True Detective Season 4 Episode 3 Explained- The Mysteries Of Annie And Who Has Awakened?

Summary:

• True Detective Season 4 Episode 3 doubled down on supernatural elements with the investigation of the scientist’s deaths.
• Annie’s past is revealed, and it makes her relationship with Clark even more important.
• A theme of violence against women is emerging.
• Who is the she that is awake and who was the little girl that Navarro saw when she was knocked out?

The mix of crime drama and underlying supernatural elements is what has set True Detective apart. The viewer always feels like they are walking on sand. They never knew what was real and when the ground would shift underneath them. Season 1 did that beautifully. It was a knockout punch of eerie suspense and smothering dread, coupled with fantastic performances by Mathew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. True Detective Season 4 Episode 3 found some of that same magic when the magical realism that Issa Lopez is known for took center stage. There is something very wrong in Ennis, Alaska, just as in Louisiana years ago. Most strange of all is they seem to be related.

Hank has assembled a goon squad of alcohol-fueled men to search for Raymond Clark. They don’t find Clark, but they do find a lot of trouble. Neither Danvers nor Navarro wants him and his group out there. They are violent and impulsive. Hank also can’t be trusted. After smacking Peter’s last episode, he brought him his old skates. Everything he does serves a purpose, however. Hank wants to manipulate Peter. Finn Bennett(Peter) is so sweet and earnest he is hard to watch. He is being pulled in three directions at a time and doesn’t know how to balance any of it. He never says no to Danvers because he wants so desperately to be the kind of cop his father never was, but that devotion to his job and Danvers makes him neglect his family.

In an attempt to correct his father’s mistakes, Peter is making new ones with his wife and son. The sins of our fathers are not ours to carry, but he can’t shake them. Hank can’t be trusted. He was abusive and had no trouble lying to protect the mine or anything else he wanted to. He ignored Susan’s call after Annie died. Now, everyone knows he lied, but it doesn’t matter. Navarro confronted him, but very little will happen. Danvers shares a similar concern for the mine regardless of what it does to the water or the people in Ennis. That doesn’t mean she would let someone get away with murder, just that she weighs her options before acting. That’s the most significant conflict between the women. Navarro is a crusader. She feels responsible for the citizens where, whereas Danvers feels accountable for the town itself.

That conflict is interesting, mainly because they seem to work well together when they aren’t arguing. Even more compelling is that Navarro’s heritage was something her mother denied when she was younger. Navarro doesn’t have connections to her culture, and it troubles her. As a white woman, Danvers can’t relate in the same way, but her stepdaughter is having a similar problem. Danvers is furious with her when she goes to the environmental rally. She makes her remove her face paint not because she is a bigot but because she is terrified something will happen to Leah. It is heartbreaking to watch Danvers force Leah to remove her paint. She is forcing her to deny her identity. The more she pushes, the harder Leah will rebel.

Annie’s past was teased out in True Detective Season 4 Episode 3. We saw her and Officer Navarro meet for the first time, and by the end of the episode, we heard her die. It’s a brutal auditory way to close True Detective Season 4 Episode 3. It stands in stark contrast to the way we meet her. Annie was a midwife and a respected member of her community. She was also a thorn in the side of the people beholden to the mine. Navarro was there to arrest her for an act of terrorism but instead earned respect for her and reconnected with her roots.

That connection gives her access to people Danvers doesn’t have. Through one of those connections, they find out about Oliver and know at least two people knew about Annie and Raymond. Susan says Raymond was odd but deeply in love with Annie. He wasn’t the one who wanted to keep their relationship a secret; she did.

We don’t know why she wanted to keep her life private, but we know their relationship started in 2016, and she already had the spiral tattoo on her back. Susan claimed she dreamt it when she was in high school. Was she channeling all the lost souls of Carcosa? Why was Clark obsessed with the spiral tattoo? Did he also feel the pull of the past? Was he haunted by someone or something he didn’t quite understand?

