True Detective: How I think the final episode goes down.

SPOILER ALERT. Information gathered from all seven previous episodes will be discussed below.  I would suggest not reading any further if you haven’t caught up through last Sunday’s episode 7.

*I apologize for any grammar issues. I haven’t wrote anything involving sentences since college. Now all I write are lines of code. I’m a little Rust-y*

Any meaning to the 10-2 over his head?

Any meaning to the 10-2 over his head?

Well there has to be a reason I’m actually typing in an effort to form complete sentences and not typing computer code. That reason is my infatuation with HBO’s True Detective. The final episode airs this Sunday and I’m already starting to dread life without Rust and Marty. This show has grabbed me from the start. Always a cop drama fan, the addition of philosophy and the metaphysical to this show makes it one of my favorite of all time. Especially since I find myself feeling exactly the same as Rust when he starts talking about life.

That’s enough of that. Let’s get down to why I’m writing this thing called a blog.  I believe the b is silent.  The first seven episodes are full of information and little clues as to what we are going to find out in the 8th and final episode. If you’ve only watched them once, I suggest going back and try watching them again. I picked up so many more details the second time through. Details that I’m going to try to use to guess what the final episode has in store for Rust and Marty.

How will the finale end? Easy. Mark Wahlberg will show up at Rust and Marty’s house in little white booties and shoot each in the head. Game over. Just kidding.

My honest take on how this all ends? There will be a lot of blood and neither detective walks out alive.  Why?  Notice how in episode seven they start building a rapport like old friends. I think it’s just the writer getting them closer to illicit a bigger emotional response from the viewer when they die. That said, let’s lay out why I think each detective will die, one at a time.


In episode 7 Rust talks about how he came back to Louisiana to take care some things before he could get on to taking care of another. He also mentions that he really hopes death is the end (and that the old lady who snapped saying death is not the end was wrong).  He sounds like he’s ready to die, possibly suicidal if it weren’t for this case he wants to “nip in the bud”.  He also looks like shit so there’s another possibility he could have an ailment we learn about.  This quote sums up Rust’s mindset: “My life’s been a circle of violence and degradation, as long as I can remember. I’m ready to tie it off.”

Rust also mentions that “He doesn’t sleep. He just dreams.” Well at the end of episode 7, right after we meet Errol the giant lawnmower man, the show ends with a song.  The song is called “Lungs” and is by Townes Van Zandt. One line in the song (full of lung cancer references) caught my attention and Rust dreaming….

“You better leave this dream alone and try to find another.”

See ya Rust.

There’s also the fact that McConaughey himself said he wouldn’t be back for season 2 as his role was “finite”.  Yeah I don’t think he makes it out alive.


I believe Marty ends up dead as well but not before he slaughters a bunch of people. I’ll explain why later. Remember in early episodes Marty mentions the importance of family in a man’s life? Well now he’s divorced, hardly talks to his kids, eats tv dinners, and drunk creeps profiles (who doesn’t..right…right?).  That said Marty doesn’t have much going for him and given he helped kidnap the sheriff, he’s all or nothing now. No good comes from him living. Finally the biggest reason I think Marty dies? The awkward “Is this goodbye” with Maggie at her house.  That seems like a pretty big tell.

There’s also a rather obvious issue that hasn’t been resolved yet. Why did Marty’s daughter draw those pornographic pictures as a child and why did she set up 5 Ken Dolls surrounding Barbie? A child simply doesn’t just think of that on their own. She’s probably seen it herself. Her drawings indicate she may have even seen the spaghetti monster himself at one point. Abusing her or someone else. In her pornographic drawings, she draws out five different men doing things. Remember there were also five men who did something on that VHS that Rust stole and Marty couldn’t bare to watch. Too much of a coincidence for me. The final kicker for me is the drawing of the 5th and final guy….

Spaghetti monster drawing

Spaghetti monster drawing

That looks a beard on his chin to me. Five guys in the drawings, one having a beard, the barbie incident, her being promiscuous at a young age (if SVU taught me anything), and her having to take meds as mentioned by Maggie in ep7. It seems pretty obvious to me.  Somehow, someway, Marty is going to find this out in the final episode and this will set him off into a blood thirsty rage.

Here’s another Easter Egg that I first saw at The Atlantic. I usually hate reading around the internet because it ruins my own chance of having an original idea but I’m glad I came across this….

Sneaky camera work.

Sneaky camera work.

Marty’s head is covering the ‘G’ in “King” painted on the wall. On his right obviously is the spaghetti monster. It’s very interesting and probably the directors trying to throw us off. Kin? Some wonder if it means Marty’s family is somehow involved in the rituals or perhaps the wife?  I think it’s another tell that his daughter (KIN) was a victim of the spaghetti monster at one point.

There’s also this odd piece of art on the Hart’s kitchen wall that closely resembles the spiral tattoos. No word on who made the spiral but I think I can guess.

Hint hint?

Hint hint?

