So far this season, the theories about True Detective have been split into two main camps. There are those who believe Wayne Hays's wife Amelia is behind the murder/disappearance (even though even the creator said that's wrong). And there are those who are convinced that somehow the wealthy local Hoyt Family is somehow behind the crime.
In a clunky, and rather disappointing, reveal in the latest episode, we learn that the Hoyt Family is indeed somehow behind Julie Purcell's disappearance. Throughout Season Three, there have been subtle and repeated connections back to the Hoyt family, where Lucy Purcell worked for a brief time.
This week we hear a lot about Harris James. If you'll remember, he was an investigator working on the case back in 1980 and found the backpack that Hays thinks might have been planted in Woodard's yard.
Hays and Roland go and visit James in 1990, who is now working security at Hoyt Family Farms (see the connections already?). He took the job with Hoyt a year after the Purcell kids went missing in '81. Their questioning of James doesn't come up with much other than he seems like kind of a slimy corporate bastard.
Now, when we flash forward to 2015, when Hays is being interviewed for the documentary, Elisa notes once again that James went missing during the 1990 investigation. When she presses the question, and points out all the fatalities surrounding the case, Hays has a senior moment and shuts the interview down.
After that, the show takes a bizarre turn to Tom Purcell's perspective. Having been released from jail, he hunts down Lucy's cousin Dan, who claims to have information about the case. At gun point, Dan tells Tom that he was just going to give the name of the person paying Julie to stay quiet and in hiding. We don't get the name in that scene, but the next time we see Tom, he happens to be lurking outside of the Hoyt estate—evidently because that's whose name Tom gave.
Then, in what's a bizarre, all-to-easy scene, Tom walks right past security cameras (with someone watching) and immediately finds a pink room that one of the runaway girls remembered Julie talking about.
Tom walks into the room, says "The hell? Julie?" then we see a man who looks like James walk up behind him.
It seems like a pretty clear reveal. Hoyt was keeping Julie hostage in his house after kidnapping her in 1980. Although there's still more to be revealed in this show, and that's what I think is haunting Roland and Wayne.
Talking in 2015, Wayne tells Roland: "That director woman, she mentioned Harris James's name again."
As has been theorised already, fans think Wayne and Roland found Julie, killed her captor and covered it up and let her go to stay safe in 1990. This would be why they're so concerned about James being brought up by the documentarian. But considering there are still two more episodes to go after this one, hopefully True Detective still has a few twists left that fans didn't see coming.
Matt Miller is a Brooklyn-based culture/lifestyle writer and music critic whose work has appeared in Esquire, Forbes, The Denver Post, and documentaries.
