Whew – take a collective deep breath. True Detective is back. After a disappointing second season that saw very little critical acclaim, the future of the show was cast in doubt. But, HBO elected to roll the dice and shoot season three. They cast Mahershala Ali as the lead, and from a story standpoint, it certainly seems like Nic Pizzolatto tried to take it back to its season one roots. So far, so good. Let’s hit the review.
Let this serve as your final reminder that there are definitely spoilers within this post. Episodes one and two both dropped last Sunday, and I’ve given y’all an entire week to catch up. But, if you don’t want the show spoiled, DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER.
OKAY – THOSE OF YOU LEFT, YOU SURE YOU WANT TO READ ON?
LFG
TRUE DETECTIVE S3E8
Whew – here we go. We get Mr. Hoyt, played by Michael Rooker, and Wayne in the continuation of the limo scene from the week before. As it turns out, Hoyt doesn’t know exactly what happened to Harris James. Security footage shows James leaving, followed by Hays. Hoyt wonders what they’d find if they went looking in the woods. Hays uses that to his advantage, though, denying any knowledge. It’s bullshit, and Hoyt can see right through it. Wayne suggests they “swap confessions” – badass line – and Hoyt wonders what Wayne thinks he’s guilty of. Ultimately, Hoyt leaves after warning Wayne to stay away.
Now, we’re back in 1980 and we’re going to start all the loose end tying up with a bang. Kindt (noted asshole) asks Wayne to sign a statement saying all of the information that Amelia wrote in an article for the paper is heresay. Wayne refused angrily and went on to spend the next 10 years as a glorified secretary.
Problem is, Wayne doesn’t really handle it all that well.
Fast forward to 2015, we’re with Roland and Wayne. The Hoyt Mansion has been deserted, but they’re there for answers, and boy do they find them. They find the pink rooms.
Then, they find Junius Watts – the one-eyed man who’s been popping up all along this story. “I’ve been waitin’ for y’all.”
We get the full story of what happened from the man who lived it – Junius tells Wayne and Roland about how he helped raise Mr. Hoyt’s daughter Isabel. She grew up, got married, started a family, but after her husband and daughter died in a car wreck, she took a turn. Drugged up all the time, she lost her mind a bit.
This was all going down at the same time Lucy Purcell worked at Hoyt Foods. At a company picnic, Isabel saw Julie and tried to pick her up then….she looked like Isabel’s daughter.
That’s where it all really started – Isabel set up a deal to see Julie. Lucy agreed as long as Will was present, too. They (along with Junius) used to meet up at the spot in the woods where they’d play. One day, Will was pushed…falling back, he hit his head on a rock and died. Junius is the one who put him in that cave.
He then calls Harris James to plant the evidence at Woodard’s house and throw the authorities off the trail. They tell Lucy the truth and give her a massive payoff to disappear and let Julie come live with the Hoyts for good. We all know how that ended.
After that, Julie was drugged and told lies for years before Junius helped her escape from the pink rooms at the Hoyt compound. She never met at their rendezvous point, and she never came back.
‘Mr. June’ then begs the detectives to kill him. He doesn’t want to live with what he did and the knowledge of it anymore. Wayne and Roland refuse….Roland has the best line of the episode when he looks at Mr. June’s gun case and says if he doesn’t want to live…
“….fuckin’ don’t.”
Whew – a lot to take in with that sit-down, but there’s your story, folks. That’s what happened. So, now it begs the question….”well, whatever happened to Julie?”
Well, our detectives (still in 2015) head to the home for runaway girls we saw Amelia visit earlier this season. They learn that Julie indeed came there, lived several years, and then died after contracting HIV. It’s a lot to process – on the way out, they bump into the landscaper’s daughter. If you thought this was a little out of place and random….well, then you don’t know True Detective.
Later on, Wayne is flipping through Amelia’s book, when he comes across a minute detail that jars a larger memory. What if Julie’s death was just a conspiracy to protect her from the nuns? What if little Mike Ardoin…
Mike. Fuckin’. Ardoin.
….shows up while Julie’s at this home for runaways because HE’S THE LANDSCAPER….remember lil’ Mike? The kid who was in love with Julie when they were kids! Apparently, he runs across her one day, realizing it’s her, they fall in love, have a daughter, etc. etc.
All of this from ghost Amelia haunting Wayne in his office. I know I sound like I’m mocking this all, but it really was pretty chill-inducing when you put it all together.
Well, ol’ cowboy Wayne decides to saddle up. He gets the address for the landscaping company and it takes him far away. Northwest Arkansas. He pulls up to the house, and forgets why he drove there.
Could not make this shit up, y’all.
He calls Henry. Becca is with him, and they show up to pick him up. In the meantime, Wayne was chatting with who we believe is indeed…you guessed it…Julie Purcell. The presumption is that they concealed her past and she married the landscapin’ Mike Ardoin….her own little happily ever after.
Wayne never comes to (at least we think), and he returns home with the address in his pocket. Henry tells him to go enjoy playing with his grandchildren. Roland arrives, walking up on the porch and patting Wayne on the shoulder. Wayne surveys the scene, and a smile comes across his face.
