‘Night Country’ Boss Issa López on Reviving ‘True Detective’ and Franchise’s Future: “We Will Know Very Shortly”

[This story contains spoilers from the season finale of True Detective: Night Country.]

Who killed Annie K., and who killed her killers? Those season-long burning questions were concretely answered in the True Detective: Night Country finale. And now, to hear Night Country boss Issa López tell it, those answers were out in the ether weeks before they were revealed on screen.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter two days after the finale aired, López waxes about the veritable true detectives who spent the last six weeks dissecting True Detective online, locating and unlocking massive pieces of the puzzle along the way. Watching Night Country become a part of the Reddit phenomenon that has swept previous shows like Game of Thrones and Westworld was a brand new experience for López, who comes to television from independent cinema. And the showrinner, writer, director and executive producer says it was an invigorating experience — so invigorating that she’s already scheming ways to maneuver and play with her audience’s expectation in her next act, whatever that may be.

Will that act be more Night Country? Likely not, as she explains to THR. Despite pressure from sources as prestigious as her stars, Jodie Foster (also an executive producer), Kali Reis and Finn Bennett. But what about more True Detective? Having helmed the most-watched season of the HBO crime anthology to date, will Lopez return to the franchise she helped redefine?

Read on for Lopez’s victory lap following the success of True Detective: Night Country in the sprawling chat below, where she also responds to franchise creator Nic Pizzolatto criticizing the season (“His experience is not my experience”). And, begin with this mental image: As the Zoom call begins, Lopez is literally doing a celebratory dance…

Well, you’re having a good week!

I’m having a good week. The ratings are insane. The reactions are amazing. The reviews … all of it, it’s a dream. It’s what we wanted for the ending. So it’s been gorgeous, I’m very happy.

The most watched season of True Detective. What does that feel like?

Oh, God. That’s what you want with a series, right? You want to start solid and grow, and the challenge was, can we revive that spirit and can we get people back to True Detective? And they came, and then not only came, but more people came than the first one. It’s always scary when you’re going to take a challenge like this and seeing this response has just been fantastic. This sounds so corny, but it was made with so much love that seeing this response, it just warms your heart.

You were confident in the story you crafted before the season aired, but were the reactions to the show in line with what you expected? 

The amount of love on reviews and podcasts and coverage, but also on social media and everything… it’s just not only the amount, but the enthusiasm and the declarations of this moved me. I cannot stop thinking about it. It’s just very profound and obviously, there’s people that didn’t dig it, but it’s less, way less, and it’s just a little percentage and they’re very angry and that’s kind of what it is. But you just bask in the fact that so many people responded to [the] reviving, and a lot of people who had seen the first season love the fact that it felt like that. And a lot of people who have not seen a single season before, loved it, went back, watched the other three, and now the original three seasons also [rose in ratings] because people went back to watch them. So that’s just beautiful.

You mentioned that people should walk away from the finale with theories, and all season long, fans went deep into the theorizing. What was it like, watching all the theory-crafting on your side?

It was so much fun. I could not get enough. I mean, there are some people who [predicted the ending]. Not completely, not the whole picture, but pieces were everywhere in the internet. And then there were masses of theories that were not right, but they were still so amazing to see. People watched the episodes four or five times and obsessed and created whole narratives. And then sometimes I was looking at them and I was like, “Oh, that would have been interesting.” (Laughs.) So it’s so much fun. And I was not expecting that when I crafted it. I did put in clues. Blair (Kathryn Wilder) is missing two fingers, and [there was a scene where her finger prints] are on the shoes, which we took out in editing. I thought, we’re about to see Blair again. Am I playing too close to the fire? So I took it out. And then at the very end, in episode six, when all the clues come together, it was so satisfying to see that print of the hand. So I thought about it a lot and because I come from cinema, [where] people sit down and watch the movie…

They don’t have time to go on Reddit in the middle, at least not without being very rude.

Yes. I was not expecting people to watch each episode five times. So some people caught it, not everyone. I was really nervous and I was really, really excited, nervously watching people piecing it together. And it was just fun to see how you create this little puzzle and people just flock to try to piece it together. And the other thing that you don’t count on: I learned that there’s really good [internet] detectives out there, and they work together, the way [actual detectives] do for true crime, and then someone figures out something and someone else figures out something else. And it’s so interesting to watch. I still think people were completely blown away by that reveal with the black lights and the print. It still comes together and it surprised masses of people. The few that put together, they knew that Blair was involved, but they didn’t know how. And other people knew that the women were surely involved with the aftermath of Annie K. But just observing how some sectors had one part and another had a different part… it just was a joy.

This idea of people watching five times, viewers colluding on theories, is that invigorating for you, this experience of TV and having this level of interactivity with the audience? Does this make you more apt to push in deeper on television you think?

