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SPOILER ALERT! This story contains plot points from the fourth season finale of True Detective: Night Country.
The fourth season of HBO's crime anthology ended Sunday with investigators Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) solving the murder of the eight men from the Arctic research station Tsalal who disappeared without a trace.
Here, creator/showrunner Issa López — who came to the anthology after writing and directing the award-winning Mexican film Tigers Are Not Afraid (Vuelven) — talks about how she first broke the story about the men at the research station that she represented the moral center of the drama and what it was like to work with Foster and Reis.
DEADLINE: Did Navarro become a ghost after she left the ice in the finale?
ISSA LOPEZ I'm not saying she's alive, and I'm certainly not saying she's dead. I have crafted this very carefully as an ink block test for you to discover yourself as a viewer. I love that Navarro explains very early in the series that she feels the urge to just walk away and leave everything behind. On the other hand, the entire series is an exploration of the fact that she feels a calling to the afterlife. At the climax of the finale, she gives herself to it rather than fight it and go into it with pain and fear. And by doing it, she preserves a piece of herself. So the phone call she was afraid of is resolved. The Aborigines in Australia go and wander, find themselves and then return, and I think that's what Kali has embraced [for the character]. However, there is a possibility that she will also be with the women in front of her to visit them. You can read it both ways and it's up to you to interpret which one fills your heart.
DEADLINE For several episodes I thought you were telling a supernatural mystery, that something alien killed these men. I'm assuming that was the point to throw us off somehow?
LOPEZ Here too it is both. In the real world, a terrible act happened. Annie K. was killed. There is no real reason to kill a woman anywhere. But on top of that, she was killed for terrible reasons. This ultimately has consequences for these men. The women take justice upon themselves because justice does not come from outside, as we know happens in the real world. They sent the men to the Arctic. It's easy to imagine and assume that they die from exposure, and when they die from exposure, they panic and become delirious, as explained in the series. So it's completely real. That's a rational explanation. But there is another explanation for these men going into the ice. Their clothes are there for them to return to so they can try to survive. They never come back for the clothes. Did you come across something out there that woke you up while digging in places you weren't supposed to dig? When they took women's lives because of where they were digging? This is another vision of that. And once again, it's your job to decide which version to go for.
DEADLINE How did you come up with the story?
LOPEZ I was briefly married to a scientist and love science. I was an archaeologist and studied anthropology. That's the beauty of television. You really have the space to explore your obsessions. And instead of seeing it as a challenge, I saw it as an opportunity to just go and explore so many avenues, so many ways to explain a single event.
DEADLINE In the end, you gave us a history lesson about the Alaska Natives that most people don't even know exist. Was that a goal?
LOPEZ True Detective is about the locations. The location is as much a character as the characters themselves. So the first season takes place in Louisiana, the second season in Los Angeles and the third season in Arkansas. Each of these places was incredibly unique and brought different elements. Then I thought of Alaska, which is completely different from the three and where the nights last forever. It would have been absolutely wrong to talk about these communities without considering and elaborating on the fact that 70% of the population of these northwest Alaska towns is Iñupiaq. I didn't know her. So I learned as much as I could. And then I had the tribe's council of elders go through each script with us and make sure we stayed authentic. We brought the Alaskan people, the Iñupiaq, as characters into the show, only to remember that we didn't use that as an interesting backdrop. It became the story we told.
DEADLINE At what point during filming did you wonder why the hell I chose a cold location?
LOPEZ Oh, every night. I am Mexican. What am I doing here? Nobody told me I had to do this. Being Mexican, there was perhaps some expectation that I would do it along the border or in the Arizona desert or that it would be tropical. No, I had to choose the roughest place in the world!
DEADLINE What was it like working with Jodie and Kali? So much anger in every episode with these women! Did they need a lot of guidance?
LOPEZ I think the interesting thing about working with women is that it's pretty darn easy to access [motivation]. I mean, we're so lucky to be on these sets. But we've all dealt with shit in our lives. And it's accessible and fun to create something positive with. So it's not a show about angry women; it's also a show about angry women. It's also about loneliness and about loss and about sadness and about wanting to be with someone and sharing the things we carry with us and not being able to do that until we break through ourselves. But it's also about the anger that we feel and carry within us. Kali and Jodie couldn't be more different and they couldn't be more different than me. But you notice that there is an exchange of experiences and the technique they use with each other is different. With Jodie, everything comes from her head. And if you're clear about the reasons why the character is accessing an emotion, they'll get there. Kali and I come more from the world of emotions. So I would do a verbal analysis with Jodie while I went to Kali and said, “This is how you feel.” Then I would let her go and they would beautifully reach the same tone. It was beautiful to see.
DEADLINE I have to ask about Peter Prior [Finn Bennett]. He felt like the moral center of this story. I felt so sorry for him.
LOPEZ Do not be sad. I mean, yeah, he's absolutely the moral compass. He is the unspoiled one at the beginning of the story. But the truth is that it's a police story. And I don't think there's an easy way to be a police officer in this world, if there ever was one. And delivering justice, when that is the job of the police, cannot be black and white. We've seen it over and over again. He is a small police officer and is trying to become a full-fledged police officer. And he manages to do this by asking the right questions and completing his training to become a detective. He is not a full police officer until he receives the baptism of blood and it is his own blood. Now, from a Freudian perspective, from a Greek tragedy perspective, there is an ancient human tradition that says that in order to grow up you have to kill your parents. It's a very primal image, but it's behind so many modern conflicts. I took it a bit literally in this case. He must break with the pain, corruption and dark emotions that Hank has experienced [John Hawkes] asks him to connect with him. He is not that person. Peter makes a decision before shots are fired, and Hank realizes his life is over and everything will go downhill from there. Everything he has done will come to light. He knows he has lost his child. So he raises the gun. And if you look closely at the frame, Hank doesn't have his finger on the trigger. He didn't mean to shoot Danvers, but he makes that gesture knowing he will go down.
DEADLINE Did you feel like you had enough episodes to tell your story? Did you want more?
LOPEZ No no. It was the opposite. HBO kept saying, “Please pay attention, please.” Okay. Seven.' And I thought, no, six. That was me. I think it's a mistake to overstay your welcome. You have to stop while you're winning. Every story uses the space it needs. The goal was six and we finished at six.