True Detective: Night Country Tops The White Lotus in Ratings for HBO

True Detective has returned to HBO and its newest season is quickly becoming a hit for the premium network. True Detective: Night Country is the first season of the iconic crime series to air in five years, telling a brand new story with a new creative team and characters. Despite the changes, and all the time away, Night Country caught on with viewers, especially in its second week.

The second episode of True Detective: Night Country aired on Sunday and was a great ratings performer for HBO. In fact, this new episode managed to outpace even the highest performing episode of another recent HBO anthology series, The White Lotus. 

Sunday's edition of Night Country saw a 28% spike in viewership from the season premiere last week, for a total of 2.6 million viewers. That includes same night viewership from classic HBO and the Max streaming service. Through two seasons of The White Lotus, the series' highest-rated episode saw 2.3 million same night viewers. Those numbers even put True Detective: Night Country on par with episodes from Succession's final season.

The love for True Detective continues into Night Country, carrying on the tradition of digging deep into every episode and chasing down theories that began with the first season back in 2014. There even appears to be some connection between the new season and the original that put the show on the map.

Is Travis Rust Cohle's Father?

There's a lot of evidence to support the popular fan theory that the ghost we've seen in True Detective: Night Country is actually the father of Rust Cohle, the character played by Matthew McConaughey in the show's first season. Rust mentioned at one point that his father moved to Alaska and was dying of cancer, but there was never complete confirmation that he was telling the truth in that moment.

What we do know, however, is that his father's name was Travis and that the Travis featured in Night Country was living in Alaska while dying of leukemia. In the latest episode, Rose also refers to him by his full name: Travis Cohle. Turning on subtitles reveal that the last name is indeed spelled the same as Rust's.

There has been no confirmation that the two characters are connected, but all the evidence revealed so far points to the notion that Rust's dad is deeply connected to the Night Country story.