There’s a lot of talk about weird dreams and visions in this episode. Knowing about The Changeling’s William Wheeler doesn’t help us understand how the scientists or Annie K died, but it is another symbol that may become more meaningful as we get more information.ĭreams and visions and spiral tattoos, oh my
Both also prey on the innocent and seemingly cannot be stopped, no matter how many women try to do so.ĭoes the William Wheeler connection add up to a real theory, or is it just eerie? Like the oranges, I think this is another eerie but potentially meaningful pop-cultural reference. In the sequence where Danvers and Navarro confront him, he seems to be possessed by something inhuman, just like William Wheeler in The Changeling. The William Wheeler of Night Country is similarly awful. But eventually William reveals himself to be Kinder Garten, part of a network of evil men tied together by their Norwegian roots and focus on killing babies on behalf of a monstrous creature that seems to have control over their behavior.
Her husband, Apollo (Lakeith Stanfield), goes searching for her and befriends a guy named William Wheeler who is an IT expert and seems to want to help him. In that series, a new mother becomes unraveled following the birth of her son and allegedly kills the infant, then disappears. (If you haven’t and want to remain spoiler-free, scroll past the next paragraph.) (Is that the whole story, though? Doesn’t seem like it.) The name of that killer and serial abuser is William Wheeler, which may sound familiar if you’ve either read The Changeling or watched the adaptation of it on Apple TV+. When responding to yet another domestic disturbance at their house, they find that he’s killed her, and Navarro blames Danvers for letting it get to that point. (More on that below.) The oranges may not serve as a signal that Navarro is destined for death so much as a hint that entities from the beyond are especially present out in the snowy expanse of Ennis - which would explain why Rose was able to see Travis Cohle out in the snow too.ĭo all these oranges add up to a real theory, or are they just eerie? Right now they are mostly just eerie, vitamin C-loaded symbols.Īfter Peter Prior pushes Danvers to reveal what caused the bad blood between her and Navarro, she explains that years ago, she and Navarro were trying to protect a young woman who was being abused by her partner, a known sex abuser and committer of assault. Or at the very least that she has strong ties to the spirit realm, an idea confirmed by the elaborate vision she has after falling on the ice and briefly blacking out. That latter scene, in particular, suggests an almost magnetic pull between her and the oranges that, per the above, suggests death is coming for her. Oranges make a couple of cameos in “Part 3,” first when Navarro picks up one in the opening sequence following the flashback, and later, when trudging across the tundra, she throws that orange and it immediately rolls back to her. This imagery has been so imprinted on the mainstream consciousness that the prominent placement of this delightful citrus fruit in any film or television scene immediately demands further scrutiny. If you’ve seen The Godfather - or even sat and politely nodded while someone else described The Godfather - you are likely aware that it features oranges as symbols that foreshadow death. Let’s examine a few of those details more closely.
Those jarring moments function like alarm clocks, reminding us to remain on high alert for details that might help us understand what caused the deaths of those Tsalal guys (no relation to those Halal Guys) and, possibly, the never-solved murder of Annie K. It’s a pair of screams, first from a mother giving birth, with help from Annie K, in that flashback to seven years earlier, and again from Annie herself in that newly discovered Blair Witch–y cell-phone video of her final seconds alive. Whispers aren’t what bookends this episode, though. It has mysterious visions, ominous symbolism, severely injured scientists suddenly becoming possessed by a demon (I guess?), and whispers and white noise evocative of the thin veil that separates the living from other realms.
This week’s episode of True Detective: Night Country leans further into the supernatural elements of Ennis, Alaska, or what Chief Liz Danvers would describe as that “voodoo, E.T., cosmic, choompa-loompa bullshit.”