Recap / True Detective S 4 E 06 Part 6

Recap pages are Spoilers Off per policy and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned

"The question isn't who killed Annie K. But who knows who killed her?"

Navarro and Danvers get to the highest point of Niqsiq Pass and dig their way in. Once inside the cave, they look around, until they get at a dead end where there is a spiral on the ceiling. First Navarro, then Danvers crash through the ice, landing at the cave's lower level. Just then, Raymond Clark turns up and they chase after him. They end up finding an underground laboratory, and in it, a star-shaped tool, like the one used to stab Annie K. While trying to find Clark they follow his trail to a ladder leading to a hatch that opens at the Tsalal station. They split up to search for Clark. He manages to trap Danvers in a freezer and knocks out Navarro with a fire extinguisher. By the time Danvers breaks through the freezer door, Navarro has come to and is beating up Clark. She stops Navarro so they can get him to talk. With the blizzard, they cannot drive away, so they are stuck on the station with no radio or Wi-Fi.

In the meantime, at Danvers's home, Peter Prior scrubs everything as best he can, stows the bodies of Otis Heiss and his dad in the latter’s car trunk, and washes the blood off himself. Just as Peter finds a molar embedded on a wall, Leah arrives to spend New Year's with her stepmom. She is surprised to find Peter there and asks him why is he cleaning up and where is Danvers. To stop her from asking more questions, he asks Leah to spend New Year's with his wife and kid so they are not alone. He removes the molar from the wall before driving her to his home.

Back at the station. Danvers and Navarro have Clark taped to a chair. He refuses to answer their questions, so Navarro forces him to listen to Annie K's recording, including the sounds of her screams as she is attacked. They leave him alone, gagged and blindfolded to listen to the recording on a loop. As he freaks out, they go get some coffee.

The Priors'. Peter drops off Leah, but Kayla confronts him before he can leave, and demands to know what is going on. Peter tells her he has to do something but can't tell her what it is. Immediately, she asks if Danvers made him do something bad. He comes clean(ish): "I did it. Alright? And I'm fixing it now, but I need your help, Kayla. Look at me. I need to do this one thing, and then I will be here with you. But right now, I just... I need fսcking..." She interrupts him with a Big Damn Kiss and tells him to stay safe.

The station's kitchen. Danvers helps herself to some snacks and Navarro gets an ice pack. Navarro mentions how both her mom and Julia could remove the peel from an orange in a single piece. Danvers finds some broken glass on her boot that takes her back to the accident that killed Holden, so she throws it away. They go back to Raymond Clark, figuring he is ready to talk. When asked if he was there, he confesses. Flashback to the night of Annie K's death: she'd forced her way in and found the underground lab. She'd figured out what they were doing at the station. In Clark's own words, "We were digging for the DNA of a microorganism contained in the permafrost that, that could potentially... Save the world. [...] We cracked it. We could actually do it." They were not just falsifying the toxicity numbers for the mine; they were pushing the mine to pollute even more, as that made the permafrost better for extracting DNA. Annie found that out and started destroying the lab and years' worth of work. Lund caught Annie in the middle of this and stabbed her with the star-shaped tool. The others heard the commotion and joined in and also stabbed her. Clark denies killing her but the flashback shows that Annie was still alive, so Clark finally smothered her to death. He justifies their actions by claiming that if they could finish the work, Annie K's death would not have been in vain. He also denies cutting out her tongue, but admits that they did call the mine to clean up things. Navarro points her gun at Clark's head, and Danvers leaves Clark alone with Navarro to do whatever she wants.

Some time later. Navarro joins Danvers and the latter admits that in the Wheeler case, she would have shot the guy if Navarro had not. They go back to question Clark some more, this time about his colleagues' deaths. Clark claims that Annie did it. On the night in question, he said out loud "She's awake". The lights went out. Figuring Annie had come back for revenge, he ran to the hatch and down the ladder where he hid, holding on to the hatch door while the other scientists were under attack. He did come up when hungry and found Otis Heiss, claiming he wanted to know how to survive Annie. They point out that Annie was not even born when Otis Heiss was injured. "She's been hiding in those caves forever. [...] And before she was born, after we all die, time is a flat circle, and we are all stuck in it." After hearing all this, Danvers muses that Clark was hiding there under all their noses while they were searching the station. She instructs Navarro to not let Clark sleep and goes off for a nap. He begs Navarro to either kill him or let him die.

