cases in each season.

Now in its fourth season, the spirit of the first season is honored in Night Country with detectives Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) who solve a case of eight men missing from a research station in Ennis, Alaska.

Showrunner Issa López spoke with Creative Screenwriting Magazine about the process of paying homage to three previous seasons while creating something new and memorable for audiences.

“Initially Nic Pizzolatto was going to write Season Four, but HBO later decided to hand me the reins,” adds López. Since she never worked with Pizzolatto, this was her chance to inject her personal vision into it while carefully studying what came before.

Issa López. Photo by Max Chino Lemus

“I think it’s a brilliant idea to bring in new filmmakers to take on a few of the seasons, and then bring someone new to renew the franchise, the blood, the stories, and the voices,” she says. Issa cites other examples where this approach has been successful including James Bond and Doctor Who. The specific nature of True Detective also lends itself to transcending a wider universe.

“Because of the specific anthology nature of this series, it’s fascinating to see how it will transform down the line. So, embracing that spirit, and knowing that I was not taking True Detective to make it into my career, but to visit that universe. And the reason to visit it, is because I loved that first season and I very much missed the flavor and the feeling of it.”

“We’ve seen endless movies and TV series about detectives following a very mysterious, slightly ritualistic murder. This one has something extraordinary. I think it is the atmosphere and a little bit of the supernatural.”

“And big questions about a place in the universe, and what it all means, were so seamlessly put on a gritty hook. It was a huge challenge,” she recalls.

“The things I love is that the setting was extraordinary and a character on its own. I loved the two characters [of Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson)] and how they complemented each other.”

She pondered how she might create a different supernatural, different big questions, different characters, and a different environment. Issa López didn’t seek to reinvent the True Detective wheel and maintains an air of familiarity in Night Country.

While planning Season Four, Issa chose to set it in the Arctic with two female main characters. “I felt that there was more to say in depth about the female identity faced with such mysterious events.”

Building Out Night Country

For Issa López, it all began with the idea of a strange, unexplained murder mystery in the Arctic many years ago. At the time, True Detective wasn’t on her radar. In fact, it was John Carpenter’s The Thing which propelled her initial idea.

“The Thing is a whodunnit in a way. We the audience had the answer all along. I was wondering if we could have that formula without the audience knowing exactly what went down.” So, it was fortuitous when HBO reached out to ask Issa about where she would set Season Four of True Detective.

“True Detective is very much an American piece and a meditation on certain aspects of American culture. The beauty of it is the US has the high Arctic in Alaska.”

The next step was to decide on a case. The showrunner confesses that she went down a rabbit hole of all the unsolved mysteries that captivated her as a child that examined the enigmas of the world. Issa settled on the concept of mass disappearances. She took the case of the Mary Celeste that vanished in the Atlantic Ocean in 1872. When it was found, the entire crew had disappeared leaving behind their clothes and partially-eaten food.

The second inspiration was the Dyatlov Pass incident – a Russian expedition into the Northern Ural Mountains in 1959. “Everyone in that expedition died in very strange circumstances with very weird little details.” López merged the two cases to conceive Night Country.

Researchers under ice. Photo by Michele K. Short/ HBO

She now had a place and a case for her show. The next question was the “who?”

“It could be the domestic likeable slog of Hart or the philosophical profound bitterness of Rust. I came up with my clash in defining who Danvers and Navarro were.” Season One toggled between the meaning and the meaninglessness of life in a merciless universe that doesn’t care for us. Issa asked the existential questions, “Is there a higher power? Is this all there is? Is there more to us than a chunk of flesh with some electrical electrochemical signals? And when it dies, it drops. And that’s it. Or are there deeper connections between things that stay beyond physicality?”

Danvers and Navarro were the skeptic and the mystic 

At this point, the characters in True Country began to draw themselves out a bit.