Again, this is just my own personal interpretation using clues they’ve thrown about his daughter throughout the series hinting that she was a victim. I think we put the pieces together finally on Sunday and Marty wont have enough ammo to satisfy his thirst for justice.


I also noticed a potential Easter Egg that could indicate both detectives will be killed. When they enter the burnt church in episode 2, there’s something perched in the rafters.

Owl in the rafters.

Owl in the rafters.

Right above Marty’s head in the picture you can see an owl. Some cultures believe that owls were harbingers of death. The owl has other meanings and it could just mean there’s another death about to unfold for the detectives.  However, I’m sticking with my theory and saying it’s bad news for the boys.

So that’s how I think things will play out in the final episode. I’m not sure where and how they will die but I have a few possibilities. The where is probably beaten out of that corrupt sheriff on the boat. They eventually head to this spot and ultimately are killed. How will they die? I have no strong feeling but a hunch. Remember during the intro for the show both Marty and Rust’s faces are shown and then fire overtakes them? That might be their fate.

So there it is, my thoughts on how our heroes die in the final episode. There should be plenty of blood on the detective’s hands as well before they meet their fate. Remember Reggie Ledoux in handcuffs telling Rust “You’ll do this again”? Maybe the lawnmower man or spaghetti monster gets his head blown off. Either way when the dust settles both detectives will be dead along with several of the cult members. Nothing will change because the “sprawl” (rich and powerful members) is too large and the cops never solve a  case, just clean up a mess.

Rust once said “This is a world where nothing is solved” (ep5), and he might eat his words. The flat circle of time will go on and events will keep occurring unchanged.


Random Thoughts

I also want to go over a few other things as we approach the finale. At the end of episode 7, did it not seem like it was too obvious who the lawnmower man was? He had scars, the sun shone against his back with an orangish/yellow tone, and he was cutting the grass in a circular pattern. It was almost too obvious that he was the man with scars or Yellow King. This made me ponder if the writers were trying to trick us in the scene and we would wrongfully assume he was the spaghetti monster.  After some thought I decided against that. It absolutely was the large man with scars (and a beard in ep3).  My reasoning? We’ve been introduced to characters for 7 episodes now and with only an hour remaining, there’s no time to introduce us to one of the main characters. Everything we’ve seen and heard in seven episodes is about culminate into one action packed final hour of television.

Given how we were briefly introduced to the lawnmower man in episode 3 and his reemergence in episode 7, I started wondering if there are other characters with brief scenes earlier that may show up in the finale. The obvious person would be Maggie’s father (Jake Herbert via IMDB). He made a brief appearance in episode 2 but we didn’t learn anything about him other than he’s an asshole and hates how kids dress and everything these days is about sex.  one could say his cameo was meaningless, it was more about Maggie making Marty participate in family day which happened to take place at her parents. Given what we know about Audrey, I find him a more interesting subject. Under the assumption that Marty is a good father who might miss things right under his nose, who else could have exposed Audry to the ritual of the circle and experiences that she drew out in school?  Was she abused as a child? Did she accidentally stumble upon a video tape or ritual in progress? Either way it was traumatic enough to set her off and need medication as an adult.

The who and how Audrey was exposed leads us down the path of whether or not Maggie’s father Jake is a higher up in the cult or even one of the 5 masked members in the circle?  It makes you wonder if he reemerges after a brief cameo like Errol the lawnmower man/spaghetti monster did.

There’s also the possibility Maggie knows her dad is one of the rich old white men who takes parts in these rituals. She was just raised by fear to not tell anyone about it and somewhere in all of that, Audrey got mixed up in one of the aforementioned scenarios. If this is true I’ll be shocked. Tomorrow we’re going to be waiting in a cold sweat to see what the big jaw dropping revelation is. If Maggie’s knowledge of all these rituals is actually uncovered, well, that would certainly be worthy of the season finale bomb.  I feel like that would be a huge twist, almost too big of a twist.  I could see her dad’s involvement being revealed and Marty learning of Audrey’s potential abuse which makes him put Reggie Ledoux holes in plenty of heads. Enough blabbering, I have to stop this before I spend the next decade stone-drunk. Hammered but functional.

To recap:

The season finale is going to be full of death.

Marty and Rust kill a lot of bad guys, most of whom could be key for the two detectives (Gilbough and Papania) that are covering the Lake Charles murder.  Marty finds out that his daughter Audrey was somehow involved as a child and goes off. We may or may not find out if Maggie and or her father are involved. In the end  Marty and Rust both die. Rust may off himself or both may die in a fire.  Gilbough and Papania will show up at the end of the episode to find the carnage. Every single bad guy that could be used to build a case will be dead and so are both Rust and Marty.  They’ll have no witnesses or idea of what took place, forcing them to shut the case down. After the case is shut down, the cult returns to doing what they’ve been doing for years. Time is a flat circle.

Wreath placed where Dora Lange was found. Notice it's shape. Duh.

Wreath placed where Dora Lange was found. Notice the shape. Duh.



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