The following episode contains references to suicide. If you or someone you know is in need of help, please contact the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988. Listener discretion is advised. You know, it's the most fucked up Christmas special, I I think ever made in the history of television. All of them have to stop running away from the things that they've been running away from the entire series.

Julia is precious. Julia is that rock holding Navarro together. Once she loses Julia, she loses absolutely everything.

Would we say that the dead never leaves us? That is a true statement. They might leave us physically, but they will never leave us spiritually..

I'm Alice Khannik Glen, an Inubaq writer, podcaster, and activist from Wutkervik, Alaska, and this is the True Detective Night Country podcast. Sometimes the difference between the truth and what we create in our minds, the spiritual and the tangible, can be difficult to separate. Throughout, True Detective: Night Country, we're faced with unexplained mysteries, wondering if there may be a deeper meaning behind what we see. As a reminder, If you haven't watched part four of the series, I recommend doing so before listening to this podcast as we will be discussing some spoilers. This week, we're brought back into Night Country on Christmas Eve with strange occurrences in the air. Danvers sees Julia walking and undressing into the cold. It becomes clear she's having a crisis, and Danvers tries to help.

Hey, Julia. It's Liz Danvers. I work with your sister. I'm just going to come towards you, okay?

Yeah, we need to get you inside.

The mine continues to be a source of tension, not only with the locals, but also amongst law enforcement. Why are you here?

You have protests around the mine.

You had a shooting that ended in a fight in the hospital.

You got six dead bodies in the local ice rink and a still missing person of interest. You need to get this shit under control.

Navarro, seeking to help her sister, takes Julia to a Native-run mental health facility. Upon being admitted, Julia witnesses a haunting figure of her dead mother and escapes. Meanwhile, Navarro visits Rose at her cabin in need of guidance and later gets an unexpected call from the mental health facility. Julia has tragically taken her own life.

Hello.

Evangeline Navarro. This is Lieutenant James Ingram, the Alaska Coast Guard. I'm afraid to have some bad news.

You just let people fucking die.

What the fuck? You just fucking get me.

This is As Navarro spirals, Danvers struggles to put the pieces together about the murder of Annie K. Obsessing over the newfound video, she starts drinking. She gets into her vehicle and crashes into a snowbank, coming face to face with a one-eye polar bear. It's as if fate is reminding her of her past. These elements of darkness, spirituality, and death leave us wondering how our detectives will move forward.

Episode 4 is the Dark Nights of the Soul so the all is lost. Movies have that moment, and it's necessary in the journey of the hero to go through absolute hopelessness to come on the other side. It will tilt a little bit more heavily towards the spiritual and the horror side of the series.

Part 4 of Night Country, while set on Christmas Eve, is not very merry. I asked showrunner Iso Lopez to share more about her choices in writing this episode and its relevance to the larger narrative.

You know, it's the most fucked up Christmas special, I think, ever made in the history of television. This is, I think, where the characters go through the worst possible Christmas Eve ever. And all of them have to come to terms with stop running away from the things that they've been running away from the entire series. They're faced with the demons they carry, and they break in pieces when they're faced with them. In a way, this show is a little bit like that first season in the sense that you can read it as an ink blood test that you can decide if you believe in in a spiritual world. So it's a decision for you in the end if you go in one direction or the other.

As we witnessed this week, Danvers begins to lose control. In talking with Issa and Jody Foster, they each shared more about what they feel is happening to her.

All the things that she has to start to escape her. Leah simply walks away. She's not going to dance the dance anymore. Let's pretend that everything is going to be fine. The case stops against the wall. There's nothing else she can do. There's nothing to entertain herself in the deadly silence of that home of hers. Then in the silence, she starts hearing a voice that is calling her, and she can't take it.

I think almost everybody I know has conflicted feelings around holidays. We almost never live up to some childhood ideal that we had of what the holidays are supposed to be, where you have the family together and the parents getting along with their kids, and there's a turkey in the oven and all that stuff that we're fed by our culture, by TV and media. I think Danvers feels a little bit like a failed parent. She has lost two people, so she's lost her ex and her son. It's just always a rough time. So Danvers ties a few on while she's doing her research, gets a little drunk, and makes a bunch of mistakes.