Completely. Completely. It’s been a collection of things that you learn and that you can be more strategic in the future, knowing how the television experience is different. I think I understood the television experience. What I didn’t completely understand is the level of obsession that this type of TV series and the weekly engagement with it, because also, if it had dropped on Netflix, it would have been binged on a single sitting and that wouldn’t have happened. It’s the nature of the beast. True Detective, it’s HBO that does it weekly, it is the big exposure and the ratings that the series had, it was very specific to this series. So I was expecting it to be successful. I was hoping it to be successful. I didn’t see the masses [dissecting the writing], which is amazing. So if I do TV again, if I weave a mystery, am I going to weave it differently? Oh, you bet. You learn. And it’s going to be so interesting to create it also as a playing game with the people who interact and dissect a mystery. You create this relationship with the audience. I put something into the world and they received it beautifully, and I saw them interact with it.

A lot of people wonder if you would revisit Night Country. The ending is ambiguous, but in so many ways, it’s also very conclusive. What do you think?

Well, I’ve been talking about this nonstop for the last two weeks because I’ve been seeing my actors. We did a lot of exit press, which is an interesting phenomenon in itself; turns out that the interest in the series only grew. So I was in Europe last week with Jodie and Kali, and then I saw Finn and Anna Lamb and Fiona Shaw, and all of them are giving me hell like you wouldn’t imagine. (Laughs.) Just going, “Think about it, think about it!” And it was very beautiful. It’s a beautiful thing to hear, that they would be like, “why not?” And I would be like, “Guys, think about it for a second. It would be a disservice to the characters.” And they love the characters. Because we took these people through a tremendous journey and they broke through themselves and came out on the other side. If we go into a second season, “And then three months later, a cat disappears in town…”

I don’t know, you’re kind of speaking my language.

But it’s the truth! We [kept talking] and were obviously playing with the idea, and I was on the train between Paris and London with Jodie and Kali, and they were like, “But you did think about it, right?” And I was like, ‘Well, sometimes you’re in the shower…” And they were like, “Please tell us.” And I was like, “Well, first of all, it would take place during the long day… Oh, I shouldn’t have said that.” (Laughs.) So it’s very tempting because it was a joy and we miss each other, and it turned out so well, and people loved it. And the constant information that I’m getting from social is they want more of Danvers and Navarro, and also Prior. There’s a lot of love for Prior. It’s very tempting. But I do feel that the characters grew. It’s a lot more boring to do drama about grown people than people that need growth. So I don’t think I’ll do it.

Okay, so here’s part two of the question: if not more Night Country, what about more True Detective? Would you do another season, especially with these ratings? Have you talked to HBO at all?

I cannot answer that just yet.

Okay. That’s optimistic.

I cannot answer that just yet. But…

You love the franchise. You would be up for exploring more if circumstances aligned.

Yeah, and this is an absolutely honest answer: I miss cinema enormously, and I do have a project that is on the cusp, actually. I was on the cusp of making it, and it was stopped to do True Detective. Now the big question is, do I jump right back into that movie, or do I want to make more TV? And, we will know very shortly.

There were so many references to season one throughout Night Country, then there were the comments made by Nic Pizzolatto, which you have responded to already. The finale has this really beautiful “time is a flat circle” moment. On the other side of the season, is any of this reverence for the franchise recolored for you by the people who made negative comparisons with season four and season one, and especially Nic’s comments? [Note: Reis also responded to Pizzolatto’s comments on X, saying, “Hey I guess ‘if you don’t have anything good to share, shit on others’ is the new wave.”]

Well, I already talked about my reaction to Nic’s comments, which is my stance again: The way that we relate to the stories we tell is profound and it’s personal, and I cannot make a judgment on his experience. His experience is not my experience. I’ve never started a franchise, so I cannot talk for him. I can talk for me. And all I can say is I love True Detective and I love Night Country, and they’re in that same universe, and if you jumped on the boat with me and came for the ride, you’re going to enjoy the fact that the language is the same language and the mythology is the same mythology and the elements are shared. But if you didn’t jump on the boat with me, you’re not going to like it. So I hope you jumped on the boat with me and gave this chance. 

Me too, because I don’t know how else you’re getting out of the ocean.

You need a boat, man! (Laughs.) So come on board.

Do you feel like you have at all been bitten by the franchise bug as we live in the franchise world? If Kevin Feige and his hat came knocking on your door, would you open the door? 

It’s a very peculiar thing, True Detective. It’s very unique in the sense of, yes, it’s a franchise, but each of its iterations are independent. It’s almost like a book. I mean, the only way that I made it part of the franchise is the tone and the feeling, as we’ve discussed the last time we talked, and the grammar of that mythology that unifies. That’s it. That’s all that makes it a franchise. Otherwise, I’m free and I’m free to tell the stories that I care about as long as I respect those elements and I use the same grammar. So it’s so fantastic. While if I jump [into another major franchise] — which nobody has invited me, let’s be clear — but if I jump in one of the other ones, that’s not the case. The characters are there. Often the cast, so many of the creative decisions have been made already, and those franchises are massively controlled. So I think it would be a very, very different endeavor. And anything that I cannot put a big, huge imprint of my own voice is not interesting to me.

I still think that it would be great if you did the Avengers: Endgame of True Detective, and get Matthew McConaughey and Jodie Foster back. The Contact reunion we need!

Right. That would be … (Pauses.) Oh, fuck. Well, there’s an idea… (Laughs.) There you go!

True Detective: Night Country is now streaming its full season on Max. Read THR‘s coverage on the season here.