In the second episode of True Detective Season Three, documentary producer Elisa Montgomery tells 70-year-old Hays that "It's been theorized that the straw dolls [in the Purcell case] are a sign of pedophile groups like the Crooked Spiral." What she's referring to is the symbol seen throughout True Detective Season One, found, most notably, carved on the back of Dora Lange's body and seen in some of Rust Cohle's visions.
This has led fans to speculate that Season One and Season Three of True Detective take place in the same universe, which the show's producers have more or less confirmed. Now, in the upcoming fifth episode of the season, True Detective includes another nod to its first season—this time showing the actual faces of Matthew McConaughey's Cohle and Woody Harrelson's Martin Hart.
This brief scene appears in the teaser for Episode Five, which shows Montgomery sitting next to a laptop that displays a newspaper article with the headline: "Former State Police Officers Stop Alleged Serial Murderer." Beneath the headline is an image of older Cohle and Hart.
"They're all gone. Vanished. Killed. Kept silent," Montgomery says in the voiceover in the clip, which you can watch in full below.
It's unclear how, exactly, the Season One case connects to the Purcell case—or why Montgomery is showing this to Hays—but this is a clear confirmation that these stories take place in the same universe and may be intertwined.
Although, producers of the show have pretty clearly stated that they just put those Easter Eggs in as fun ways to fuck with fans. True Detective producer Scott Stephens told The Hollywood Reporter a few weeks ago:
"I guess it's set in the same fictional world everything is set in, right? The reference is kind of a nod to the [first season]. The stuff in season one was based on the same sort of pedophilia stories that are mentioned by the documentary crew. That's kind of the connective tissue."
Now, this could just be a way for him to throw fans off the trail. Or these references to Season One are really just yet another red herring in this story.
Matt Miller is a Brooklyn-based culture/lifestyle writer and music critic whose work has appeared in Esquire, Forbes, The Denver Post, and documentaries.
