HBO's True Detective is an essential piece of television, delivering writing, directing, cinematography, and performances t🤡hat are a cut above the rest. The show's signature style explores incredibly complicated crime mysteries with an astute pair of detectives determined to solve them, and the inaugural season set a very high bar for the series.

Over the years, we've seen lots of notabꦰle stars fill the shoes of these tireless detectives working disturbing cases all across America, like Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, Rachel McAdams and Colin Farrell, Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff, and now Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, but are their stories all connected?

Major True Detective plot spoilers ahead.

Are The True Detective Seasons Connected?

While True Detective is structured as an anthology series, it's becoming clearer that each individual season exists within the same universe, even though the stor🌠ylines are still perfectly standꦫalone.

With the exception of Season 2, the True Detective 🌠seasons appear to share ෴direct connections with each other.

Like American Horror Story, every new season introduces new detective pairings in new jurisdictions that work tirelessly to solve unrelated mysteries, though that doesn't appear to be the case with True Detective: Night Country.

Even with a completely new setting and cast, HBO's fourth season of True Detective threads its plot with the characters and case from the show's first season.

How Is Night Country Directly Linked To Season 1?

Night Country takes you to the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska, where the sun sets for the last time and is a good distance away from where the Louisiana murders ✱in Season 1 took place. However, it seꦿems like they're starting again.

This season's harrowing mystery revolves around an isolated Arctic research base called Tsalal from which all personnel have disappeared, only to be discovered miles away conjoined by the el🌜ements into on♓e giant 'corpsicle.'

While the first episode leads you to believe the mystery might take a more horror and supernatural turn tied to Alaska's indigenous culture, those theories soon get flipped on their heads, and there are echoes of the first season's otherwℱord🌸ly Yellow King.

That familiar spiral mark on the victims of the Tuttle Cult from Season 1 reappears on the victims of Tsalal station.

Even more compelling is the revelation that it's all connected to the Ennis cold case of Annie K., who also had ♍the spiral and was murdered and posed with the same M.O. as 1995 victim Dora Lange and 2012 victim ꧅Stephanie L. Kordish.

The quote at the beginning of Night Country ties back to a character from Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow (or 168澳𒅌洲幸运5开奖网:Hastur in Lovecraft's expanded Cthulhu Mythos), an ominous figure depicted by the 🔜Carcosa shrine that Errol Childress and the rest of the cult were sacrificing lives to.

It's also not a coincidence that Alaska is the location for Season 4 — it was mentioned a lot in Season 1 due to Matthew McConaughey's character Rust Cohle being originally from Alaska.

It's revealed that the old man who aided in finding the location of the scientist's bodies was, in fact, the ghost of Rust's father, Travis Cohle. He was suffering from leukemia before he ended his life on his own terms, and this tracks with what Rust told investigators in 1995 when he went undercover with the Iron Crusad🌃ers M.C.

The information about Travis was revealed by Rose Aguineau, who is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:overcome with visions of his ghost (like when he led her to the bodies). This is eerily parallel to Rust Cohle's visions from the first season, w🌃here he saw his dead daughter in a similar way.

While Rose and Rust's father were confirmed to have been in a relationship together, we know his biological mother met Travis in Galveston, Texas long before then and left him at the age of two.

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There are also similarities in app🧔earance between Matthew McConaughey's older 2012 Rus🎀t and Travis Cohle.

Another shocking twist in Episode 2 is that the research base is funded by Tuttle United, which confirms that Season 1's insidious Tuttle family is still very in♎fluential in the world and up to more pernicious deeds.

The Tuttles held great influence and power in Louisiana, setting up schools like the Light of the Way Academy and holding pos🦩itions in US politics and government.

The inside of Raymond Clark's trailer looks like something straight out of Errol Childress' living room in the first season, filled with strange scribblings, the Carcosa spiral, and similar twig do🦋lls hanging from everywhere (not to mention the giant one in the bed).

Rust also comes back in other subtle ways in the episodes through Easter eggs and some clever writing on the part of Issa López and Nic Pizzolatto. Jodie Foster's character, Liz Danvers, brings up the importance of asking the right questions to her subordinate, which is exactly what Rust tells the investigators interviewing him at the end of t🦂he 🧜first episode.

You also see the research scientists having Rust Cohle's preferred beer brand, Lone Star, at their outpost, and it seem𓆉s to be just as popular in Alaska as it is in Texas.

McConaughey remains an executive producer for 💫the fourth seas♋on, so maybe an appearance from Rust shown continuing to follow the trail of the cult to his hometown is likely. The Lone Star Beers are waiting for him.

What Is The Main Connection In Season 3?

Season 3 of True Detective starts off with a similar atmosphere, centering on a child kidnapping and murder case tied to weird straw dolls and an enigmatic influential Ozark family known as the Hoyts, who remind you a lot of the Tuttles.

While Season 3's connection isn't as intricate as it is in Night Country, it confirms that Marty and Rust's case with the Louisiana cult exists in the same universe and is actually brough𓆏t up in connection with the Purcell children's kidnapping.

During the present-day section, Mahershala Ali's older, dementia-plagued Detective Wayne Hayes is giving an interview in which he's presented with an article detailing Rust and Marty's 2012 apprehension of Tuttle-associated killer Errol Childress.

The woman conducting the interview is a true crime television journalist, and she believes the two cases might be related, and goes on to reveal a slide displaying a sequence of blue spiral logos that pedophiles are known to use.

One of those spiral shapes is very close to the tattoo seen on the bodies of the victims involved with the Tuttle family and on Annie K., Raymond Clark, and the ಞother scientists from Season 4, and it further goes to show how the lines between cosmic horror and reality are blurred in the True Detective universe.