True Detective: Night Country Ending Explained: Who Killed Anne and What Really Happened to Navarro?

True Detective: Night Country ended yesterday with an epilogue halfway between supernatural and reality, certainly full of humanity and tenderness. Giving us two protagonists perhaps at peace, reassured by the terrible internal struggles that had plagued them in previous episodes. As we will see in our in-depth analysis, Danvers and Navarro will not only solve the mysterious case of the disappearance (and discovery) of a group of scientists engaged in scientific research in Alaska. But they will also be able to get to the bottom of the terrible death of the activist Annie K., closely linked to the Tsalal case. Here is the explanation of the ending of True Detective: Night Country.

The last episode of the series with Jodie Foster and Kali Reis opens in the middle of a snowstorm, in the eternal night, on the last day of the year. When Danvers faces his demons, he accepts the pain of the loss of his family, and in particular little Holden, and the storm stops. When he recovers his mercy, the one he had lost, the stars return. And the new year arrives. It arrives when he bids farewell to the poorest women in the city, stating that he only wanted to inform them of the results of the autopsies on the scientists, according to which a climatic event killed them. It comes when she lets Navarro take his private leave of them, waiting for her outside. Because deep down Danvers knows what will happen. He doesn’t tell Navarro not to go. He just tells her to come back now and then. And so it will be, in the most touching ending in the entire history of True Detective.

True Detective: Night Country Ending Explained: Who Killed Annie K.?

In compliance with the classic mystery structure, the discovery of the culprit is a priority element in True Detective: Night Country. In this case, there is more than one crime to solve. The main one, however, seems to be the death of the Inuit activist Annie K., rather than the disappearance of the scientists. Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) just need to complete the final pieces of the puzzle. Navarro finds the connection between the deaths of the scientists at the Tsalal Arctic base in Ennis and that of Annie, brutally killed six years earlier under mysterious circumstances. The girl was killed by the researchers themselves.

Romantically linked to one of the researchers, Raymond Clark (Owen McDonnell), she had discovered how the scientists were actually in the play of Silver Sky Mining, the mine that had polluted the city of Ennis over the years. Not only was their data false, but on the contrary. They polluted the town more and more, to extract from the permafrost, now increasingly liquid, everything they needed to sequence the DNA of an extinct microorganism capable of stopping cellular decay. In a fit of rage, Annie had destroyed part of the laboratories, being stabbed repeatedly by the men. Clark, realizing she was still alive, finished her off by suffocating her. How does the agent arrive at this outcome? Navarro tortures Clark who, hidden in the ice tunnels under the power plant, and then found by the policewomen, spills the beans under the threat of a furious Navarro, who records everything with his cell phone. The man is then left to die in the cold.

Who Cut out Annie’s Tongue?

Issa Lopez affirms that there are two options and that it will be the public who decides which one best fits their way of seeing the world. For those who prefer rational explanations, the answer is Hank Prior, who before dying confessed that he had not killed Annie but had moved her body. “They send Hank to take care of the activist’s body,” explains the director. “He leaves it in a conflict zone and mutilates it to make it look like someone is sending a message”.

The language was found by the “invisible women”, who decided to keep it out of respect and leave it at the time of their revenge, also as a message, in this case that both cases were connected. “The other version of events is that Annie’s vengeful spirit comes in with the group of women, and that’s why Clark says, ‘She’s here.’ It’s Annie who leaves her own tongue because she knows that if anyone decides to listen, you can tell your story”.

What Happened to Clark?

Precisely the man in question, captured in Tsalal by Danvers and Navarro, was crying out for them to end his life or let him die. After learning part of the truth and with Detective Liz sleeping, he then watched as Navarro let him go to freeze to death. But before this and what we discovered at the end; Navarro managed to record Clark making his confession. Thus, everyone knew what happened to Annie and also what mine was hiding, being closed at the end of the episode.

What Happened to Danver’s Son?

One of the stories that they didn’t tell us much was that Danvers had a son with Leah’s father, the police chief’s adopted daughter. Only with flashback did we see that something had happened even though Danvers didn’t talk about it. We were finally able to deduce that he died in a car accident along with his father, which brought obvious trauma to Liz.

What Happened to the Scientists?

It was the Inuit women of Ennis who avenged Annie’s death by attacking the researchers. Analyzing the cave where Clark was hiding, the scene of Annie’s murder, Danvers discovers the imprint of a hand with two severed fingers. Only Blair Hartman (Kathryn Wilder), the lady employed in the fish factory we saw in the first episode, questioned by Danvers for having hit the ex-boyfriend of her friend Bee (Diane Benson) with a bucket, had this physical characteristic. Danvers and Navarro immediately go to talk to her, Bee, and other women from Ennis.

While cleaning the offices of the base, the two of them noticed details that had led them back to Annie’s murder. Starting from the star weapon that had hit her several times. So they decided to take justice into their own hands. First by kidnapping the scientists, locking them in a van, then forcing them to flee naked into the Arctic freeze. When asked by Danvers why they didn’t report it immediately, Blair replies that they didn’t trust the cops. The agent can only agree with them and decides not to report them, focusing on the medical-legal report according to which the scientists died due to an avalanche. Danvers and Navarro themselves share a similar secret. They supported each other when years earlier they killed a man, Wheeler, responsible for murdering his wife. Covering up his death as if it were suicide.

