True Detective Season 4 Episode 5 Explained- All Those Theories On Silver Sky, The Tuttles, Night Country, And Who Killed Annie K

Ghosts don’t stay dead, and secrets never stay buried. Everyone has something to hide and someone they are running from in True Detective Season 4 Episode 5. For all the spirits popping up in Ennis, ordinary greed and corruption are destroying this town. We learned just how twisted Hank is and who moved Annie K. Unfortunately, money and power are pulling the strings, and few people are willing to stand up against injustice. Before the end of the episode, several people are dead, and Navarro and Danvers are headed to Night Country. Here is everything you need to know about True Detective Season 4 Episode 5 and those ties to Season 1.

The penultimate episode of Season 4 was shocking. All of the things we had suspected were confirmed this week. Friends and foes became very clear. The Tuttle’s influence reaches to the end of the earth, and no one is safe. Before all of that, Navarro honored the dead and, in doing so, laid the groundwork for them to speak to her.

Navarro and Danvers and Prior

The partners had a tough time in True Detective Season 4 Episode 5. All of their mistakes, fears, and regrets came back. In quiet moments on the road, before things went sideways, we saw what made these two good together once. They genuinely care and trust about each other even if they don’t always agree. It’s a strangely compelling dynamic between two women with so much and so little in common simultaneously. They are both prickly and struggle to show those they love how much they care. Danvers is terrified for Leah but can’t find the words to explain why. Instead, she fumbles for words as she talks to Navarro.

The most interesting part of this conversation is their discussion about the protests. Danvers feels pulled in two directions. She knows the town needs the money the mine brings, but she also knows the mine is destroying the town. The water is poisonous, and babies are stillborn at alarming rates. There is also the giant hole created when Annie K was killed. Not only was she a leader in the community, but her midwife skills were essential. Without her, both operations are suffering. When Danvers tried to label all the protestors as “crazy radicals,” Navarro shits her down. Danvers doesn’t listen to anyone, but she corrected herself when Navarro gave her opinion. After discovering the entrance to the cave that Otis was found in thirty years ago had been deliberately blown closed, Navarro’s allegiance was tested.

What started as a heated but peaceful protest quickly deteriorated, and Navarro and the other troopers were called in to break things up. She was there to see Leah get beaten by an overzealous security guard and was able to protect her. Unfortunately, Danvers felt she needed to be taught a lesson and had her booked. By the end of True Detective Season 4 Episode 5, Leah is out of jail and still staying with Kayla, but she is beginning to understand a bit where Danvers is coming from, even if she isn’t ready to forgive her yet.

Navarro returned Julia to the ocean. Rose helped her break through the ice and then was there to help her when she lost herself. I wonder where she is going each time she leaves this plane. It’s a burned-out, dry place that appears as dead as the ghosts that live there. What does this place want to show her? It isn’t Lousiana, as it’s too arid to be a humid state. Why does she keep going there? She has seen Danvers’s son there, so it isn’t tied to her family or memories. Maybe the dead know she is one of the few who can help them reach Danvers before it is too late.

Danvers knew that Otis could provide the crack in the case they had been waiting for if he could detox fast enough and be willing to help them. Both of those things didn’t happen. He did provide a little context about the accident that caused his injuries thirty years ago. A cave collapse trapped a group of men, including him. Everyone heard a screaming, howling noise, and all of the men, but he followed the noise. He collapsed, and the next thing he remembered was waking up in the hospital with burned ears and hearing loss. Otis has no idea how he got there or who rescued him. He also doesn’t know how he sustained his injuries. He knows that Clark is obsessed with the Night Country and hiding from someone awake and coming for him.

Danvers is called into Silver Sky and told that the case is closed. The medical examiner has concluded that a freak avalanche killed the men. Their deaths are being labeled natural. Not only that, but Captain Conley and Silver Sky know about Wheeler. They use it as leverage to force Danvers to back off. Silver Sky didn’t care what Danvers knew and wasn’t concerned with the conflict of interest created when the same parent family funded TSALAL as the mine they were supposed to be monitoring. It may have worked with anyone else, but Danvers and Navarro know they are close and won’t sit back again. A well-timed guilt trick from Navarro was all the push Danvers needed to ignore her orders and forge ahead.

Danvers has no trouble using who and what she needs to solve murders. She steals heroin to entice Otis to take them to the cave. It isn’t the right thing to do by a mile, but Danvers wants answers, and as it all turned out in True Detective Season 4 Episode 5, it doesn’t matter. His fate was sealed.

