Even True Detective: Night Country’s answers have mysteries

polygon.com:

Despite the name, True Detective has really never been about tying up every loose end to a mystery. Sure, the detectives at the heart do their damnedest, but if you’re here for procedural and ethical police work, you’re probably barking up the wrong tree; this tree is more about glimpsing supernatural terror, refracted through the prism of human cruelty and violence.

But if you’re really in it for the mystery, and you desperately want a few more answers to the questions that True Detective: Night Country left you with, here’s everything as best we can put it together — including a few comments about the mysteries that the show smartly leaves unsolved.

[Ed. note: As you might’ve guessed: This post spoils the ending of True Detective: Night Country!]

This is one of True Detective: Night Country’s best and most carefully unanswered questions. We know most of what happened to them, they killed Annie, and as revenge the women of Ennis forced them out into the snow to freeze to death. But once the women left, something else kept them there. We hear a few different people throughout the season repeat the phrase “she’s awake;” the show never clarifies who she is exactly or what that means, but it’s possible that whatever this seemingly supernatural force is also what really killed the scientists. The one thing we know for sure is that something otherworldly visited a kind of divine justice on them. And that’s so much creepier than a straight answer.

This is the opposite side of the coin from the fate of the scientists: the show offers us no real explanations, but it certainly strongly suggests that something supernatural and strange was up in Ennis. We don’t have a single credible suggestion at who could have planted the tongue or why, But it does center the entire Tsalal tragedy around Annie. Of course, it’s possible that the women of Ennis planted the tongue there as a reminder, but then, how would they have even gotten it in the first place — plus they deny having