What you should be looking out for is the forces keeping Navarro and Danvers apart and the forces dragging them together. Because episode 2 is about the clash between those two.

Liz Danvers is awful. I think the most challenging part was navigating her mean-spirited curmudgeonly quality, her awfulness, as we call it, but seeing the real reasons underneath.

Navarro is very smart, very calculated. She likes to be alone. I I have to call her a badass with a big heart. She is such an onion that you can't peel layers back. So I wanted to know who this character was.

. I'm Alice Kanik Glenn, an Inyebach writer, podcaster, and activist from Utkervik, Alaska. And this is the True Detective Night Country podcast. Every series needs to have the right people in the right role to make the narratives come to life. This is especially true for this season's Detectives Liz Danvers and Evangeline Navarro. As a reminder, if you haven't watched part two of this series, I recommend doing so before listening to this podcast as we will be discussing some spoilers. In this episode, we'll hear from showrunner Issa Lopez, our true detectives Jody Foster and Kaylee Reece, and real-life Alaska State Trooper, Anne Sears, who is a source of inspiration for this series. As we dive back into the world of Ennis, the missing Salal station employees have been discovered, and Detective Danvers is working to untangle the many mysteries about the case, including why the men's clothing is found folded near where their bodies were discovered.

Is it burnt cornea?

Let me see.

Yeah, like the ice burns.

Why are they naked?

It doesn't make any sense.

As the bodies of the Salal station men are brought to an ice rink to thaw, authorities begin to piece together some of the clues. All of the men have blood trickling from their ear. They're all positioned as if they were running from something. One of the men has a strange mark on his head, the same mark that was tattooed on Annie Kautak's back. As the story lines unfold, Detective Danvers and Navarro are now faced with the dilemma as to how these cases will be investigated. The two detectives clearly have a lot of history together, which is what we are just beginning to unravel. But the questions remain, who exactly are Danvers and Navarro? What complexities does each character hold? And how have the Arctic and Alaska natives of Ennis shaped and molded the people they have become?

I think that the first season was a master class in male psychology and male behavior, and it was really well done. I care for those men, even with all their failures.

I'm speaking with Issa Lopez, the showrunner of True Detective Night Country.

When I knew that I was going to have all these male scientists disappearing and vanishing into thin air in the environment of these towns, I felt that there was a direct invitation to tell a female story that was related to that.

As we talk, she shares more about how she brought the characters Liz Danvers and Evangeline Navarro to life.

Someone told me a long time ago that writers cannot write anyone that they don't carry. So I definitely carry these two women. I am profoundly skeptic and cynical and of an asshole The more that I turned Danvers into an asshole, the more that my friends around me were saying, She sounds a lot like you, which is terrible because she is a horrible human being.

Hey, no photos. Delete that right now. Sorry. Come on, Liz. They're just blowing off steam. Shut up, Hank.

All right, everyone.

But I am definitely Navarro, and this is why I kept that little Latina flavoring her and her name and the Dominican father. I do not believe in anything I cannot see, but I also can't believe that we see everything that there is. So I'm both women, and both women are constantly arguing and fighting each other and really, really liking each other, but driving each other insane. And this is what you get in the series.

At this point in the season, we don't yet know the exact reason why Danvers and Navarro have a contentious relationship, but Issa provides a hint to the answer.

What you should be looking out for is the forces keeping Navarro and Danvers apart and the forces dragging them together because episode 2 is about the clash between those two.

Writing and casting the characters in a series like True Detective: Night Country takes a lot of thought. Issa recalled that process.

I allowed the characters to speak to me. Upon rewatching True Detective, the biggest influence that I could see was David Fitcher's Seven, which is a movie I loved. I went back and I watched Seven. And then that got me thinking of the Silence of the Lambs, because there is no seven without the Silence of the Lambs. I am writing this under the influence of the first true detective, and that was made under the influence of seven, and seven was made under the influence of the Silence of the Lambs. So I thought, why not close the circle and go back to the origin and bring Clarice? So Jody was my very first choice I couldn't believe that she was going to say yes. She's very picky. But what the hell? Why not to try? And she said yes. And oh, God, what a fortunate decision because she is definitely the best actor of her generation. She's incredible. And the things she can do are incredible. And even knowing what her range is, I was not ready for what she brought to the series. And on the other hand, Navarro was such an opportunity because she's a badass that has an enormous heart and she truly cares.