She starts to numb herself by drinking which is a thing that she doesn't do after the tragedy she went through before. And once she's numb enough, she starts going through the case again. She can't help it. She's trying to find anything to hold on to it. And she finally finds so some little strands to follow, but she can do it herself because she's drunk at this point. So against everything that she stands for, she jumps on a car and drives, which is the very thing that she detests the most. And of course, she's going to end up in an accident, as she know she would. This is a dead wish that she's following. But what she finds is this one-eye polar bear which is a callback to the little polar bear that belonged to Holden.

By this point, it's clear that between our two detectives, Liz Danvers is more skeptical about this supernatural. But when presented with circumstances she can't rationalize, she's forced to confront her spirituality head-on.

This is the episode where she's doing everything she can to silence it, and it still comes knocking. It's still presents itself in the form of the bear. You can take a little plush toy and throw it away. It doesn't mean that the spirit world is not going to come looking for you and stand in front of your headlights and making you stop and look at it. It's a connection between the two characters and in a way, the soul of the place. D'ambres has this polar bear that has only one eye that belonged to her child. And they had this game where she covers one eye of the child and says, I see you. It is also a reference to the fact that we see only part of what is around. It's a little bit of a metaphor, if you will. You know, is to remember me. I see you. I see you. Dabris has a dream of her child saying she's awake, which we don't know if it's a dream or not a dream. She doesn't want to see. And she wakes up, puts her feet down, and finds the toy which shouldn't be there at all.

So the next day when she faces Navarro, who constantly reminds her that there is more to this world, she puts so much energy in shutting it down, throws a bear away and says, There is no one but us.

Both detectives are grappling with their demons, but Navarro's wounds are raw and bleeding. Speaking with Kaylee Reece and Issa, they revealed the turmoil churning within Navarro this week. Much of it focused on Navarro's sister Julia.

Julia is precious, and I mean everything to Navarro. She's the reason why she's even trying to be in the regular job and have a regular, normal, supportive type of role in Julia's life and be in law enforcement. Julia is the only thing holding Navarro together, to be honest with you. That's her reason to maybe not beat every officer up, maybe hold herself together in times where she to kill Danvers or whoever it may be in the line. Julia is that rock holding Navarro together. Once she loses Julia, she loses absolutely everything.

Well, Julia is exhausted. It was a whole conversation to be very careful, not confusing the call of the supernatural with mental illness. Rose explains it very clearly in episode 2.

Don't confuse to use the spirit world with mental health issues. Sounds to me like she needs treatment.

What Julia is suffering is mental illness, and she walks away from the possibility of treatment and from the possibility of medication, which is a certain hope, but it's a tough walk to walk, and she succumbs to it. Julia's death suddenly turns into now she's the that is hearing the voices. She's terrified because beyond mental illness, Navarro is confusing those forces. Navarro does have a connection with the supernatural world. Navarro does hear the call. But because of what just happened to Julia, who in a way now has joined the other side and is also calling, Navarro is convinced that this is the way that she will die, that if she follows that call, she's going to end up dead, and she's really, really terrified. But there's many discoveries coming her way about the call and how to respond to it.

Navarro's world begins to crumble, setting off a series of events with major consequences. She's filled with rage over Julia, over Annie, over her own mother, and attacks three men drinking outside the hospital. One of them is Ace, the domestic abuser from part one. Outnumbered, Navarro takes blow after blow from the men.

Navarro just wants to feel pain because she just knows that Julia has been feeling pain her entire life. It's not a physical pain. So the best thing that Navarro could do was go out and start a fight because she was angry. That's where you see for the first time, Navarro really questioning her position. What am I doing here? This is way beyond me putting on this uniform.

I've throughout my life, when you're in the sudden shock of loss, the first reaction that I've seen in myself and I've seen in people close to me is a feeling that you can't feel anything, that you should be going through horrendous agony and you feel numb. I think that the only way she translates it is first into the aggression of trying to blame someone and creating a fight. She can't blame anyone. There was so many attempts to help Julia that the decision comes to her like illumination, and what she needs is to be hurt herself. She feels so guilty, and she needs to feel pain. She jumps into this crusade against a man that she has now blamed for all the suffering of women and a domestic, violent man. She goes to kick his ass knowing that not alone and that she's going to end up hurt. And that's what she's looking for, to get hurt and feel that pain. It's truly, again, a dead wish. Both Navarro and D'Ambers are going through near-death experiences in this episode.

