‘True Detective’ Season 2 to Tackle Transit System’s ‘Occult History’

True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto hinted at some of the themes in the series’ second season in a recent interview with HitFix. “This is really early, but I’ll tell you [it’s about] hard women, bad men and the secret occult history of the United States transportation system,” he said. As for what he learned from the show’s first season, which just ended its run, he said “I need to keep being strange – don’t play the next one straight.”

5 things we learned from True Detective

He also said that he wrote the first season of True Detective with the season finale in mind, as well as the fates of both Matthew McConaughey’s character, Rustin Cohle, and Woody Harrelson’s, Martin Hart. “Considering what these characters had been through, it seemed hard to me to work out a way where they both live and they both exit the show to live better lives beyond the boundaries of these eight episodes,” he said. “Now they are going to go on and live forever beyond the margins of the show, and our sense, at least, is they haven’t changed in any black to white way, but there is a sense that they have been delivered from the heart of darkness. They did not avert their eyes, whatever their failings as men. And that when they exit, they are in a different place.”

Q&A: McConaughey on McConaissance and True Detective

Looking back on the season as a whole, Pizzolatto said he was very satisfied, both with what he made and how it was received. “It couldn’t have been better,” he said. “I’m just surprised by it. . . . I think this show answers everything it told you to ask. The questions it didn’t tell you to ask are questions best left to one’s self.”