All 6 episodes of True Detective: Night Country, ranked worst to best

2. Episode 6, the finale

Endings can make or break any mystery story, and Night Country has a good one. It's a classic: Who killed the scientists at Tsalal? Essentially, the butler did it.

Well, not the butler exactly; the cleaning crew, made up mostly of indigenous women who had been hanging out in the background of the show the whole time. it ends up the scientists had killed Annie Koutuk, who found out about the research station's corrupt relationship with the Silver Sky mining company. Things got out of hand and the scientists killed her as a group rather than risk letting their secret get exposed, which would mean an end to their work. Rather than go to the cops, who we know by now would have worked with the mine to bury this secret, the women took matters into their own hands to avenge a fallen member of their community.

The twist plays fair, keeps with the True Detective tradition of revealing a human culprit behind a spooky mystery, and leads to as happy an ending as could be expected given that a bunch of guys were murdered and poor Peter Prior had to kill his own father.

There are also some neat thematic linkages, with the cleaning crew's extrajudicial killings of the scientists recalling how Navarro and Danvers killed William Wheeler while on the job years ago. "Part 6" also closes out some character arcs, as Danvers finally grapples with the loss of her son Holden and Navarro embracing her heritage and leaving to find her herself, with the suggestion that she'll return when she's done. The finale puts a bow on the story and leaves me with the impression that the characters are mostly going to be alright. Good for them.