True Detective: Night Country Showrunner Addresses That Iconic Season 1 Line in Finale

Even before True Detective: Night Country premiered, showrunner Issa López confirmed that the project’s origins were as an entirely original narrative, only for her partnership with HBO to turn it into Season 4 of the Nic Pizzolatto-created True Detective series. Throughout the six-episode season, fans spotted a number of Easter egg references to the debut season, as well as more direct narrative connections to those first episodes, which includes this week’s season finale repurposing one of the series’ most memorable lines. López has since confirmed how she never aimed to intentionally inject the line, instead that she witnessed an organic opportunity to reference the quote.

WARNING: Spoilers below for the season finale of True Detective: Night Country

In the season finale, when Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Navarro (Kali Reis) confront Clark (Owen McDonnell), he reveals that he and his fellow researchers were ultimately responsible for the death of a woman who discovered the conspiracy their research station were orchestrating. During his manic confession, Clark begins discussing eternal, supernatural figures who view the universe from such a heightened perspective that even time itself is seen as a mere object, as he utters, “Time is a flat circle.” 

In Season 1, Matthew McConaughey’s Rust Cohle made a similar claim using the phrase. While Night Country had a number of Easter eggs to Season 1, López admitted this line wasn’t designed as a mere reference.

“I do know that the hardcore Pizzolatto Forever fans are going to perhaps believe that it was put there just to appease them, but it’s not true,” López confirmed to Entertainment Weekly. “That phrase, it was not something that I planned on putting in the series at all. I think it’s super cheesy to say, ‘I will find a place to put this.’”

The bigger thematic connection between the two seasons would be the spiral symbol, which ambiguously represented these elder beings. The literal, visual representation of this concept is what surprised López herself about the connections.

“Organically as I was writing the scene, [I thought] if you’re going to go with the version of there’s something mystical out there in the ice, and there’s something in the darkness that is awake and has forever been where this ancient spiral is, and that is also connected to Annie … Then Clark says Annie has always forever been in that cave, and she will always be there, and all of us are doing the same things forever — that’s a line that I wrote — I [then realized], because time is a flat circle!” the showrunner joked. “It just came so naturally. And it is a scientist who says it because that concept is based in quantum physics. So it is a scientist who needs to say it.”

She continued, “It’s absolutely organic and it came from the script … So it was not an intention, but I love that the connection between this season and the first one was so true organically that the lines were coming from the lips of the characters.”

While the first three seasons were entirely disconnected from one another, Night Country marked the first connections between storylines, confirming not only that they unfolded in the same world, but also had direct narrative connections to one another.

Stay tuned for updates on the future of True Detective.

What did you think of the season finale? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!