Tsalal station. Danvers wakes up. The power is out, and freezing to death is a concern. She goes outside to find Navarro staring off at nothing and Clark frozen to death and half-buried by the snow. She is furious and accuses Navarro of cutting the power, which she denies. While Navarro tries to get a generator working, Danvers is checking out the fuse box. Just then, a tire rim rolls by her feet. Navarro hears a voice calling her name and has a vision of Clark convulsing, muttering "she's awake".

Rose Aguineau's home. Peter Prior has just arrived. He tells her what Navarro told him to say, because he has a body that needs to go to the same place as Julia. Rose mutters that it's going to be one of those nights.

Tsalal station. Danvers and Navarro are both huddling under blankets by a bonfire. Danvers is lamenting that they got involved in the case. Navarro talks about how there is something out there calling her, and tries sharing her vision of Holden and his words with Danvers. But an enraged Danvers shuts down that conversation and threatens her if she even says his name.

While Leah leaves yet another message in Danvers's voice mail, Danvers tries going back to bed but she can't sleep. She goes outdoors to search for Navarro, even though visibility is practically zero. Navarro is walking out. She has a vision of herself walking on a desert, blood dripping from her ear. She listens to a voice calling her. A hand reaches out to hers and a voice whispers, "Your name... is Siqinnaatchiaq". Danvers keeps searching for Navarro but she hears Holden's voice and sees him trapped under the ice. She tries cracking the surface but falls through it. Just before she stops struggling, Navarro pulls her out and saves her. While Navarro tries to get Danvers to stay awake, Danvers flashes back to happy moments with Holden. She finally asks Navarro as to what Holden had to say. "He says that... he sees you. He sees you, Liz." This makes her finally break down in Navarro's arms.

Somewhere on the ice, same location as Julia Navarro's final resting place. Rose Aguineau makes Peter Prior break a hole in the ice. Then she tells him to look away so he doesn't see her cutting Hank's body so he doesn't float. Peter himself pushes his father's body in the water where it sinks. Rose warns him that what comes after is going to be the hardest. The aurora boreal appears to them. It is now January 1st.

The Tsalal station. The storm is over. Danvers remembers what Clark said about "holding on to the hatch" while the other scientists were under attack and he was hiding in the ice caves. Danvers uses a chemical and an UV light and takes a look at the handprints left on the outside of the hatch; one belongs to someone missing fingers. Danvers says that they have been asking the wrong question: it isn't who killed Annie K., but rather, "who knows who killed her?" The answer leads them to the home of Bee and Blair, the two employees at the seafood processing plant from Part I. ^note Bee was the one who bashed Blair's abusive boyfriend in the head with a bucket. Danvers and Navarro ask them about what happened to the scientists. An unapologetic Bee explains the story. While cleaning at the station, she spilled some water that was dripping toward the panel hiding the hatch. She went down the ladder, found the lab, etc. and realized the scientists killed Annie. They did not report because they have no faith in law enforcement: "It's always the same story, with the same ending. So we told ourselves another story." As Bee tells the story, several women from the Iñupiaq community file in. Bee and Malee, along with those women, burst into the station, cut the power, kidnapped the scientists at gunpoint (minus Clark, who was hiding in the cave) and drove them away to a remote location, forced them to take off their clothes and run off.

When they dug in her home in the ice, when they killed her daughter in there... they woke her up.

The women left their clothes in case "she" spared them, which she did not. Having told their story of how they avenged Annie K, Bee defiantly asks Navarro what are she and Danvers going to do. Navarro just says that stories are just stories. Danvers tells the group of women that the official reason for the scientists' deaths was a "slab avalanche" and that the case is closed. Before Navarro leaves, she asks Bee about Annie's tongue being left in the station. Bee claims that's not part of their story.

