The Bus

Pretty good finale, although I wish it had been 1:15 or just a bit longer. One hour wasn't enough.

The only disappointment is that we don't know (were not spoonfed) what happened to Hart's daughter, exactly.

Also: no one from this cast is supposed to come back next season as the same character. I think the idea is each season is an independent story.

Turd Ferguson

Rust's speech at the end about feeling his daughter and his father's presence when he was under made me misty. Incredible end to an incredible season.

Geofferson

Disappointed there wasn't anything more about Maggie or Hart's daughter. The clues are just confusing now. That was a weird scene in the hospital. Maggie's eyes looked to be two different colors and they made a point to include her large, gold ring in a shot. Okay, I need to stop.

Deftones

yeah, that was a pretty good episode. i do agree it seemed a bit rushed. it could've been longer. but, we got some stellar performances again. i can't see how MM won't win an award for this. he was brilliant.

a cool way to continue the plot would be new detectives picking up the case and trying to find out who was involved in the video.

spainlinx0

A remarkably happy ending for such a dark show. I enjoyed the ride.

Mike86

I thought it was a very satisfying conclusion. I think the show probably could have squeezed in another couple of episodes or so if they had really wanted to flesh out some more story but overall I'm more than happy with the series/season as a whole. As for the clues with Maggie I think that was just to throw people off. Marty's daughters earlier in the season seems a bit more hard to explain and I guess is the only thing I'd like to have seen expanded on.

Going to miss these two characters but I'm glad that Rust and Marty both made it out alive and that the show didn't go some cliche route that had one of them involved in the murders. I wonder if Rust's world/religious views have changed now that he says to have felt the presence of his daughter and his dad when he was under, it would seem so given how emotional he was but he was pretty set in what he thought was right before that. Really good final scene between Marty and Rust and McConaughey gave a fantastic performance.

dave94

I was pleasantly surprised by the hopeful outlook by Rust after the dark places the show went throughout the season.

Cellar Door

That was great. Loved the ending with Rust and Hart at the hospital.

Big Boy Laroux

Now all of the sudden they don't want to show nudity? I want my money back!

EdTheRipper

Excellent end to what was a great series. McConaughey was just incredible. I'm really sad that its over now.

JasonF

What an amazing 8 hours of television. I need to let this percolate in my mind a while, but I'm definitely going to need to rewatch the whole thing in a few months.

Meanwhile, this might help some people who (like me) had some trouble keeping track of the relationships between some of the peripheral characters.

johnnysd

Were they hinting that Rust was a minister or something similar before the death of his daughter?

creekdipper

Harrelson already showed his hairy ol' butt in The Cowboy Way. You aren't missing anything.

majorjoe23

They didn't. That wasn't a literal thing, a few people referred to him as a priest in this crazy molesting religion. Probably due to his ability to understand how monsters think/to mislead the audience into thinking he might be involved.

Pointyskull

While I wanted more of a reveal - especially related to Marty's family - I like the notion of them only getting the guy they were after.

I really hate that this series is over...

Neil M.

I thought seeing Errol holding Rust up in the air with a knife, while he's being head-butted, was really ridiculous. I'm a little mixed on the show but I'll definitely watch it again. The production value and performances were fantastic but the story let me down a bit.

Geofferson

My favorite part of the episode was the epilogue at the hospital with Hart and Cohle. Hart's obviously struggling when his family comes to visit, Cohle is obviously struggling given what he experienced while unconscious...and the final exchange between the two of them in the parking lot was a thing of beauty. We're reminded that the primary focus of this show is about these two men and their lives. Everything else (as much as we may hate to admit) is ancillary to the narrative.

Overnight, this finale brought back thoughts of the old HBO show Carnivale. I don't think there's been any show since then that did such an effective job telling a story between light/dark, good/evil as TD. This season will be missed for sure.

spainlinx0

I find it funny that the person who I thought was a red herring, creepy lawnmower man, did indeed turn out to be the main killer. Then every other clue that everyone was so good about piecing together, daughter with Barbie orgy, hidden paintings, crown in the tree, etc. turned out to not even really be addressed.

bunkaroo

If you wanted to see nauseating female nudity, you could have just left HBO on after True Detective - Girls is on right after.

cungar

What did Childress throw at Marty that stuck in his chest? It was dark and maybe I missed it but I thought it was an axe. Would he really survive that?

sauce07

It was a small hatchet

cungar

'True Detective' Finale Crashes HBO GO
Fans turn to social media after crime drama season finale fails to load
Comment

Sunday night's season finale of True Detective, the HBO crime drama phenomenon that has attracted nearly 11 million viewers per episode, became a (murder) victim of its own success, crashing HBO GO and launching the inevitable social media cri de coeurs.

Nausicaa

Interesting finale. I have mixed feelings about it, but overall I liked it. That said I think while episodes 1-5 were basically brilliant, the final three felt a bit weaker. I think when Marty and Hart left the station and the three story lines were condensed into the single present storyline, the show lost a lot of its narrative complexity and thematic beauty. There were aspects of this show the first half of the season that just floored me, and they were largely absent in the final two or three episodes.

Things that I didn't like so much:
1) Too much footage of Childless and his sister around their house. I wish the show would have stayed focused on Rust and Cohle's POV. As a villain, he ended up being pretty lame, and even most of the other villains in TD were more intimidating/interesting. That whole opening sequence was pretty unnecessary.

2) The whole final chase through Carcossa. The abandoned Fort was a great location, and there were some cool shots like the aerial shot down towards Rust in that submerged clearing, as if trapped in a maze. Overall though, the whole scene was played way too quickly, and the cinematography wasn't dark enough IMO. Marty and Cohle surviving their wounds was also a bit of a stretch, to me.

3) Cohle's new found optimism at the end. On the one hand it was a natural and fitting conclusion, on the other I was kind of hoping the show would up the ante with its bleakness and give us something a bit more grim.

I liked the call back to one of my favorite lines in the series, when Rust tells the detectives how his daughter slipped into a comma right away before she died, and how beautiful a death it was as she stepped from one darkness to "another, deeper kind".

Anyway, overall it was a really well executed 8 episodes of TV that gave viewers a lot to think about. Great stuff overall.

Giantrobo

slop101

Now, was Pizzolatto ripping off Alan Moore, or paying homage...?

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