True Detective Season 4 Episode 2 Recap And Review- The Dead Are Speaking, Carcosa, And All The Ties To Season 1

All roads lead to the past. As much as we try to outrun our sins and the sins of others, we can’t. True Detective Season 4 Episode 2 is as far away from Season 1 as you could get. There shouldn’t be anything in common. Different times, people, walks of life, and Ennis is the end of the earth, yet the past is calling. Will Danvers and Navarro finish what Rust and Marty started all those years ago? What will it cost them? Are those even the right questions?

The dead scientists from TSALAL Artic Research Station are frozen together, and their bodies tell a haunting picture. These men have burnt corneas, burst eardrums, and some tried to claw their own eyes out. Naked and terrified, they froze to death. Before they did, however, they carefully removed their clothing and folded it neatly. Just a few days before Christmas, these men were killed either by their own fear or by someone or something we can’t see yet. One man has survived against all odds, but he is too traumatized, and in such bad physical shape he is in a medically induced coma. He won’t be of any help for a while, if ever. In Ennis, the dead don’t stay silent, though. Eventually, they give up their secrets.

Danvers will keep the case because she knows it is connected to Anne K. Navarro feels that same pull. Rose tells her to be wary. Sometimes, the dead need to tell you something. Often, they need to be heard, but sometimes, they want to take you with them. Rose thinks the world is growing old, and Ennis is coming apart at the seams. It is why the dead linger so much there and why it is getting worse. Is Ennis, Alaska, the mythical Carcosa the Tuttle’s searched for? Were they looking in the wrong place?

Rose cautions Navarro in True Detective Season 4 Episode 2 to know the difference between those who want to communicate and those who want her dead. Travis, the ghost that showed Rose the dead bodies, was one of the former. He appears to her when he needs something. How many of the latter are running around in Ennis?

Has Carcosa shifted to Alaska?

Rose recognizes the spiral symbol and says it is older than any of them. Maybe it’s older than the ice itself. She is respectful of this world and the one adjacent to it. Rose’s definition of Ennis feels like a less malevolent form of Carcosa. The Tuttles from Season 1 and their cult revered this potentially fictional place. The Yellow King and his black stars were something to strive towards. Transcendence was only possible by killing and leaving tributes to the King. What if all of that was the twisted warping of an already heinous organization? If the Tuttles operate a human trafficking ring, all of the supernatural elements are subterfuge. On the other hand, Ennis is a special place. Maybe the fabric between worlds is thinner there. Perhaps this is the fabled Carcosa, and everyone is in danger.

Danvers and Navarro in True Detective Season 4 Episode 2

Like Marty before her, Danvers is a mess of aggression and bad decisions. She has slept with many people in town, including a geologist, Leah’s father, and the police captain. It appears she was exiled to Ennis for one of those decisions, even if they still occasionally come together. The geologist is a resource that begins to paint a picture of what the scientists were doing at TSALAL. They were searching for some extinct microbiology in the ice that could cure cancers, disease, and potentially aging. He claims it would never work doing it the way they were because the core drilling would damage the DNA strands during extraction. How did the scientists not know that? Is all of the mysterious experimenting a red herring for something more human?

Danvers and Navarro have until the bodies thaw at the local skating rink to figure it out. After the bodies have thawed, Captain Connelly will take them to Anchorage. Danvers’ late-night call with him did not help her. They left each other angry, and if she had hoped it would buy her some more time, she was wrong. The parallels between Marty and Danvers and Navarro and Rust are compelling. Is history repeating itself? Danvers is abrasive, selfish, and dedicated to her job. Navarro can be just as prickly but seems to have compassion for those around her. Jodie Foster and Kali Reis continue to shine. Their earned relationship is as uncomfortable to watch as it is believable. They are an intriguing pair that might be the dead’s only hope.

There are plausible explanations for some of what happened to the men. They could have been scared by a polar bear and run out in the cold, where they became hyperthermic and removed their clothing because of paradoxical undressing. Delirium could explain some of their self-inflicted wounds. None of those things explain their clothes being folded so neatly, the spiral symbol, or Clark being missing. Those questions only get bigger by the end of True Detective Season 4 Episode 2. Where has Clark gone? What did he do to the other men? Did he do something to them? What was he doing with Anne in that trailer?

The trailer that Navarro finds is a treasure trove of terrifying things. Bones, strange artwork, a shrine to a dead person, and symbols are everywhere. Additionally, something made Clark change drastically. His scientific journals were orderly and neat until one page showed an apparent descent into madness. What does “Oh God, Never Sleep” mean? What did he see in his nightmares to scare him so? Did sleep deprivation cause his seizure in the pilot episode?

We know he and Anne were intimate in some capacity from the photo the tattoo artist sent Danvers in True Detective Season 4 Episode 2. We know they were together days before she was killed in 2017. We also can assume her death destroyed him, and he was never the same at TSALAL. What we don’t know, however, is what brought the two of them together in the first place. Nor do we know why they kept their relationship a secret.

The environmental impact of the mining camp nearby continues to be a nagging problem. Anne K was an activist that the miners didn’t like. Was she beaten and killed because of that connection, or was that cover for something more sinister? Are women disposable in Ennis, just as they were in Season 1? Hank Prior appears to be an abusive man. Peter’s mother left them when he was young. Ironically, Hank is now being taken advantage of by an online personality who is grifting him. It’s poetic that this secretive man is currently being tricked. However, I am still confused about why Peter had to steal the case files from him. What is he hiding in those files, and why doesn’t he want Danvers to see them? Is Anne’s case possibly linked to many things, including Peter’s mom leaving? Maybe she didn’t leave. Maybe she was killed.

Two of Anne’s possessions were found in True Detective Season 4 Episode 2. Her phone was found in the trailer, and it was her tongue found in TSALAL. Who has been keeping it all this time and why we don’t know yet. Anne’s phone had a smashed screen, which might have happened during her attack. Was Clark there when she was killed? Is that how he had her phone and her tongue? Until Clark resurfaces, we can’t ask him.

Why won’t the past leave us alone? In Ennis, the past is a living entity that haunts and informs everything we do. Cherished memories co-mingle with warnings of genetic predispositions. Hank dreamed of being a musician before life, and Peter’s mom squashed that. Navarro’s sister may not want help, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t need it. Rose counsels Navarro not to mistake the spirit world with mental illness. It’s good advice, but who is to say which is the problem?

Our past lives are never really gone. Danvers is a hard ass now, but once, she was carefree. She danced, smoked pot, and smiled. Hank was and still is an abuser who continues to bully his son. Navarro worries about making the same mistakes with her sister that were made with their mother. Maybe they all need to listen to what their memories are trying to tell them before it is too late. Find all our True Detective coverage here.

Stray Thoughts:

• The bad water near the mine is mentioned often enough that I wonder how much it has to do with what is happening in town. Is the water supply contaminated so much that it is causing hallucinations, and everything that is happening is a byproduct of that? Is the simplest solution the right one?
• Qavvik is the best boyfriend in the world. He fulfills all of Navarro’s needs and never asks for anything. He also makes a mean-looking pancake.
• What is it about the Lighthouse that makes me so uneasy? I am convinced it is a cover for something criminal.
• Tuttle United funds TSALAL Artic Research Base. The Tuttles are an influential family in Louisiana and the main antagonists of True Detective Season 1. Have they been funding research here to keep ties to what could be the next Carcosa?