The new True Detective season sure seems like it’s connected to the first

Real detective is back. To wait. What’s Real detective?

It’s been almost 10 years since HBO introduced it to the public Real detective in January 2014. A TV show with a name so wacky it’s absolutely had in order for anyone to take it seriously, the first season of creator Nic Pizzolatto’s anthology drama stood out for pairing a resurrected Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in a murder mystery with a creepy Weird Fiction subtext and a all-timer title sequence.

Consecutive seasons of Real detective was not a sensation like his award-winning first was. After a much-delayed third season arrived in 2019, the series was effectively put on ice and Pizzolatto’s working relationship with HBO came to an end (while another at FX not even take off).

However, HBO still believes enough in the magic of that first season to put some juice behind another episode. Although it’s probably meant to stand on its own like others Real detective seasons, Nightland — starring Jodie Foster as Detective Liz Danvers and Kali Reis as her reluctant partner Detective Evangeline Navarro hunting down men missing from an Arctic research station – is certainly trying to win back fans.

The trailer in front Real detective: Nightland is full of callbacks to Season 1, in ways that are structural (a cop is interviewed about a gripping case), stylistically (dark and moody wide shots suggesting the supernatural), and lyrically (the spooky spiral from season one is back ).

The trailer works hard to make those connections extremely clear – the spiral was a bit of Lovecraftian symbolism that took the place of the crime ring season 1 protagonists Rust Cohle (McConaughey) and Marty Hart (Harrelson) track down together. The spiral was also invoked in Season 3, itself an attempt to return to the show’s origins after a wildly unpopular second season.

But online, viewers of the trailer also noticed that there may be more to it Night Land‘s season 1 then ties up ghostly symbolism: The story is set in Alaska, and in the fourth episode of season 1, “Who goes thereRust Cohle claims he went there to visit a dying father who no one can confirm was ever there.

Little tidbits like this are made Real detective a hit: on the surface it was a seedy crime drama, but it was Also one built for the fan theory era, riddled with ominous references to Weird Fiction works like Robert W. Chambers’s 1895 work The king in yellow, which, depending on your perspective, enriched the series or ultimately turned out to be a waste of time.

That’s ultimately what everyone from HBO to everyday fans is hoping for Real detective: Nightland delivers: a captivating mystery to speculate about and study every frame. Hopefully showrunner Issa López and producer Barry Jenkins will find that magic again. Yellow jackets can’t do it all by yourself.

Real detective: Nightland will premiere on HBO and stream on Max later this year.