‘True Detective’ Season 4 Confirms a Major Connection to Season 1

Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for True Detective: Night Country Episode 2.

As True Detective: Night Country gets colder and darker with each passing week, we can finally start connecting some dots. This week’s episode, “Part 2,” shows Chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) still struggling with understanding what drove the researchers of Tsalal Station to an icy death, but one revelation, in particular, caught everyone’s attention — one that may have more to do with the case than Danvers and Navarro know. When Navarro is visiting Rose Aguineau (Fiona Shaw), the latter mentions the name of Travis Cohle (Erling Eliasson), seemingly confirming a major fan theory from before Night Country even premiered.

True Detective

Anthology series in which police investigations unearth the personal and professional secrets of those involved, both within and outside the law.

Release Date

January 12, 2014

Creator

Nic Pizzolatto

Main Genre

Crime

Seasons

4

Studio

HBO

Streaming Service(s)

Max

Travis Plays a Mysterious Role in ‘True Detective: Night Country’

At first glance, the seasons of True Detective seem like they are unrelated. Each season tells a separate story, with new characters venturing into mysteries that dig deep into how evil people can be, and how much it takes to do the right thing. In November 2023, though, Night Country creator and showrunner Issa López confirmed that this new season “is its own story, but it’s still connected” to the major universe of the series. Now, the reveal of Travis’s full name brings one of the first signs of this connection.

Those who usually watch movies and TV with subtitles are often treated to some clearer insight into what’s happening onscreen. It’s thanks to the subtitles that fans were able to catch that Travis’s last name is Cohle, the same spelling as Rustin “Rust” Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) from Season 1. The reveal comes when Trooper Navarro visits Rose at her shed in the Alaskan wilderness. Navarro has been worried about her sister, Julia (Aka Niviâna), and believes Rose might have answers — especially since the local eccentric has already admitted to seeing Travis’ ghost reaching out to her.

When Travis died, Night Country reveals that it was Trooper Navarro who found his body. He had terminal leukemia but wanted to go out on his own terms, so he “went into the ice,” as Rose says, instead of waiting for the disease to kill him. Before that, though, the two of them had a close intimate relationship and, when Travis decided it was time to go, he brought Rose croissants, and they spent the night together. “And then I found him,” Navarro says. “One last gift from Travis Cohle. I got to meet you,” Rose answers. The rest of their conversation is rather ominous, with Rose telling Navarro that people seeing the dead happens all the time in this town: “I think the world is getting old, and Ennis is where the fabric of all things is coming apart at the seams.”

While this is an intriguing statement, Ennis’s connection to the supernatural seems to be a recurring theme in Night Country. In “Part 1,” it is Rose who finds the bodies of the Tsalal Station scientists on the ice after an apparition of Travis appears to her and silently points her in the right direction. Now, in “Part 2,” Rose mentions that he “only comes when he wants something,” so Travis’ part in this story may not be finished. As the Tsalal supply guy says to Officer Peter Prior (Finn Bennett) later in the episode: “It’s a long f*cking night. Even the dead get bored.”

Is Travis the Father of ‘True Detective’ Season 1’s Rust Cohle?

When it was announced that Night Country would be set in Alaska, fans immediately started speculating that it could have a connection to Season 1 via Rust Cohle. The Cohles aren’t the season’s only connection to previous installments, with the mysterious spiral symbols being one of the main leads in the corpsicle case and Tuttle United revealed as the company funding Tsalal Station, but they remain the most interesting and enticing one.

In Season 1 of True Detective, Rust Cohle is a difficult person to deal with, filled with philosophical beliefs and ominous sentences. In Episode 4, “Who Goes There?,” Rust takes a sick leave from his police job, claiming he needs to visit his sick father in Alaska, a man named Travis who’s been living up north for 30 years and is dying of cancer. Later, in the season finale, “Form and Void,” after Rust wakes up from being unconscious, he says he could feel his father’s presence. Back then, it sounded like another spiritual moment from the character that embodied his belief system — as opposed to Cohle’s partner, Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson), the purely rational one in the duo. Now, Night Country hints that Rust could have really been experiencing a connection with his father at that moment.

It’s important to note, though, that the timeline of events gets a little confusing. Season 1 of True Detective has two separate timelines — one in 1995, and another in 2012. Rust feels his father’s presence in 2012, meaning Travis has likely already died by then. But Rose and Navarro talk about him as if he was still rather young when he died, and there’s even a flashback of him with Rose in which he looks younger too. Of course, ghosts are not a good way of measuring age, because they can appear as they like, but a flashback is an anchor to reality, and Travis appearing young in one is enough to make it confusing. Night Country is set in the current day — or at least a few years back — as there’s a lot of current technology around, including iPhones. This means that Rust, who was born in 1964, should be around 60 in the present-day timeline, with Travis about 30 years older. Also, it’s not revealed how old Trooper Navarro is when Night Country takes place, but if she was the one who found Travis’ body on the ice, it can’t have been that long ago.

With all that going on in Night Country, fans are even speculating about Rust possibly returning in this new season, but that might be harder to predict. McConaughey has mentioned in the past that he’d “be open to doing another one” and, later, that his coming back to True Detective would depend on “the right context,” and while he retains his credits as an executive producer, there’s no word on him coming back, unfortunately. While many star-studded cameos have been happening recently, even successfully kept a secret until their unveiling, it still seems unlikely that Rust will make the journey from Louisiana to Ennis.

True Detective is available to stream on Max, with new episodes of Night Country premiering every Sunday.

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