The themes of darkness, death, and spirituality are woven throughout the series, but here in part four, they become the focal point. I was curious and asked Issa where these themes originated for her.

Well, it's part of my Mexican identity. I come from a culture that drinks, reads, moves, speaks, sings in mysticism, and it's in everything we do and think. The older I get, the more I give in into my true nature. Loss is definitely something that all of us can either relate to, or at least we can relate to the fear of going through it. I lost my mother when I was very young. I was eight years old. It does, in a way, paint your relationship with the world and how you interact with other people and the stories you tell yourself. Those stories that you tell yourself eventually become the stories that you tell the world. My father was an atheist and my mother was a Catholic. When we grew up, we sat down and they said, Listen, you guys can choose whatever you want. And it depended on who was nice to me if I believed in God. If my mom was nice, there was a God. If she was not, it was like, Okay, God doesn't exist. If my dad was nice, it was only us in the world. Except when there's an earthquake, except when there's something that seems to have no explanation.

So Danvers and Navarro, Mom and Dad, God and the Absence of God. Leave in me. And I think that They live in all of us. We have moments of faith when we're believers. At times, we lose our faith. When we are non-believers, at times, we're tended to pray and to believe. I think that the fluctuation of these two are at the center of who we are. Finding a line that can walk both at the end of the series is part of the mission.

Part 4 ends in loss and defeat for our main detectives. It feels like rock bottom. And I asked Isha to share why this episode concludes on such a down note.

I don't know if it's loss and defeat. I think it's doom, which is different. It does seem that they're going deeper into this spiral, into the abyss. There's a reason that spirals are a warning. Interestingly, when you fall down a spiral, you're also falling down to the center. Sometimes, falling all the way down to the center is what you need to find yourself. So, yes, there is a lot of catastrophe happening here, but it's the path to discovery.

The intense darkness and sense of oppression that grips you while watching the series isn't a mere coincidence. Patience. It's meticulously crafted. And beyond the story, it's communicated through cinematography and sound design. Consider the challenge that takes. Almost this entire season is enshrouded in snow and night. It takes exceptional skill and precision to pull off.

I thought what was really interesting about the entire set up was you had the two cops and you had the case, but you also had these beautiful themes of the supernatural. And also I thought an overarching theme of disconnect, like a disconnect that people suffer from nature. I thought that those two themes resonated very strongly with me, and I think they're very contemporary.

This is Florian Hoffmeister, the cinematographer for True Detective: Night Country. He shared how darkness played a powerful role in how he shot the series.

We all enjoy suspense stories and mystery stories that take place in the dark, and darkness as a part the visual language of a series or a film is something that's very common and people are very used to it. But I thought, if you live in the dark most of the hour of the day, you will treat light differently. But I wanted to very consciously step away from a look that would make everything look moody because it's mysterious. I was interested in how does lighting and the approach to lighting change when you live in the dark. I felt that the brightness should be really bright, like bright lights. They should be like guitars. They should scream, and the darkness should be really dark. Then we shot an extensive set of tests because it wanted to have this slightly rough feeling, like what I said, that the highlights had to go really bright in the darks, like really black. I wanted to actually save it and ingrain it into the digital files. So it became the real nature of the show.

Florian conveyed the planning that went into each scene. It was detailed. It had to be carefully thought out so that it communicated the right tone to the viewer.

A film that has always very much inspired me in the way that it photographed and dealt with crime is Sicario. There's a certain detail attached precision to the cinematography, especially when it comes to the procedural elements, because every crime story obviously needs the odd scene in the office where people discuss whatever findings. That tends to be something that the plot needs, but then it's not necessarily visually very rewarding. I think the film like Sicario, what they chose was a slightly detached feeling that conveys this feeling of isolation. I think that's something that I took with me. If people are resonating with those themes of loss and disconnection, isolation, but also the beauty of the nature that's and the beauty also in the relationship that surround us, I think that'd be lovely.