Meanwhile, Henry is in the kitchen. He wads up the piece of paper with the address on it. But, just before he throws it away, he opens it up and puts it in his pocket.
We get a flashback to Wayne sitting at the bar when Amelia walks in. He apologizes for blowing up on her about the article and losing his job. He says he wants to marry her, and she says first things first – he needs to sober up. She offers to get him home and they exit the bar.
To conclude this season, we end on a flashback to Wayne entering the jungles of Vietnam. What a heavy metaphor.
THOUGHTS
What a damn good conclusion to a damn good series of television.
There was apart of me unsatisfied with the ending. We didn’t see the Hoyts hanged in public. Nor did we see the case officially closed. But, I get the idea. Things don’t always wind up tied neatly with a bow on top of them. Life is messy.
We’re also reasonable people. As long as Henry has that address, it’s safe for us to assume that matters are handled. My guess is Henry looks into the address and either Wayne comes back around or Roland puts the pieces together.
There’s also the idea that maybe Wayne was faking his forgetfulness. I mean, hell – he did it all season with Elisa. Perhaps he saw Julie and thought, “I don’t want to meddle.” Maybe he did come to and simply chose to leave things undisturbed. I mean, think about what happens to this beautiful life Julie has apparently built if this case comes back in 2015. Could Wayne have seen that and decided it was better left as is? Sure.
But, it really was just the story of a family going crazy and buying a kid. Kindt was a nice nod to season one, but wasn’t there for a massive government cover-up after all. Turns out, he really was just a power-hungry asshole who wanted convictions, right or wrong, at all costs.
It was fun to piece this giant mystery together over the course of the last two months. Here’s to hoping for an equally enthralling season four!
QUESTIONS
What was left unanswered? There weren’t many holes left opened, but I managed to find one glaring omission and a few minor ones.
- What happened to Amelia? What is Amelia hiding about her past and why is she hiding it? Amelia, Amelia, Amelia – This is the only place where I felt they dropped the ball in the finale. The series ends and we learn nothing about Amelia’s ‘messy’ past. We don’t know for sure what happened to her – here I was thinking she was going to fly a little too close to the sun and get killed. But, it turns out she didn’t. So, what happened?
- We never really learned what Freddy Burns saw. Not a biggie, and real talk – it’s safe to assume that he probably just saw the kids with Mr. June and Isabel Hoyt. But, I would’ve liked to see Freddy’s story tied up. In hindsight, I guess seeing grown up Freddy, still clearly affected by the whole thing, was supposed to be our signal as to how things turned out for him.
- What happened ‘between Julie and her father’ that they allude to?
Also, what was Julie referencing when she called the police station and said, “I know what he did?” Could this be the “falling out” mentioned in E1? Not really sure what to make of this one – most likely, Julie was being fed lines when she called the police station. But, we never learned of the incident mentioned early on in the season. - Who killed Cousin Dan? What exactly did he know? It’s like he was Lucy’s confidant. Who knows what was going on between those two? I imagine he didn’t know much more than what Lucy knew. We can reasonably conclude that Tom killed Dan, but we don’t know for sure.
QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Oh, boy – we got a lot of ’em.
- Who did it? The big one! Thanks to one-eyed Junius, we learn the whole story. It was Isabel Hoyt after all, with some help of course.
- How the fuck is Julie alive? She ran away and never came back!
- Who’s driving the brown sedan? Mr. Junius!
- What happened with Hays’ daughter? Looks like she’s fine, living a life of her own after all.
- What else, exactly, does the interviewer from 2015 know? She never showed up again after spilling her theory to Wayne. Looks like we saw the extent of what she knows.
- Did Lucy know anything about this happening? Not only did she know about it. She helped fucking facilitate it!
- Something happened between Wayne and Roland that Wayne doesn’t remember. What was their falling out over? No big reveal, so that likely means it was the way Wayne manipulated Roland about Tom, and the incident with Harris James.
- Whose car does Wayne keep seeing parked outside his home in 2015? Ol’ Junius again.
- What exactly are the pink rooms and what does Tom find in them?
- Obviously, what happens in the limo? Ol’ Ed Hoyt puts a Grade A threat on Wayne and walks away. Likely, that’s why Wayne quit pursuing the case back then.
Prior to the finale…
After E4:
- The fuck was in that bag that Woodard went and got? Practically, a damn armory…
- Does the interviewer from 2015 possess new information/evidence about the case? In short, yes – we just don’t the full extent of her knowledge.
After E5:
- Who got blown up at Woodard’s house? A lot of damn people….and he also forced Hays to shoot him dead. Wild ass shit.
- Is Roland still alive in 2015? He is! But, for some reason, he’s living alone, deep in the woods, with a kennel full of dogs.
- Who do they incarcerate for it in 1980? Woodard.
After E6:
- What is he “withholding?” Or, specifically, what did he leave in the woods? Certainly seems like this is the murder of Harris James.
- What did Wayne and Roland do? “How you gon’ talk to them doing what we done?” See above.
- What happened to Harris James? See above, too. HE DEAD.
Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD and #BeBetter. “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Alabama Crimson Tide football, the WWE, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley
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