‘True Detective: Night Country’ Showrunner Defends That Wild Easter Egg In The Season Finale: ‘I Believe That It’s True’

WARNING: Spoilers for True Detective Season 4 Episode 6 below.

With the True Detective: Night Country finale now out in the wild, showrunner Issa López is defending the inclusion of a wild Easter egg that caught fans (and franchise creator Nic Pizzolatto) by surprise.

While Jodie Foster’s Liz Danvers and Kali Reis’ Evangeline Navarro interrogate scientist Raymond Clark (Owen McDonnell), he utters a line that will be very familiar to fans of the original season of True Detective.

“Time is a flat circle,” Clark says, echoing the iconic line from Matthew McConaughey’s Rust Cohle, and further tying Night Country to the first season. However, for López, the inclusion of the line was more than just an Easter egg.

Via Decider:

“Well, number one, I believe that it is true. You know, I do believe that. In a bunch of quite advanced physics theories, time is not linear. It’s happening all at the same time,” López told Decider. “That was what Rust Cohle was referring to in that first season. Everything is happening at the same time, all the time. And we’re doomed to be trapped in it.”

López explained that she purposely gave the line to a scientist to nod to the real physics behind the theory. (Though she emphasized that Clark “has lost his mind” at this point in the story.)

As a storyteller, López also liked the concept of time being “circuitous” and expanding on that theme with her entry in the True Detective pantheon. However, the inclusion of the line apparently did not sit well with Pizzolatto. In a now-deleted Instagram post, he lashed out at Night Country being tied to the first season.

Pizzolatto has now taken a more passive-aggressive approach by encouraging people to keep their thoughts contained to a new Instagram post instead of flying into the comments of photos of his wife and recently departed father.

While Lopez has been diplomatic about Pizzolatto’s social media meltdown, Night Country star Kali Reis did not hold back her thoughts.

“That’s a damn shame,” Reis tweeted about Pizzolatto. “But hey I guess ‘if you don’t have anything good to share, shit on others’ is the new wave.”