What Happens to Navarro and Danvers?

Even Navarro and Danvers manage to find a modicum of peace in their tormented existences. And to establish a friendship between them. When Danvers falls into the freezing water, convinced he heard the voice of her little son Holden asking for help, Navarro doesn’t hesitate to jump in to save her. In tears, Danvers asks Navarro (who is a believer and has the power to contact the dead) if she knows what happened to the soul of her son, who died in a car accident. She finds comfort in her friend who tells her that the little one sees her. She cries desperately but is finally relieved in Navarro’s arms. Liz also manages to rebuild her relationship with her daughter Leah, happy to have a mother who fought the same battle as her to protect the environment. Called to answer questions from her immediate superiors about the management of the case and the disappearance of Hank Prior, Danvers tells a lie. That is, the man fled Ennis for personal reasons.

In reality, Hank, who has always connived with Silver Sky, so much so that he eliminated Annie’s body by cutting off her tongue, was killed by his son Peter. Who, in this way, saved his boss Danvers from his father’s threat. The man’s body was hidden in the freezing waters by the mysterious Rose (Fiona Shaw). Navarro’s fate, however, seems shrouded in mystery. And series showrunner Issa López didn’t quite help clarify it. According to the most accepted theory, Navarro died like her mother and sister before her. She thus enters the world of the deceased to which she has always been connected. In her house, she left only the cell phone with which she collected Clark’s confession, and which led to the closure of the mine, thanks to the diffusion favored by Danvers. And little Holden’s teddy bear. In the final scene, Danvers and Navarro are together in the latter’s lake house. She returned briefly to her friend’s side, to be close to her one last time. Did she die? Did she just walk away? Choose the explanation that is the most plausible to you. After all, no one leaves Ennis.

Is the Navarro in the Final Shot Real?

In the statements that Danvers gives (emulating Cohle from the first season, but in a good mental and emotional state) they ask her about Navarro’s whereabouts and she claims to know nothing. In the last scene of the season, Navarro appears on the far right of the screen, a serene presence who does not seem to faze Danvers in any way, which can be interpreted in two ways: that he cannot see her or that he simply knows that she is with her. The possibility that both possibilities coexist and that it is the public who chooses is precisely Lopez’s intention.

“If the returning Navarro is her spirit, there is beautiful poetry in that: She is a spirit at peace, not like the apparitions she saw before,” he explains. “And if he is Navarro after taking a walk and coming back to be with her friend, he is beautiful too”. Whichever version each viewer chooses, the ending of Polar Night has been more than remarkable and has left a very good taste in the mouth: it has resolved the main questions, it has done justice in its way in a world of gray, and it has allowed its protagonists find peace and process their losses.

Who Killed the Tsalal Scientists?

What Detective: Night Country” also offers us the answer to the great mystery of the season: what happened to the Tsalal scientists? The truth is that, after spending a restless night amid the investigation and her traumas, Danvers remembers that Clark claimed that Anne came for them. Thus, upon studying the traces of the hatch, he goes to look for Blair Hartman, one of the women from the community who worked cleaning the laboratory. On one of their days of work, they discovered the scientists’ hiding place and realized that they were truly responsible for Anne’s death.

Therefore, they sought revenge: armed with shotguns, they took the scientists to the outskirts of town, made them take off their clothes, and ran naked. However, they assured that they did not murder the men, since they could have returned for the clothes, they left them… so it is suggested that the spirit of the deceased young woman would have intervened in these deaths. After hearing what happened, Navarro and Danvers decide to remain silent and close the case without implicating the women in this event.

What Happened to the Rest of the Characters?

The series also offers us answers about the outcome of the main characters:

Clark commits suicide by going out into the frozen landscape barely dressed, dying similarly to his companions.

Danvers nearly dies after having a vision with her deceased son Holden, but Navarro saves her and eventually, the tough detective gives in to her partner’s connections with the dead, discovering that the boy sees her from the afterlife. Eventually, her relationship with Leah improves as well.

Peter Prior manages to dispose of his father’s body and appears on the scene while Danvers explains to the detectives the theory that the subject died accidentally, after murdering his witness.

Navarro learns his Iñupiaq name during his visions and disappears from the town, but not before leaving behind the video of Clark‘s confession, in which the guy admits to Annie‘s murder and the truth behind the contamination… which triggers the closure. of the establishment.

What Really Happened to Navarro?

Evangeline Navarro‘s ending is the one that has left the most doubts among viewers, given that it is suggested that she would have walked into the cold to meet the same fate as her sister. This hypothesis is supported by what Danvers says when asked about the whereabouts of her partner: “Well, this is Ennis. Nobody really leaves” (the same thing that the residents said to refer to dead people). However, in the final shot of “True Detective: Night Country,” we see the two protagonists in a cabin that Danvers traveled to with Leah. Is the character alive? Or is it perhaps the representation of her ghost?

What Happened to Prior?

The young detective managed to bury his father after killing him before he did the same with Danvers. Forgetting this difficult trauma, in the end we see Danvers explaining to the men investigating the end of the case and the disappearance of Prior’s father; They deduced that he disappeared after killing the detective’s witness.