What happens to Danvers’ son in ‘True Detective’ season 4?

It’s fair to say True Detective: Night Country won’t go down as many fans’ favorite season of the anthology crime drama. Although it’s somewhat difficult to ascertain if the show’s poor critical reception is down to review-bombing or because it just really is that bad, it’s clear to anyone watching True Detective season 4 that it’s a long way from the quality of the show’s acclaimed first season, even if it does attempt to recapture that glory by featuring some unexpected callbacks and connections.

Night Country‘s mixed success, however, is nothing to do with leading star Jodie Foster, who plays Chief Liz Danvers, an Alaskan cop who teams up with Trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) to investigate the mysterious disappearances of eight scientists from a top-secret research station. Along the way, Danvers must face her own personal trauma owing to a devastating incident from her past, the specifics of which are never spoken about throughout the season. However, the Night Country finale at last tells all.

Holden Danvers’ fate in True Detective: Night Country, explained

In prior Night Country episodes, we had glimpsed a spirit boy in bed with her, not to mention that there seemed to be a greater significance to a polar bear stuffed animal missing its eye and the song “Twist and Shout” by The Beatles. In the finale, the answers are revealed. Well, kind of. In short, yes, Danvers had a son, named Holden, but he and her late husband, Jake, died in a car crash. Liz and Leah, who was her husband’s biological child, were the only survivors and Liz adopted Leah has her own afterward.

The truth comes out during the finale when Liz falls into frozen waters after she glimpses her son through the ice, which marks the character’s first interaction with the spirit world that Navarro has been connected to throughout. Holden’s spirit speaks with Navarro and asks her to tell his mother that he is still with her, which leads Navarro to cover one of Liz’s eyes with her hand. This calls back to the polar bear with the missing eye, Holden’s toy. It’s not clarified but maybe we can infer that “Twist and Shout” was playing in the car when it crashed.

The way this plotline was handled has definitely earned the ire of True Detective viewers, with many feeling that they still have many questions about Jake and Holden’s deaths that weren’t answered. “It’s so strange. It feels like so much was left on the editing room floor,” posited one Reddit user. Meanwhile, others felt that making a big mystery out of Liz’s backstory wasn’t worth all the hassle. “We’ve known this since the very first episode but the show treated it like there was more to it,” another Redditor argued.

True Detective season 5 — which hasn’t even been confirmed yet but seems a given — the onus is on you to do better.