‘True Detective’ Recap: ‘The Final Country’

Written by John Edward Betancourt 

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​I’m always excited when a television series, begins to reveal its secrets. Because once that happens, there is no turning back for the show, and the facts begin to pour out in fast and furious fashion and that’s precisely why I was so eager to tune into last night’s episode of True Detective. Because last week’s episode brought forth our first real revelation in regard to the Purcell Case, meaning that ‘The Final Country’ would potentially fill in more of the blanks, and well, it most certainly did, in the most disturbing ways imaginable of course since this tale, held nothing back when it comes to the case, or the dark things that Wayne pushed himself to do in order to solve this grand mystery.
 
Now, the first thing this particular tale taught us, is that the Hoyt family is not to be trifled with, since in 1990, Roland and Wayne found Tom Purcell’s body high above the world near where his children died with a ‘self-inflicted’ gunshot wound to the head, a discovery that outright brought the case to a close since all the evidence pointed toward Tom at this point in time and that did not sit well with Wayne. Because he knew something stunk about this whole mess and that somehow the family was involved in this and that prompted him to dig deeper and deeper, eventually allowing for him to uncover the fact that Harris James made a trip to Vegas the day before Lucy died, and that she had been in contact with the Hoyt family prior to his arrival and that meant these two men were going to have a little showdown with Harris in order to get the truth.
 
But, before we dig into that, we need to talk about all the wild revelations that came forth about the Hoyt family in 2015. For in this time period we learned that the family never had any luck with children and keeping their line alive, implying heavily that they ‘acquired’ Julie in the hopes of creating a family for a daughter who lost everything. Which would mean that the Hoyt’s were in fact involved in child trafficking, a point hammered home by Elisa when she revealed her research on the matter to Wayne, a moment that in essence tied this season together with season one since Rust and Marty popped up in this one via an old newspaper article. But what matters more, is that this revelation and the reveal that the one-eyed man likely worked for the Hoyt family, seem to have put Roland and Wayne on the fast track to wrapping this up. 
 
However, the big reveal of the night, is that we came to learn that Wayne has some ugly secrets of his own when it comes to this case. For eventually, he and Roland caught up with Mister Harris James, and performed a little street justice out in the barn once again, with ugly results. For while Harris did imply that he knew more than he was leading on, he wouldn’t tip his hand and an errand of mercy from Wayne led to more confrontation and eventually Harris’ death, forcing Roland and Wayne to bury the evidence, meaning that they did indeed do something twisted and stupid when it comes to this case and there was indeed fallout from this act, since Edward Hoyt made a house call to speak with Wayne and well…no good can come from that.
 
Either way, I love the fact that the reveals are coming in fast and furious fashion now, and that we can finally confirm that Wayne and Roland pushed this thing too far in order to get answers, and while their hearts were in the right places, the end result speaks for itself and well…this is it ladies and gents. We now stand on the precipice when it comes to this story, for only one episode remains and the season three finale will likely reveal the truth about what happened in 1980. And considering how disturbing this case continues to be, and how many twisted moments came forth in this episode, I’m hopeful and anxious to learn everything there is to know about what happened back in ‘80, because deep down, I know the truth is going to leave me unsettled and uncomfortable. Until next time. 

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