The Female Spirit

Issa López meticulously studied the Alakan tribes which are not a monolith. The Inuits of Northern Alaska are very different tribes with distinct characteristics. The showrunner decided she would focus on the Iñupiat tribe, so she duly studied their mythology without infusing too many specifics into the series.

“I found that there is a constant presence of the female spirit that inhabits the tundra, nature and animals.” This appealed to Issa in light of the destruction humanity is inflicting on nature.

“I thought that the idea of the desecration of the female body with violence and the desecration of the land and its female principle could be tight. And that the female rage and response, and search for justice could be very much the profound plot beneath the surface plot of solving the crime.”

Danvers and Navarro

Issa López simplifies their relationship to that in a buddy cop movie. “It has some of the elements of a romcom. And it’s funny because I started my film career, not my TV career, by writing romcoms. The rules of romcom are very specific. And I do love the idea of taking the elements of another genre and inserting them in a different genre.”

Danvers and Navarro share a rich history. Following a tremendous breakup, they now can’t stand each other but are forced to work together.

“It’s never romantic, but in the process of working together, they will remember why they were so good together and fall back in love again because they complete each other. As corny as that sounds in a romcom, it’s a lot of fun to put in a murder mystery; the ability is that one has the other needs.”

Danvers is very rational and methodical and always asks if the right questions have been asked to solve the case. She is deductive in piecing together the pieces of the puzzle.

Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) Photo by Michele K. Short/ HBO

“Navarro has more of an intuitive nature and looks at the bigger picture instead of the particulars. She also understands that people already have the answers, and by talking to people, knowing the community and by creating the links that she needs to reconstruct herself, she’s going to put the pieces together in a way that Danvers can’t. She has access to a wider world; a more magical reality. This opens the door to understanding that we don’t say goodbye to the people we lost,” continues López.

Genre

López describes True Detective: Night Country as “a standard detective show with a flourish of supernatural.”

“It is two crimes. One that happened in the past. One that happens as we’re watching the story. And the idea of how all of it is connected. There’s a factual mystery that these two women have. Those two mysteries being one and being connected is what these two women need to figure out.”

There are additional elements of fate and supernatural revenge. Issa proposes that there are two ways to experience the series – just the facts and the less tangible supernatural. Both tracks offer a real explanation of what happened to the eight researchers.

The Artic snow at the extremities of the Earth are integral to the mystery. The purity of the white snow above masks the frozen bodies of the scientists beneath it. And Danvers need to dig through all that ice to to find the piece of her that she’s missing, which is the capacity and courage to grieve. Similarly, Navarro has do deal with the mother that left her in the ice. She now has the ability to get back part of her culture and her identity that was taken from her.

“The idea of permafrost, the impenetrable ice that never melts, is covering the inner life of these characters and is central to the imagery, the events, and the emotional arcs of these characters.”

True Country not only delivers tangible clues to the murder at a controlled pace, it also folds in ambiguities and more questions like the crooked spiral motif which repeat themselves throughout the series.

“In the very first episode we see this woman who’s missing two fingers and that’s going to be the reveal at the end of the series,” mentions Issa.

“And then you ask yourself, if you’re going to take the risk of reminding the audience of those two missing fingers or not, because you want them to be able to read all those little markers, but not being able to put them together. So at the end, they realize the answer was right there in front of them.”

During the second episode, the detectives get a set a fingerprints missing two fingers. But it’s not clear whether it’s because the print image isn’t perfect or because the fingers are missing. In other cases, López simply added red herrings.

Issa designed each episode to be watched multiple times so that questions are raised and audiences pick up on details along the way.

The End

True Detective: Night Country prides itself in its head-scratching finale which balances answering some questions while raising others. There was always going to be a level of ambiguity in the ending. López wants her show to reflect the mysteries of life in which we rarely get all the answers.

“Navarro walks out into the ice. Is she going to her death? This is a woman that has solved her relationship with the call of the wild. Then Danvers asks her to come back.” What will happen?

by Staff Writer

From our in-house editorial team.