“It’s always the same story with the same ending: nothing ever happens. So we told ourselves a different story, with a different ending.”
True Detective: Night Country came to an end tonight on HBO, following Ennis Police Chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Alaska State Trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) as they figured out the connection between the murdered activist Annie K (Nivi Pedersen) and the scientists of the Tsalal Arctic Research Station. Issa López‘s season of True Detective neatly wrapped up its major mysteries, while still allowing the audience to choose for themselves how big of a role the spiritual world played in this frigid drama.
So who killed Annie K? What happened to the researchers at Tsalal? And did both Danvers and Navarro survive the season?
**Spoilers for the True Detective Season 4 finale, now streaming on Max**
True Detective Season 4 Episode 6 begins with Danvers and Navarro trudging out into a blizzard to explore the “Night Country,” a series of underground ice tunnels where they believe Annie K was murdered. What they discover is the tunnels lead to a secret underground lab located directly beneath the Tsalal Arctic Research Station. They also discover that Annie’s former lover, Raymond Clark (Owen McDonnell), has been hiding there.
After Danvers and Navarro follow Clark into the abandoned station, they manage to finally overcome him and tie him up. Using the recording of Annie’s final moments to torture Clark, they succeed in getting the scientist to talk. He explains that Annie figured out that the only way the Tsalal scientists were able to dig into the permafrost to extract world-changing DNA was by pushing the local mine to destroy the environment to soften said permafrost. This horrifying realization set off a deadly chain of events that ended in the deaths of Annie K and all the Tsalal Researchers, including Clark.
So what happened? Who killed Annie K? What happened to the Tsalal Scientists? Do Danvers and Navarro surviving True Detective: Night Country? Here’s what you need to know about the ending of True Detective Season 4…
The final episode of True Detective: Night Country reveals that the Tsalal scientists killed Annie K after discovering that she had destroyed years of their work.
