True Detective
HBO
True Detective has been a bizarre adventure in serialization, the first season being one of the best detective stories put to television, and the others being a rollercoaster of quality culminating in the recent True Detective: Night Country, which formed some tenuous links to season 1.
But those links could bear fruit. True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto told the Nothing Left Unsaid podcast that there’s an idea that may reunite Matthew McConaughey’s Rust Cohle and Woody Harrelson’s Marty Hart. And the actors are open to the idea.
“I actually have another story for Cohle and Hart that — who knows? — maybe we’ll do it one day,” Pizzolatto said. “It’s character-based again. … But it’s not something I’ve written or anything. It’s just, I had that in my head. And we’ve talked about getting back together and doing it, and I think the guys are open to it. It’s just a question of whether that would ever happen or not.”
So, would this potentially be season 5 of True Detective? No, it wouldn’t. It may not be broad knowledge, but season 5 is already greenlit with Night Country’s showrunner Issa López back for more. So, if this Cohle and Hart season did exist, we would likely not see it for years, especially if it’s still in the concept phase. We do not have a release window for López’s season 5 at this point either, though no doubt that’s further along.
True Detective
HBO
The series has spanned a decade now, which has produced four seasons. There was a very short gap between seasons 1 and 2, a year and a half, before switching to 4-5 year gaps to get to season 3 and season 4.
As for what the new Cohle and Hart storyline would be, Pizzolato does not go into that here. Night Country featured Rust Cohle’s father and had the “spiral” mythology return, but that was about it. Season 1 ended without the “bad guys” getting taken down in full, the large-spanning, abusive cult. Presumably, this would have to be a story taking place in their later years, as I’m trying to imagine how more flashbacks would work, but who knows.
One thing that I think was missing from all the other seasons of True Detective was director Cary Joji Fukunaga. Pizzolatto only seems like one part of the puzzle, but it was Fukunaga’s direction that rounded out the season and made it what it was. And you can feel his absence in the other, lesser seasons. Fukunaga went on to direct shows like Masters of the Air and Maniac, and films like No Time to Die and Beasts of No Nation. It’s unclear if it would be possible to get him to return, not just the actors.
I would certainly be interested to see where this project could go, but if it does happen, it seems like it would be a long, long way off.
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