Florian's vision for Ennis on the screen was brilliantly complimented by the sound designer of Night Country, Martin Hernández. His challenge, he had to ask himself, how should Ennis sound when there is little to no light, the temperatures are sub-zero, and a supernatural pulse underlies everything? An immense task, but for Martin, it was a return to familiar terrain.

I worked before with Issa. In a couple of projects down here in Mexico. One of them, which is, Tigres are not afraid, a psychological thriller. It's funny because there is a very subjective approach to the characters and to the story and the environment where the characters are developing their everyday living. How do we express that? When you are isolated in a community as this one, where where months of the year is night. Funny things happen with the mind. It's a different world. We have to express that, and it's involving the supernatural events that also occur on the story. There is a fine line between what is really happening and what is supernatural as we understand, and that is very well expressed in the script and the story. We sound Otherwise, we had to play that character. Why we are here is to translate into the sound world what the director is hearing and what the director wants to express. So this is the non-scripted lines that are happening alongside the dialog and the conversations and the scenes. A feeling, a thought, a fear can be expressed with And this fear or these feelings can be expressed alongside or with the sounds of nature because the nature is very much present, and that nature, of course, is a snowstorm or heavy wind.

But that doesn't have a sound on its own. So the wind in the houses, the wind on the windowpains, the wind on the doors, the wind on the cars. So all these things that are, as we all know, present in the everyday life, all of a sudden have a different weight and proportion because the wind is very different, because the isolation is very peculiar, and because the proportion of this is so much bigger than what we perceive in a regular day.

In the world of Ennis, more and more we've seen the dead interact with the living, like the polar bear hunting Danvers and Navarro's vision. While Eisa drew inspiration from her own heritage to build this fictional storyline, ideas of spirituality and the supernatural also exist in real Alaska native culture.

Would we say that the dead never leaves us? That is a true statement. They might leave us physically, but they will never leave us spiritually.

This is Robin Munguyuk, an Alaska Native storyteller from Woodkervik. Like many of the native of characters portrayed in Night Country, Robin has spent his life learning and preserving Inubuk traditions.

These summans that we used to have were very strong in their knowledge and power. They used to have this word called tunal, Tunarak. Tunarak, in our English language today, means the devil. But back in the day of the shaman, it meant the helping spirit. When somebody passed away or there was a death in a dwelling place, A shaman would come in there and practice his seance. He would come in there and say his prayer, hoping to attach himself with that spirit, hoping to help that spirit.

Connection with the supernatural is part of our spiritual tradition.

We believe that some of our leaders still have access to the spirit world through songs and ceremonies.

The Inupiat people live by superstition. They live taboo. You had to be careful how you live because if you stepped on something in the wrong way or if you did something not in the right way, your balanced life would not fashion you in the way you wanted it to go.

In one sense, superstitions oftentimes guide how we live and hunt. We give freshly caught seals a drink of fresh water so that the seal spirit knows we took care of body in death. We cut the skull from the spine to set his spirit free so that he or another seal will return to give its body to us again. We pass these beliefs on through the stories we tell.

I believe that storytelling and spirituality are real, strongly connected with one another because spirituality is something that you believe in, and it is something that you're going to always hold close to your mind, your body, and your soul. You cannot live in this isolated livelihood without having spirituality. Knowledge is really easily remembered through song and dance. I believe that there is a great connection with spirituality and storytelling.

These stories teach moral lessons like how we are to interact with nature and the world around us.

Darkwith and legends are true to some extent because they are added with the truth to these legends and folklore. They got creatures out there that are called Mithayeps, or scary beings that will snatch you from your place if you go a little bit too far from your home and stuff like that. There are stories of giants. There are stories of prominent people who did prominent things. There are stories of people who were in tragedy. Those are so many different stories, and they're all put in tomorrow, and they're all put into context to where it teaches you a lesson. Oh, there's going to be lots of opinions and controversial things about our stories, about myth and legend. There was a young lady, and she from a land of Nunaar. Nunaar was from a land of Nunair. Nunair was a place-Nulayuk is also known as Sedna the Sea Goddess.

