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True Detective: Night Country Showrunner on Finale's "Time" Line Use

True Detective: Night Country Showrunner Issa López on THAT line from Season 1 working perfectly for the finale (but it wasn't planned).

Showrunner Issa López (Tigers Are Not Afraid / Vuelven) has made it known just how influential the Woody Harrelson & Matthew McConaughey-starring season of HBO's anthology series was – but the Jodie Foster & Kali Reis-starring True Detective: Night Country was something so much bigger than just a "sequel season." By the time the final credits rolled, viewers were left with the answers we needed – and a whole slew of new questions that will haunt us even more than how the first season left us. With the season finale still freshly out there, we're going to implement our "spoiler rule" and jaw-dropping deep details – but there was one moment from the episode that López clarified that we wanted to pass along. "I do know that the hardcore [Nic] Pizzolatto Forever fans are going to perhaps believe that it was put there just to appease them, but it's not true," López explained to EW. "That phrase… it was not something that I planned on putting in the series at all. I think it's super cheesy to say, 'I will find a place to put this.'" That moment? After the spoiler image jump…

When Detectives Danvers (Foster) and Navarro (Reis) finally get a chance to get some answers from Clark (Owen McDonnell), the scientist drops a line that fans should be more than familiar with: "Time is a flat circle." Yup, the same line dropped by McConaughey's Rust Cohle during one of the season's many memorable moments. Noting that the force in play in both seasons is "ancient, it's older than the ice, it's older than Louisiana," López added, "It's older than Ennis, and it's always been there, and it will always be there."

López approached the confrontation between Danvers, Reis & Clark with that in mind. "Organically, as I was writing the scene, [I thought] if you're going to go with the version of there's something mystical out there in the ice, and there's something in the darkness that is awake and has forever been where this ancient spiral is, and that is also connected to Annie… Then Clark says Annie has always forever been in that cave, and she will always be there, and all of us are doing the same things forever – that's a line that I wrote – I [then realized] because time is a flat circle! It just came so naturally. And it is a scientist who says it because that concept is based in quantum physics. So it is a scientist who needs to say it, López explained. "It's absolutely organic, and it came from the script. So it was not an intention, but I love that the connection between this season and the first one was so true organically that the lines were coming from the lips of the characters."

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