But the more I understood about Alaska and the task ahead and what my detectives have to achieve, the more I understood that Navarro needed to be native and Alaskan, and that I was going to be doing a disservice to the story and to what I was going to try to say if I was imposing my nature on the environment and the town and the story. I found Kaylee who embodies the very awkward belonging but not belonging of Navarro. The I am from here, but I don't feel at home anywhere else that Navarro needed. It was such an interesting duo to have. The chemistry is incredible. I just love what they do together.

The depth that Jody Foster and Kaylee Reece bring to the screen makes the series so compelling. As Issa hinted, having Jody step into the world of Ennis didn't seem like it would ever happen, but it did. I actually had a chance to speak with Jody and learned what led her to take on the role.

There was an extraordinary script. It found its way to my desk. Of course, I was a huge fan of True Detective, especially season one. The second I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. Then I thought, Oh, who's this director going to be? I got to meet up with Issa Lopez. We hit it off, had this long conversation, couldn't stop talking to each other. Then that started the collaboration. Once you have a really great text, I feel like everybody gets inspired and you get the best work out of everybody. I love this show. I think it's extraordinary work, and I'm just so grateful that I got to be a part of it. I feel very lucky. I feel like I just happened into this magnificent experience. Issa Lopez, extraordinary director, I think probably my favorite director I've ever worked with. This is a really brave and beautiful piece, but it's also scary and twisted and really explores the dark part of the psyche of these characters, much in the vein of True Detective. I love it that she threw it on its ear. Instead of it being the steamy Louisiana Bayou with two men, it's the freezing cold, dark night with two women.

There's something wonderful and fitting that those are the bookends of True Detective up until now.

Along with feeling that this season offered something new, Jody provided insight into what specifically drew her to the character of Liz Danvers.

The character wasn't quite there for me on the page when I first read the script. I was really more interested in the script itself and in the ideas behind it, the depth of the thoughts and philosophies. I love that we were going back to the eariness and almost an unexplained spirituality to it. I loved that the native voices were centered and that it really was their story. I guess I tend to veer towards strong women. I find them more interesting. I do pick people that are on a solitary path that have a difficulty connecting, and that have inner turmoil. I don't know why I keep moving for that one, but I feel like that also works really well with the True Detective franchise. I did go about saying, I just don't feel like Liz Danvers is necessarily me, and it wasn't quite right for me. I felt like we needed to reverse engineer her and make sure that that she was the character that was supporting Kaylee's character. The native voice, Kaylee Reece, she plays trooper of Angeline Navarro, who's torn between two worlds, mixed-race person, half Dominican, half Inupik. I, torn between the past and the present and a intuition and a spirituality and a very concreteness.

I wanted to figure out a character that could support that and could make sure that that voice was central and make sure that I was helping to tell her story. Liz Danvers is awful. She makes a bunch of jokes that aren't funny. She's unconscious, she's unaware, she's completely distracted from her own emotions, from her own pain. What we can see as laziness is actually a fear of getting to the source of things because it will bring out stuff in her that she's not really willing to deal with. I think the most challenging part was navigating creating her sassiness, her mean-spirited curmudgeonly quality, her awfulness, as we call it, but seeing the real reasons underneath, allowing the audience to experience both things, to be annoyed by her and to hate her because she's not nice, but also see why that happens.

Jody has had a lifetime of experience behind the camera, but I was curious what it was like for her to work with a newcomer like Kaylee Rees. When I ask, Jody's face lights up.

I love Kaylee Rees. She is a badass in the series. I can't think of anybody else who could have played this role. She really expanded her, enriched her. It's interesting because she's somebody who can be quiet and serene and has a very sensitive, vulnerable, intuitive side to her. And yet, I wouldn't want to walk down a dark alley and try to jump her because she take you out. She's tough. The shoot was not easy. It's just amazing how she was able to never complain. She can do anything, right? She's just good at anything that she does. She's a great student, very She's very disciplined and she's open. I think that's her best quality is that she's open to learning. I really love her and admire her, and she was just a great partner.

, what has always been. Ntumas, Cicunque, Wapa, Ntuk, Ntumas, Ntumas, Cherokee, Ntumas, Cape, Rhode Island, Ntai, Providence, Rhode Island. Hello. Greetings. My given name is Many Fathers Remaining Talents, also known as Kaylee Rees. I am a member of the Cicunque, Wapa, Ntuk tribe, with lineage as Cherokee and Ntumas tribes, as well as rich lineage from the Cape, Rhode Islands. I'm originally from Providence, Rhode Island, now residing in Philadelphia.