Peter has all the makings of a good detective. He is intelligent, inquisitive, and committed. The overwhelmingly kind young man hasn’t figured out his work/life balance yet. Hopefully, Kayla will give him the chance to find himself. He is a compassionate soul who feels a strong pull to do the right thing and leave the world better than he found it. He wants to be the source of good in the world.

That will get even harder now that he has a terrible secret of his own. Hank wasn’t a good father. He lied to Peter and was physically abusive. Peter also learned Hank spied on his son for Silver Sky. In a rarest moment, we saw the man Hank could have been as he sang. Peter saw it, too, and it made him uncomfortable, so he waited to knock on the door. Hank is a bad man, but he was his father. He was such a terrible person; however, it is hard to tell if he told Peter the story about how he fell through the ice because he wanted to make a connection or because he was trying to manipulate him.

By the end of True Detective Season 4 Episode 5, Peter had to choose. He either sided with his father, who arrived at Danvers’ house to find and kill Otis, or Peter could decide to stand with Danvers. Earlier in the episode, he learned what happened to Wheeler. He knows that the women killed him after finding his girlfriend dead and then doctored the evidence. Killing him may have been the just thing to do, but it certainly wasn’t legal. He hardly had a chance to process that information before making a choice. When Hank killed Otis, he heard the shot from Danvers’ shed and arrived in time to choose a side.

Leah’s warning to him not to lose the guy who fell on the ice so another could score was sad foreshadowing. As the episode closed, he was left with two dead bodies, one of which was his father. He will have to clean up his father’s crime and then his own while Danvers and Navarro break into the cave Otis pointed them to. Curiously, Navarro didn’t think twice about telling him to go to Rose for help. It is a heartbreaking bit of symmetry. Both father and son move dead bodies. Hank moved Annie K’s body for money and a promise of a job, while Peter does it out of respect and love. He cares for his mentor and chooses to trust her because he knows there is no other way. Silver Sky has too much control.

Theories on the ending of True Detective Season 4 Episode 5

The Tuttles continue to destroy life everywhere they go. It’s not a killer cult or an inbred lunatic this time, but old-fashioned greed. The mine is owned by Tuttle, who funds the TSALAL Artic Research base. They fund the base to keep the EPA off their backs by lying about their environmental impact reports. Indirectly, they are responsible for more deaths. You don’t have to pull the trigger to be accountable, and Tuttle’s prints are all over everything that has happened in Ennis.

While I don’t think there is any tie to Season 1 beyond their continued corruption, it speaks to a greater truth. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The mine’s money keeps the town running, but at what cost? I predict we will discover there isn’t anything supernatural about Annie K. and the researchers’ deaths. Silver Sky and the Tuttles needed to cover up something, and folks had to die to do so.

Qavvik continues to be a fantastic source of support and information. His friend had seen the spirals on the rocks before. His grandmother said they were warnings. She said they marked places where the ice would swallow someone whole. They marked where the Night Country was. She was scared of that place and all it represents. It is worth noting that the Tuttles have now been involved with two different cosmic horror folklore. First, Carcosa and now the Night Country. Are they actively seeking some occult advantage, or does evil attract evil? We probably will never know, and the corporate wheel may be crippled, but it won’t be stopped.

Clark has to be waiting in the cave for Danvers and Navarro. There are only so many places he could hide during this storm, and the pull of the place where Annie died will be strong. Something drove him mad. The only question is if it was guilt, grief, or something toxic the researchers found.

Clark is obviously terrified of someone. The same “she” haunting many of the citizens in town has him running scared. What if Clark killed Annie at Silver Sky’s and the Tuttles’ request? It could have been an accident caused by unsafe work conditions, or she could have discovered something she shouldn’t. Silver Sky knows that someone on their payroll killed her, and that’s why they made Hank move her dead body. Domestic violence has become a significant theme in the fourth season. If Clark killed Annie to keep a secret or on accident after imbibing too much of some substance, he would feel intense guilt, and Annie would have reason to hunt him. It’s a nagging question. Why was he so scared of her waking up if Clark loved her so much?

Maybe the “she” in question isn’t Annie and refers to a virus or bacteria found in the ice. What if this newly discovered lifeform can heal bodies but break minds? In truth, what is likely is we will find an all too mundane motive for murder. Guilt can drive anyone crazy, and in a place as special as Ennis, you can’t ever escape the dead. The dead won’t leave the living alone. If they aren’t whispering in their ears, they are condemning them with their points and stares. If Night Country is a state of mind, they better not fight the break of dawn. The darkness and the storm are their friends tonight, but come tomorrow, they might be gone. Find all our True Detective coverage here before next week’s finale.