‘Night Country’ Showrunner Issa López Took The High Road In The ‘True Detective’ Beef Nic Pizzolatto Apparently Wants To Start

True Detective: Night Country — aka True Detective Season 4 — is doing alright with critics. Jodie Foster’s first TV acting gig since she voiced Maggie in a 2009 episode of The Simpsons — and her first regular live-action TV work since the short-lived Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice show — it’s got a Rotten Tomatoes score in the 90s, plus an audience rating in the 60s, which is nothing to sneeze at. Still, it does have one major detractor: Nic Pizzolatto, the show’s creator and honcho through its third season. He recently laid into the fourth season on social media, but instead of slamming him back, current showrunner Issa López is taking the high road.

Pizzolatto made his comments on Instagram while replying to some haters. Though he retains an executive producer credit, he claimed he certainly did not have any input on this story or anything else.” As such, if anyone has any complaints about it — such as its connections to earlier seasons, which he called “so stupid” — then take it elsewhere. “Can’t blame me,” he wrote.

They’re strong words, but in a recent chat with Vulture, López refused to return in kind:

“I believe that every storyteller has a very specific, peculiar, and unique relation to the stories they create, and whatever his reactions are, he’s entitled to them. That’s his prerogative,” López told Vulture. “I wrote this with profound love for the work he made and love for the people that loved it. And it is a reinvention, and it is different, and it’s done with the idea of sitting down around the fire, and [let’s] have some fun and have some feelings and have some thoughts. And anybody that wants to join is welcome.”

So there. Sure, it probably doesn’t feel great that the person who created and formerly ran the show you’re stewarding through a new season doesn’t appear to like what you’re doing. On the other hand, critics and audiences like it more than Pizzolatto’s second and third seasons, the former being a notorious step-down from the beloved first, which turned the words “time is a flat circle” into a feel-good catchphrase still being cheerily quoted today.

True Detective: Night Country airs on HBO on Sunday night. It’s only halfway through its run, meaning there are only three episodes left.