When talking with Kaylee, you can feel the energy she radiates. She may be newer to acting, but she hasn't allowed that to be a hindrance.

I'm a little bit of a newcomer in this industry, but I am a six-time world champion boxer in two weight divisions. What really drew me to this story and drew me to this character was just the way that Issa Lopez, she was so articulate in the way she created this story and had these two very prominent characters. Navarro's such an onion that you can't peel layers back. So I wanted to know who this character was. When she made the conscious decision to make her part Anupiac, and also having a place like Alaska that we don't get to see in such a remote place, which is so heavily populated with the Indigenous community, that was really something that was really intriguing.

As an Indigenous woman who has to carry confidence and drive, she sees a lot of herself in the character of Navarro.

Evangeline Navarro is somebody I can relate to a lot. Her father being a Dominican, hence the name Navarro, and her mother being from Alaska and being Anupiac. So She's a fierce, I like to call her a badass with a big heart. She's very intuitive. She's very connected to the spiritual side of herself, but she doesn't even understand why. She is definitely someone who is a physically powerful person. She's a huge protector. She's someone who definitely fights for justice and what's right. Being a law enforcement, especially a woman in a law enforcement and military, I knew that this woman is going to be somebody who is very physically sound and aware of her, the presence she has to carry, especially being in Alaska somewhere that's so remote. I just put in my mind that she had extensive combat training. She is resilient. She is not going to take no for an answer. She was very goal-oriented, and boxing is very goal-oriented. She has to stay present in order to react to things that are right in front of her. She has a little bit of a hair trigger, but she is very smart, very calculated. She'd rather work alone, but she works good with that one other person who is Liz Danvers.

The relationship between Danvers and Navarro is complicated, to say the least. I was curious what it was like for Kaylee working with Jody Foster and if it helped her own role of Navarro.

It's just my mind blown. I mean, I've grown up watching her movies, and there's actually a lot of movies that are in my top list that are hers. So to be able to tell this amazing story, but then to be partnered up with such a legend, and then to meet her, and she's such a kind, intelligent, curious, funny, and just very open to collaboration. It was uncharded territory for me, but it was such a pleasure. I mean, she made me feel really comfortable and had that supportive energy to be able to sit here and What are you bringing to the table? And how you see Danvers as well? How do you see Navarro? And we all just were really collaborative.

As Eisa alluded to earlier, there are forces pushing Danvers and Navarro together and pulling them apart. One of those forces is Annie K. As Annie's cold case surges to the forefront, Navarro becomes determined to solve it and link it to the Solal station case.

Maybe leave this one for someone else, Missy. It's tied to Annie's case, Rose. Oh. And you're screwed.

I asked Kaylee why she believes Navarro is compelled to solve Annie Kay's case.

She knows knows things, and she doesn't even know why she knows things because she's very intuitive. So she knows that there's something bigger than what everybody thinks happened. Like, Oh, she just got lost. She knows that that's not the case. She doesn't know how, but she knows it's eating at her. It reminds her of the unsolved case of her mother. Her mother got killed, and she doesn't know what happened to her mother, and that's something that's embedded in her that has stuck with her. And that's the very reason why she tries to protect Julia, her younger sister, so much. But Navarro is someone who's trying to figure out what she doesn't know.

If you didn't have anything, she wouldn't want you, so you have it all.

Yeah, I mean, I know everything about Annie, every single detail. Somehow, I had no idea about the Clark thing. I mean, he kept it a secret.

Why?

That's not the right question. What? That's what Danvers would say.

In this episode, Rose reveals to Navarro more detail about the spiral symbol.

I've seen that before. Years ago. What is it?

It's old, Missy. Older than Ennis. It's older than the eyes, probably.

Navarro has seen the symbol before tattooed on Annie Kay's back. It's a strong connection that these two cases are linked, and it's also a callback to a previous True Detective season.

The spiral, what it stands as a symbol of Jarkosa, which is the liminal space, the beyond, in a way, the higher plane. Can I go deeper into that idea where a reality and the wider world not connect the beyond, a mystic place where the veil between this world and the next is thinner.