Time skip to May 14, "1st long day of the year". Danvers is being interviewed by two agents for an investigation on Hank Prior's death. She tells them the story of Hank shooting Otis, trying to ditch the body, and getting lost in the blizzard. As she talks, we see Leah (now sporting a traditional chin tattoo) and Danvers driving around, having worked out their differences; the mine has closed; and Peter has returned to his wife and son. A flashback shows Navarro walking into the snow. She leaves Qavvik the SpongeBob toothbrush he gifted her. For Danvers, she has left Holden's plush bear that Danvers had thrown away and underneath, a phone with Clark's recorded confession. The agents ask Danvers if she knows who leaked the recording, but she feigns ignorance. Talk turns to Navarro, who has gone missing, but there have been sightings reported of her. When asked about that, Danvers responds, "Well, this is Ennis. Nobody ever really leaves." Final shot is Danvers hanging out with Navarro at the porch of a house by the lake.

Tropes

• Ambiguous Situation: Navarro has abandoned her home, leaving behind the stuffed polar bear Danvers had pitched outside in an earlier episode and a phone with Raymond Clark's recorded confession. She also leaves Qavvik the SpongeBob toothbrush he gifted her on Christmas. She seems to have disappeared, but whether she is dead or alive is left ambiguous.
• Atomic F-Bomb: Danvers releases a major one when she finds out that Navarro released Clark, the only surviving witness, who has gone outside and is now frozen to death.
• Beneath Notice: The reason no one suspected the women who cleaned Tsalal station.
• Foreshadowing: In "Part 1", Bee attacks Blair's abusive boyfriend Ace in their workplace, choosing to take justice into her own hands rather than report him to police (Navarro does arrest him but days later he is out). After learning what the scientists did to Annie K, she and the other women avenged Annie K's death.
• Kill It with Ice: Raymond Clark, who is duct-taped to a chair, begs Navarro to kill him or let him do it himself. So she releases and he walks out in the cold, where he freezes to death.
• Meaningful Rename: In her vision Navarro hears her mother's spirit giving her the Iñupiaq name Siqinnaatchiaq. When she and Danvers go to Bee and Blair's home, she introduces herself as Evangeline Siqinnaatchiaq Navarro. Bee explains its meaning: the return of the sun after the long darkness.
  • Notably, in the interview at the end, Danvers (who is aware of the importance of Navarro's renaming) says this:
    Danvers: I don't think you'll find Evangeline Navarro out there on the ice.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: The Iñupiaq women take justice in their own hands. They abduct the scientists who killed Annie K (minus Clark), drive them to a remote place, force them to strip and abandon them to freeze to death.
• Police Are Useless: The cleaners figured out that the Tsalal station scientists killed Annie Kowtok but have no faith in law enforcement, so they took matters into their own hands.
• Rage Breaking Point: Navarro tries to tell Danvers about seeing Holden in a vision and what he said. Danvers explodes, threatening Navarro:
  Danvers: Shut the fսck up! You don't say his name! You hear me? You shut your mouth! You don't know. When he was trapped in that car... was he scared, was he hurt? Was he screaming "Mommy"? You don't come here and tell me "he said." Or I will, I will shoot your sick fսcking mouth right off your face!
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Bee led a group of native women to the station to enact this on behalf of Annie K.
• Shirtless Scene: Peter Prior cleans up the scene of the two shootings in his underwear. It is not played for Fanservice as he is covered in blood himself.
• Spotting the Thread: Upon looking at the handprints left on the hatch, Navarro and Danvers notice they were left by someone missing fingers. This takes them to Bee and Blair.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: In the previous episode, Danvers had been furious at the Anchorage authorities' determination that the Tsalal scientists' death were not due to foul play, but rather, a "slab avalanche". After Danvers learns what Bee and the other women did, rather than arrest them, Danvers tells them what the official reason was, and that the case is closed.
• Time Skip: From January 1st to May 14th, the longest day of the year.
• Wham Line: "Who knows who killed Annie Kowtok?"