True Detective: Night Country Episode 2 Reveals Shocking Twist

The fourth season of True Detective, Night Country, is underway on HBO with last week’s season premiere introducing a major mystery with the disappearance of several men at a remote research facility in Alaska while setting up the tensions between the officers investigating that case as well as another case, one involving an old, unsolved murder case. This week’s episode took viewers deeper into that story but also introduced some wild new twists — including one that changes everything for both investigations.

Warning: This article contains major spoilers for True Detective: Night Country. Read on only if you really want to know.

While eight scientists disappeared, by the end of the episode we know the fate of only six of them — and it turns out that at least two may have survived whatever drove the researchers into the cold. The episode opened with Police Chief Danvers (Jodie Foster) and her officers investigating the frozen researchers found in the ice when, suddenly it turns out that one of the victims is somehow still alive.  That researcher is removed from the ice and taken for medical care, but the rest of the “corpsicle” is taken to the local ice rink where it will have to be defrosted before it can be turned over. It’s a move that buys Danvers more time to investigate.

Running alongside those events, we learn that one of the scientists at the Tsalal Station believed to be in the corpsicle, Clark, had a tattoo of the mysterious spiral symbol and Danvers tries to take down more information about that. Navarro (Kali Reis) is continuing her investigation into Annie K.’s death. Navarro has a hunch that Annie is connected to Clark and learns that Clark bought a trailer in cash. Navarro’s hunch ends up being correct that Clark and Annie are connect when it’s discovered that Clark’s tattoo matched Annie’s. Danvers and Navarro figure out that Annie and Clark were having a secret affair and Navarro ends up finding Clark’s hidden trailer and it’s full of bizarre drawings, a weird human-sized doll on a bed and the strange spiral painted on the ceiling above it. Annie’s phone is also in the trailer.

The twist that Annie is somehow connected to Clark and, thus, potentially whatever happened to the scientists is interesting on its own, but the episode isn’t done. Back at the ice rink, the corpsicle has thawed considerably to where they are able to separate the bodies and there’s a shocking discovery. While they are expecting to find seven bodies in the ice — remember, one scientist was found still alive somehow — there are only six. Danvers identifies all of them but Clark isn’t among them, prompting Navarro to say that Clark is still alive, somewhere in Alaska.

Clark being potentially alive offers a new complication to things, especially as we learn more about him. We learn in the episode that there was something always a bit off about Clark, that he was the loner among the scientist who was often isolated from the others and the others just ignored him when he was particularly strange. There’s also the weird video where we see Clark convulsing in the background, and we also got a look at his research notes and files, which are littered with strange drawings and disturbing notes very much in keeping with what was seen in the trailer. In total, these bits of information as well as the discovery that Clark isn’t part of the pile of frozen corpses certainly ups the ante for the investigation — and next week’s episode.

True Detective: Night Country airs Sundays on HBO.