Navarro brings this clue to Danvers as proof the cases are connected, hoping the two may be able to work the case together.

This tattoo was on Annie's body.

So?

It was on the forehead of one of your guys.

Maybe. So what?

So what? It's the same case. We can work together and figure out Annie.

No. I'm not working with you again, ever.

While the future of Danvers and Navarro is uncertain, the mystery of Annie Kay's case weighs heavily on Navarro. She realizes how important it is to bring closure to the native community in Ennis. Kaylee was tasked with embodying Alaska Native heritage on screen. As an Indigenous woman herself, it was an opportunity that she felt she couldn't pass up.

When Issa made conscious decision to make one of the detectives part of the community in Upiak, I was really happy to see that. It's part of the world that we don't get to see. So it was really special that she decided to do that. I'm really proud that you were able to see Indigenous stories, but it's not an alcoholic, a drug addict, or an abused woman. It's an honor to be able to be one of the many faces we have in the Indigenous community in this industry, because I mean, I didn't grow up seeing my face. I just seen it in my community and using that platform to just speak for those who can't speak, be a voice for the voiceless, fight for those who can't fight, dance for those who can't dance, sing for those who can't sing. There's so much Indigenous talent in the writers room, behind the camera, in front of the camera, producing. Every little aspect of this industry is just filled with so much talent. And I'm proud to see Alaska and Anupiak people and Anupiak people on screen. What a natural story storytellers. We're true to this thing. So it's just how we've preserved culture, language, heritage, and how we've healed, too.

Storytelling is healing, and representation matters so much. So I'm just elated that I get to be part of this.

While Danvers and Navarro were characters spun in the mind of Issa Lopez, they were not created in a vacuum. The tensions that Issa has in her own life had to work their way into the lives of two very different detectives living in frigid Alaska. To bring these characters to life, Issa was influenced by the real-life Alaskan troopers who have served the communities of the Arctic.

I watched hours of Alaska Troopers. There's a particular woman, Sears, who is native and she's a badass, but she's also incredibly... She's beautiful. She's neither of these two women because she's too good to be these two women. She's incredible. But she taught me a lot about the challenges that you face in these communities.

In every sense, Anne is a living legend. She served as an Alaska state trooper for over 20 years, and her heritage as an Alaska native inspired her to pursue law enforcement.

I was born and raised in Alaska. I was born in Nome, Alaska. I wasn't one of those kids that grew up saying I was going to be a police officer, a firefighter, or anything like that. I was about 21. It just came to me that I wanted to do something for my people. I started out as a juvenile police officer I did that for about a year and a half and then went to the state troopers. It just all began with a very nebulous idea that I wanted to do something to help my people.

As we talk, Anne reflects on the unbelievable experience experiences she had over her career. It's been rewarding, but it's also had its fair share of challenges.

It's not an easy task to police in rural Alaska. I mean, you have to be prepared to You got to go out in the middle of the night. You got to be prepared to jump in a plane. You got to be prepared to do everything. I mean, you are doing it all. You are collecting evidence. You are interviewing victims, suspects, witnesses. You're taking all that evidence back with you. I mean, if people really want to know what it's like to police in Alaska, you have to show those things. I mean, it's not cut and dry, and every day is different. Every case is different. There were definite benefits to being a female trooper. I think women as a whole communicate differently than men do. To bring that into a law enforcement capacity, whether I was dealing with a domestic violence victim or domestic violence perpetrator, a sexual assault victim or a sexual assault perpetrator, I could use the fact that I was a woman to my advantage. I think women in law enforcement just bring a different dynamic to the work. Especially if I was dealing with a perpetrator, they looked at me different. I mean, sometimes all they see is a uniform, and I get that.

They don't care if I'm native woman, male. But I felt like sometimes that when they saw me, they also saw maybe their own sister or cousin or aunt. You have to understand, too, that with communities this small, that the guy that you're arresting this week for whatever crime, he could be your victim next week because he's been assaulted or something stolen from him or whatever. I mean, you have to be able to talk to people and get them to talk to you. I think being a woman and being native helped tremendously.

Anne used her perspectives as a woman and an Alaska native to her advantage. Through common sense and genuinely caring for people, she served her community no matter what was thrown at her. Despite being the first Indigenous woman to ever join the force, she really recognize the trailblazer she had become.

