TRUE DETECTIVE Night Country Season 4 Trailer 3 (2023) Jodie Foster

TRUE DETECTIVE Night Country Season 4 Trailer 3 (2023) Jodie Foster

TRUE DETECTIVE Night Country Season 4 Trailer 3 (2023) Jodie Foster
© 2023 - HBO Max

True Detective (2014-Present) ensnared audiences from the very first season, and now it's time for Season 4, officially titled Night Country. The crime-drama anthology series follows a team of detectives as they piece together information about a seemingly impossible-to-solve case. Created by Nic Pizzolatto, the unique method of storytelling in combination with complex and compelling characters has brought the series countless awards and accolades. With each season revolving around a completely different cast and plot, it’s always a guessing game what the new season will bring to the table. Before we get to the upcoming season, it’s important to have a brief refresher of the previous seasons. They might not have anything do with each other in terms of plot, but they share the same DNA as far as format and structure. Looking back on them might give us some clues about the new season.

In the first season we saw Matthew McConaughey team up with Woody Harrelson as Cohl and Hart as they investigate the ritualistic murder of a young woman in Louisiana. The show jumps back and forth between the events that occurred in 1995 and 12 years later, where Cohl and Hart are being questioned about the old case and how they solved it. The second season, which has the most mixed reception from audiences and critics, transports us to California, where we follow Colin Farrell as Detective Ray Velcoro, who reluctantly joins forces with the County Sheriff Department’s Detective Sergeant Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) and veteran and CHP officer Paul Woodrow (Taylor Kitsch) to investigate the death of a corrupt city manager. Also launching his own investigation of the city manager’s death is career criminal Frank Semyon, played by Vince Vaughn.

Season 3 of the series is set in Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and spans the course of three decades. Starring Mahershala Ali as Detective Wayne Hays and Stephen Dorff as Roland West, his partner in the state police. The two of them investigate the mysterious disappearance of two young children in 1980. In 1990, the unsolved case is reopened when new information surfaces, and in 2015, Hays (now retired and struggling with dementia) is being interviewed for a true-crime documentary on the old case. This season is the first in which Pizzolatto took a directorial role, along with Jeremy Saulnier (Green Room) and Daniel Sackheim (Ozark). So what will Season 4 bring us? With almost six years having passed between the last season and the upcoming one, there are bound to be many questions. This article will tell you everything we know so far about the highly anticipated new installment.

Editor's Note: This article was updated on December 5.

When and Where Is 'True Detective: Night Country' Premiering?
True Detective: Night Country
The series was initially set to premiere in 2023, but due to the Hollywood strikes, the series has been delayed to January 2024. The show has been confirmed to debut on Sunday, January 14, 2024, on HBO. Just like with previous seasons, True Detective Season 4 is expected to air exclusively on HBO, with a streaming release on Max. While you wait, you can catch up on previous seasons of the show with the link below:

WATCH ON MAX

Watch the 'True Detective: Night Country' Trailers
HBO released the first teaser for Season 4 all the way back in February 2023, and they also released the second teaser for True Detective: Night Country in April. You can watch the second teaser in the player below and the first, extremely brief teaser in the one above.

A new teaser trailer for True Detective: Night Country was released on September 28 as well, showing us more of the case and a little bit about the personal lives of the investigators involved. Here it is:

The official trailer for True Detective: Night Country was unveiled during HBO's CCXP 2023 panel in Brazil. Check it out in the player below and stay tuned for more:

Who Are the Creators of 'True Detective: Night Country'?
True Detective: Night Country is being written, executive produced, and directed by Issa López (Tigers Are Not Afraid), who also serves as the primary showrunner. Other executive producers on the project include series star Jodie Foster, as well as Barry Jenkins, Adele Romanski, Mark Ceryak, Mari Jo Winkler, Chris Mundy, Alan Page Arriaga, Steve Golin, Richard Brown, Woody Harrelson, Matthew McConaughey, Cary Joji Fukunaga, and series creator Nic Pizzolatto. Additionally, Princess Daazhraii Johnson, Cathy Tagnak Rexford, and Sam Breckman are credited as producers.

Who’s In the Cast of 'True Detective: Night Country'?
Jodie Foster, who won the Best Actress Academy Award for playing a similar investigative role in the 1991 classic Silence of the Lambs, will be taking the role of lead detective, Liz Danvers. She teams up with the fiery Evangeline Navarro, who is played by pro boxer and actor Kali Reis. Reis made her writing and acting debut in the 2021 movie Catch the Fair One, where she plays a boxing champion. John Hawkes (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) will join the cast as a character named Hank Prior. Hank’s son, Peter, will be played by Finn Bennett.

English actor Christopher Eccleston (Doctor Who) will be playing the role of Ted Corsaro. Fiona Shaw, who is best known for her portrayal of Aunt Petunia in the Harry Potter franchise, will be playing a character named Rose Aguineau. Additional cast members include Anna Lambe (Three Pines) as Kayla Malee, Isabella Star LaBlanc (Long Slow Exhale) as Leah, Aka Niviâna as Julia, and Joel Montgrand as Eddie Qavvik.

When and Where Was 'True Detective: Night Country' Filmed?
While Season 4 is set in Alaska, it was filmed in Iceland. Production began in November 2022, and Issa López announced the end of filming on April 7, 2023. Then on November 25, the showrunner announced that the final touches to the season's sound mixing had been completed and, with that, production on True Detective: Night Country has officially concluded.

What's the Plot of 'True Detective: Night Country' About?
The newest season is set in Ennis, Alaska, a town that is annually plunged into darkness 24 hours a day for several weeks. The locals refer to this natural phenomenon as “the long night.” At some point during the last sunset before the long night, a group of men seemingly disappear from the Tsalal Arctic Research Station they operate, oddly leaving behind only their shoes as a clue. At the site where the men disappeared, Detective Liz Danvers is insistent that it should be treated as a crime scene. She teams up with Detective Evangeline Navarro to figure out what happened to the missing men.

Similar to the previous seasons, there’s also a cryptic spiral symbol that is inextricably linked to the case. You can see this image briefly in the new trailer, once as Danvers places photos of the missing men around her on the floor, and again later, when the spiral is painted on the side of a building in what looks like blood. The same spiral symbol can also be seen in previous seasons, especially the first season, on the bodies of the victims, and as what may or may not be hallucinations that Cohl experiences in the course of his investigation.

Similar to some Sherlock Holmes-type cases, where it seems like the only possible explanation to solve the case has to involve some type of supernatural involvement, True Detective makes you question how the cases can be solved and explained in a practical manner. The setting of Ennis, Alaska during “the long night” already has elements toeing the line between natural phenomena and supernatural phenomena. Is it possible that there’s something dark hidden beneath all the ice? Detectives Danvers and Navarro will have to put their differences aside if they want to get to the bottom of this new mystery.