There is an emerging theme of violence against women in True Detective Season 4 Episode 3. Mother Nature is an extension of this theme as she is mined and destroyed for her treasures, leaving her broken and dirty. Navarro feels the call to respond to both the native people, of whom she is a descendant and women in general. Her mother was from Ennis and met her father and moved to Boston, but he was an abuser, and eventually, her mother took her daughters and ran back to Ennis to escape him. That is why the Wheeler case affected her so much. She felt guilty that they didn’t do more to help her. Danvers wants to do the right thing, but she is more pragmatic and is ruled by fear.

Danvers knew Wheeler would eventually kill his girlfriend, but there was little they could do legally. When Wheeler finally beat his girlfriend to death, Danvers wasn’t shocked. Interestingly, we don’t know exactly what happened in that room when they arrived. Danvers told Peter Wheeler was already dead, but in the flashback, he whistled and smiled. Is this just a recurring nightmare or a reality? Did Navarro or Danvers kill Wheeler, and is that the real reason they no longer work together? In any case, the two officers are working together now. Jodie Foster and Kaila Reis have great chemistry, and Danvers and Navarro’s begrudging respect is as believable as their irritation.

Qaavick continues to be helpful. He found out where to find Oliver, the scientist from TSALAL, who left shortly before Annie was killed. Oliver was hard to find, but Danvers and Navarro tracked him down in a remote area outside Ennis. He wasn’t receptive to company and acted surprised about his dead former colleagues. Why did he leave and hole up in the middle of nowhere? Is he running from someone or hiding from something else?

The supernatural in True Detective Season 4 Episode 3

Navarro slips on the ice when she chases a little girl she thinks she sees. She wakes up in the desert. The same little girl is there holding a polar bear stuffed animal. She asks her to “Get my Mommy.” Before she could ask what she meant or who her mother was, Navarro woke up again on the ice. Danvers had a polar bear in a box of old things. The stuffed animal was worn and missing an eye. This stuffed animal was new and clean. Who is this little girl? Is she related to Leah somehow? Is she Leah from another time and place? When Danvers went to talk with Susan and interrupted the vigil for the woman who had a stillborn child, she looked bothered. Did Danvers lose a child? Who is Leah’s mother? Is it possible she or Navarro’s mother has ties to the Tuttles?

What does “She is awake” mean?

Whatever has awakened, it is unhappy. Whether it is Gaia or the ghost of Annie, there is something more than just simple human violence going on. What if the men at TSALAL killed Annie, and everything with the mine is subterfuge? If Annie and Clark discovered something harmful was happening at TSALAL, it could be a reason to kill. If Clark knew what happened to Annie or, worse yet, was involved, it would destroy him. It would explain his erratic behavior. What if the spirit of vengeance got even with the scientists at TSALAL but spared Clark because Annie loved him?

If the “she” everyone is referring to is a specific ghost and the idea of justice, it could be anyone wronged. Will the work of Marty and Rust finally be completed by the spirit of something unknowable? Lund, who woke from his coma, vacillated between being terrified that someone was coming for him and leering at Navarro. He told Navarro her mother was waiting for her. Was he so close to death that he could freely communicate with them? Maybe Julia isn’t mentally unstable. What if she is troubled by spirits who haunt her? That would be enough to bother anyone.

In True Detective Season 4 Episode 3, two mysteries play out. What happened to Annie, and what happened to the scientists at TSALAL Arctic Research Station? Perhaps those things are tied together more than anyone realizes right now. Find all our True Detective coverage here.

Stray Thoughts:

• Is there something about the water or chemicals leaching into the ground contaminating everything? Why are there so many stillbirths?
• Peter’s cousin, the veterinarian, says the men died before freezing. His best guess is a cardiac event. In other words, they were scared to death. He thinks they had the same terrified look he saw in caribou who were running for their lives. What scared them so badly?
• Where was Annie when she was killed? It looks like she is in an ice tunnel. Was she in the mine? Did she find proof that the mine was dangerous, or is there a less practical reason for her fear?