I have to be honest, I didn't realize it. I knew there was a number of native men. In fact, there was a lot of Alaska native men, male troopers that were from the same area as I was from Nome, it became a responsibility on me. There have been females in law enforcement that have faced barriers. If I had any barriers, I guess I was one of those people that was just like, I'm just going to plow right through it and keep doing what I'm doing and not let it slow me down or keep me down or anything. I just kept on trucking.

Anne's drive and determination brought her through years of difficult work. Being under-resourced as a department meant that each officer had to be equipped to handle a lot of different crimes. Many times this meant they also had to rely on the communities they served and experienced and spoke about.

I was mostly in rural Alaska. When you are out in a rural hub like that, you do everything. You don't have an investigator that you can call and say, Hey, I got a sexual I got a sexual assault. I got a sexual abuse case. I got an attempted whatever. You have to do it. That was my mandate. I was trained to do forensic interviews, but we also had other interviewers. If a kiddo didn't want to talk to me because I'm in uniform and I'm scaring them. They could have somebody who wasn't in uniform do an interview. When I would go to the village, city council, tribal council, folks with the clinics, if I hadn't had their help finding somebody, tracking down a victim, tracking down a suspect, or just telling me what had happened, there's a lot of cases that I would not have been able to do without those folks helping. I would be remiss if I don't mention all the folks in the village that have helped me do my job.

Anne retired in 2021 and came back to the force in 2022 as Alaska's investigator for missing and murdered Indigenous people. However, like it does for Danvers and Navarro, Anne says the position carried a heavy weight.

I will say, though, five months into that, I was not sleeping again, and I was churning cases, and I knew that I needed to I needed to lay it down. Somebody else needed to take it up because I was done. Twenty years already of no sleeping at night, I had to call it.

Despite all of the challenges, Anne has always focused her efforts in areas she knew she could have a positive impact. She always prioritized serving her community through advocacy and traveling to remote communities to raise awareness and provide resources.

When I went out to Katsubu, For my last four years, I actually hooked up with these great women, and the four of us went to all the villages around Cotsabou, and we did presentations on safe relationships, healthy relationships, what domestic violence is. I just felt like we were doing something really positive. I've always felt like knowledge is power for the kids. Give them information. I mean, it was a great job. I wouldn't have traded it for the world.

Growing up in Northern Alaska, I've observed that law enforcement is often underresourced. This is a reality that the Night Country team brought to the screen. There was no morgue to thaw the bodies of the scientists. Danvers doesn't have a team of forensic specialists helping with the case. It's up to her and Navarro to figure out how to solve this crime with no outside support. This is something I've seen in my own community. Many times, there's only one trooper assigned to an entire village or region bigger than most US states. It's not uncommon for these rural areas to be completely off the road system, making it more challenging to get a timely response when crimes are committed. Cooperation, Pamma is an Inuperk value and one that we hold dear because our people know that we have to band together in the Arctic. We rely on our neighbors and loved ones more than anyone else. I call it the Anti-Network because our aunties are often the eyes and ears of the community. In some ways, they are our community's detectives because nothing really ever gets past our aunties. They are arbitors of knowledge on personal and collective experience, past and current relationships, living history, and sometimes secrets.

While Danvers and Navarro pursue this case without leaning on Ennis's anti-network, as part two of the series closes, they do make a break in the case. They discover a final clue that concretely ties Solal and Annie Kay's cases together.

Here's the DNA results. That was Annie's tongue and Solal. Tissue has some unusual cellular damage, possibly from freezing.

Despite Danvers and Navarro finally agreeing to team up, there's still a question of what happened between them all those years ago. What created this bad blood?

It looks like your case is my case.

What are you doing here?

I don't even know Annie better than I can get from the files.

And now it matters because it's a bunch of white men.

You want in or you just want to go fuck yourself.

We'll soon start to understand that history and more next time on the official True Detective Night Country podcast.

Navarro hasn't been able to completely understand what's going on, but she feels for Annie, and she's angry at the system sustained by the mind and all that universe that destroyed her. So she's highly suspicious of the mind because of the impact of what they do and because of methods that she suspect they have to silence whomever stands up to them.

The True Detective Night Country podcast is produced by Tenderfoot Labs for HBO. You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts and stream True Detective Night Country exclusively on max. We'd love it if you could take a second to leave us a review on Apple podcasts and leave a comment to share your thoughts on the show.