Her tale is a dark tragedy. Sedna was drowned and murdered by her own father when she refused to marry a man from the village. Her father dumped her overboard a kayak, and when she tried to get back into the boat, he cut her fingers off. She sank to the bottom of the sea, and it said her fingers transformed into seals, whales, and walraces. Traditionally, Shama humans were expected to get in Sedna's good graces and placate her by sending a spirit to the bottom of the sea to brush her hair. Once this was done, the animals she controlled were able to be harvested successfully by hunters. The story of Sedna still influences our culture today. Many Inupar women have tattoos of lines on their fingers to honor Sedna. While the story is open for interpretation, I believe it shows that humans are not in control of nature and that you should always be respectful and a little bit fearful of things outside of your control. I think it also represents the power and independence of Inuback women who should be treated with honor and respect. Otherwise, ill will may darken their spirit when they die. While some of these stories may seem shocking, Robin mentioned how preserving these traditions can ultimately bring connection and hope.

With these stories, I really want to try to bring back the history of our people because there are stories all over the world that pertain the history of their cultures. It seems like our culture is one of the most denied cultures in the world. So many of them are lost. I'm just trying to show that we We had stories from a long time ago that are no longer being told by a lot of people anymore. One of the best ways to keep these stories rolling through our history is to keep them recorded, is to keep telling them however we can, whether we publish them on books, whether we write them down on paper, whether we tell them orally like we've always have been. We need to bring hope back into the world. I think storytelling is a spirituality that brings hope to the world.

In night country, there's an emphasis on darkness and the afterlife. However, these topics can be difficult for many Alaska natives to discuss. When Westerners moved into our lands, evangelizing our people with their religious beliefs, our connection to nature and many of our practices were seen as taboo and shameful. It caused many Indigenous people to feel fearful about discussing our connection to death and the spirit world. But Robin knows that these teachings are ultimately tied to who we are.

It's in our DNA. As long as we remain to be in your pi'ak, we're going to always have in your pi'ak values. And I really believe that's how we remain a strong people, is to have your traditional values intact with your heart, with your mind, with your body and your soul.

These stories, even if dark, are a powerful tool that connect us to the things that we believe in, the things we should stand up fight to preserve and protect. This same idea has been a focus for Issah all along.

There is a soul agenda, and mine is to talk about these themes. My soul agenda is storytelling. That's the vehicle, the mission, the end, the beginning, the it all. Now, the stories have to do with the things I believe in or the things that I still haven't figured out. Is there a God? Is no God? Do we have control of our actions? Should we fight for the things that are absolutely broken, perhaps beyond repair, but should we still fight them? All those things and putting them in an entertaining way, in a way that keeps you going back to finish the story and it stays with you after it's done.

My Aqa, or grandmother, was an Inupak language teacher and storyteller. When I was a child, she told me stories about the northern lights, the ten-legged pola bear, and the Inyukuns, or little people. Even if they were scary, each story held different life lessons. For instance, one time when I was little, I was crying to go home to my parents, and I complained that I'd walk home by myself if she wouldn't take me. She sat me down and told me that if I walked home by myself, the little people would grab me and take me away. In'yupak people should never travel alone, especially young children. And there are supernatural beings that enforce these rules. You can always find true meaning in Inubeck stories.

As Danvers and Navarro reach this week's episode's end, they themselves almost seem trapped in one of those old hunting tales. Standing over a vast icy expanse, they face a colossal dredge frozen in the ocean waters.

Raymond Clarke.

Hands over your head.

Inside, they're on Clarke's trail. While While Danvers finds a man named Otis donning Clarke's jacket, Navarro is entranced. She stumbles upon a fully decorated Christmas tree and is visited by a grim vision of Julia. Separated, Danvers frantically seeks Navarro, only to discover her by the tree. As Navarro turns her head, a trickle of blood runs down her ear. Just like Julia, just like the Solal men. Over it all, Otis mutters.

We're all in the night country now.

Next time on the official True Detective Night Country podcast, we start to peel back the curtain of what's really happening in Ennis.

This deep dive that they took in to their personal lives has to be brutally interrupted with the big, big eruption of the real world. And the tension that will pull our two main characters apart will all came in play in episode five.

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.