‘True Detective: Night Country’ finale: What actually happened to Navarro?

HBO’s True Detective: Night Country has run its chilling course, treading the line between cold, hard reality and the supernatural. And it’s here, clambering out of Alaska’s long night, that we have one lingering question about state trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis): What exactly went down out there on the ice?

In the eighth and last episode of the series, Navarro has a deeply spiritual experience outside the Tsalal Arctic Research Station, after she disappears into a storm. What actually happened to Navarro?

Let’s dig into it.

What happens at the end of True Detective: Night Country?

Credit: Michele K. Short / HBO

After finding out the truth about Annie K’s murder and interrogating their prime suspect, Raymond Clark (Owen McDonnell), Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Navarro have to wait out the storm. There’s no power, no communications, and they can’t drive in the blizzard, so they build a fire in the loading bay to keep warm. Navarro seems unsettled.

“There is something out there, calling me,” Navarro tells Danvers as they sit around the fire. To demonstrate her connection to the spiritual world, Navarro reveals she’s seen visions of the older woman’s son, Holden, who died in a car accident years earlier. (In episode 3, when Navarro slips out on the ice, she has a vision of a rocky plateau from her time in the military. This is when she meets Holden, who is wear pyjamas and holding a plush polar bear. He whispers, “Tell my mommy.”). They’ve both been seeing those polar bears, real and plush, all through the series.

Danvers does not take this revelation well and leaves, but when she returns, her partner is nowhere to be seen. She tracks Navarro out onto the ice, where the trooper is walking with intention. As Danvers attempts to catch up to her, Navarro has a flashback to the same rocky terrain. Blood pours from her ear as a cacophony of screams builds, but Navarro seems to silence them by closing her eyes. She continues to walk, and a voice whispers, “Come, Evangeline.” 

We see Navarro’s hand outstretched, and a woman’s tattooed hand kindly reaches out toward her. The voice gives Navarro what she’s long yearned for, her spiritual Iñupiaq name: Siqiññaatchiaq.

Credit: Michele K. Short / HBO

Meanwhile, Danvers loses track of Navarro in the storm. Suddenly, she hears Holden calling for her through the wind, then she sees a vision of him trapped under the ice. Danvers starts chipping away at the ice and falls through, but Navarro drags her out of the water and saves her life by keeping her warm by the fire. Finally accepting the possibility of the beyond, Danvers asks Navarro what Holden said. “He says that he sees you,” Navarro says. Without any knowledge of their personal ritual, Navarro holds her hand up to Liz’s eye, just like Liz used to do with Holden, again connecting the pair with the one-eyed polar bear.

Later, after they figure out the truth of what happened to the scientists from Beatrice (L’xeis Diane Benson) and the Iñupiaq women of Ennis, time shifts slightly forward. Danvers is tight-lipped about where Navarro is and her cabin is empty, except for the plush polar bear and a video recording of Clark’s confession. Eddie Qavvik (Joel Montgrand) finds his SpongeBob toothbrush — the one Navarro borrowed — left outside his house. But where did she go?

Credit: Michele K. Short / HBO

When the daylight returns, Navarro is seen walking out onto the ice. She’s not wearing a hat or gloves, but she seems calm and determined. We see Danvers and her daughter Leah (Isabella Star LaBlanc) driving, followed by a brief scene of Danvers inside a lakeside cabin; she puts down a crossword and goes to relax on the verandah. Navarro joins her on the balcony, though they don’t say anything to one another. 

The colder they get, the more visions they see.

When the power cuts out at the Tsalal station, so does the heating. As we’ve previously heard as an explanation for the horrified faces of the corpsicle, hypothermia can cause hallucinations. The colder Navarro and Danvers get, the more they hallucinate and experience strange things. And it’s not just Navarro this time. Danvers finds Navarro’s mother’s pendant in her hair while trying to get warm in one of the beds, and she sees a hubcap roll down the hallway, prompting a flashback to her son’s death in a car accident.

Navarro, whose connection to spirituality has meant more than a few visions for her during the series, is drawn out to the ice by voices. That’s where she ultimately has her rocky plateau vision.

What’s with Navarro’s different hat?

This might be a red herring or a continuity error or a “time is a flat circle” moment, but when Navarro is keeping Danvers warm to save her life, she’s wearing a different beanie than the one she was wearing out in the snow. That was a coral/orange, and this one is green. Of course, this could be explained away easily; perhaps Navarro donned a dry hat back in the station to keep warm. But this detail is noticeable enough to raise questions, or at least one big one.

Did Navarro die out on the ice?

Though it’s slightly ambiguous, I personally don’t think Navarro died. Sure, there’s a possibility she’s appearing to Danvers and the Iñupiaq women of Ennis, much like the ghost of Travis did to Rose Aguineau (Fiona Shaw), or like Annie’s spirit may have to the scientists out on the ice (if you believe that part of the tale). But in the finale, I think Navarro actually comes into her power out there.

Navarro herself has been plagued by visions and voices throughout the series, with each vision typically featuring a person pointing at her menacingly. In episode 4, she feels drawn by voices through the dredge to the Christmas tree, where the scream of her late sister Jules (Aka Niviâna) fills her ears, making them bleed. She’s told Danvers of a “curse” on the women of Ennis, and her intention of walking out on the ice early in the season. In episode 5, after the burial for her sister, Navarro finds herself straying too far on the frozen plateau; she ends up needing Rose’s help to get back safely. It’s like Navarro tells Danvers in the final episode, “There is something out there, calling me.”

Credit: Michele K. Short / HBO

However, two major things have happened: She solved Annie K’s case, and she received her Iñupiaq name, Siqiññaatchiaq. Beatrice tells Navarro it was also her grandmother’s name and that it means “the return of the sun after the long darkness.” That feels incredibly powerful after the trauma Navarro has gone through, especially with her sister’s death.

Navarro’s spiritual experience in the storm gives her the strength to both save Danvers and open her mind to the beyond, introduce herself anew to the Iñupiaq women of Ennis, resolve to keep Annie’s case closed, and finally move on from the town — away from her trauma and grief, and into the future. When Navarro and Danvers are drinking whiskey in the Tsalal station after the debacle in the storm, Navarro speaks about being wrong about “holding the hatch” and being terrified about who was trying to open it. In this moment, it feels like she’s found her inner strength, her spiritual name, and a sense of her future.

Credit: Michele K. Short / HBO

The cops interviewing Danvers say there have been reports of sightings of Navarro in the area, which means she’s not just a figment of her former boss’s imagination on the verandah. But when questioned about her whereabouts, Danvers is loyal and ambiguous.

“Let’s put it this way — I don’t think you’ll find Evangeline Navarro out there on the ice. This is Ennis: Nobody ever really leaves.”

Who you will find? The reborn Evangeline Siqiññaatchiaq Navarro, more powerful than ever.

True Detective is available to stream on Max.