I’m still enjoying the season – I think the two leads have created very good characters and I want to see how they finish the investigation. I’m assuming there’s a chemical/medical explanation for the supernatural oddness, but I suspect we won’t be perfectly satisfied one way or the other (kind of like the “cosmic maelstrom” vision Rust had at the end of season 1).
One reddit theory that makes me giggle is that Danvers was catfishing Hank the whole time, and every time she was answering Tinder or whatever on her phone, she was sending another message to Hank as his supposed Russian bride.
You nailed it. I rewatched it just to be clear, and I think I might still could be right too.
You definitely nailed what was going on. With Hank planning to kill Danvers from the get go - after shooting Otis Hank starts to raise his gun to Danvers when Peter walks in = he intended to kill Danvers. When Peter shows up - Danvers keeps telling Peter to stop and think (ie, Peter, think about this situation you just walked into, why would Otis be dead/your Dad hacked your computer, etc., if you lower your gun Hank will shoot me next). I didn’t pick up on that at all.
Then…
Peter thinks it through and comes to a conclusion. He will absolutely not lower his gun (nor help him cover it up). Hank realizes this. Since he has some moral compass, Hank confesses to moving the body and…I think…does a suicide by cop thing. If not, then it’s just you’re right all the way, Hank is testing whether Peter will actually shoot him right up until he does.
With the themes of vigilante, extrajudicial justice so front forward, I shouldn’t have been so surprised by the conclusion. The last episode was more satisfying than I expected. The supernatural elements were successfully hand waved away like “Forget it, Jake. It’s Night Country.” People see weird shit in the endless night; and it’s even weirder if you have some underlying emotional issues.
I’m not moving to Alaska anytime soon (meaning “ever”).
Yes, but what does that mean? Is she hiding in the wilderness, visiting occasionally? On reddit people were saying that was her spirit, and that she walked out onto the ice like her sister.
IMO, the visions and possible supernatural aspects felt clumsily edited and just left me more confused about the writer’s vision. It turns out there was no vision, just “haha, fuckin with ya” filmmaking.
I took the final shot meaning to be that Navarro was there with her in spirit only. My take was that she took a long walk off a short ice shelf, just like her sister. But yeah, it was left to be somewhat ambiguous.
Yeah, so most of the supernatural elements were explained, but what about the tongue? That seems to have been left as an intentional loose end.
When the women of the town told their ‘story’ about what happened to the Tsalal guys, Danvers asked about the tongue, but they said that wasn’t part of their ‘story’. The surviving Tsalal guy (forget his name at the moment) that Navarro and Danvers interrogated said that they all killed Annie K. but didn’t remove her tongue, speculating that the cop who moved her body, Hank Prior, may have removed it to send a message to the protesters— keep quiet.
So maybe Hank Prior kept the tongue in his freezer for those couple years for whatever reason, but then how did it show up at the Tsalal site? I don’t remember if Hank had had an opportunity to leave it there before the other cops showed up, and I can’t think of for what reason he would have.
Indeed it is, as show creator Issa López tells Business Insider:
But by the finale, we still don’t have the answer to one of the show’s first questions: Who cut out Kowtok’s tongue, and who left it at Tsalal when the scientists died?
“That’s one that I’m not going to be telling you because my goal was to give you the possibility of choosing your answers here,” López told BI. “There are many ways that tongue could have ended up there. Some of them are natural and some of them are not.”
Overall, I thought it was good. It tied up all the main loose ends and all that. Like the first reason, great acting really helped make it better.
I thought I’d be more interested in any loose ends, theories, supernatural or not, etc. but I’m not.
I’ll force an explanation re: the tongue. There was a consistent pattern of people telling stories to other people and leaving out things that actually happened. For example, Danvers tells Peter the story about the murder/suicide with Wheeler, but she leaves out the part that Wheeler did not commit suicide, Navarro shot him - Danvers did not want to implicate anyone for murder in her story. Another example is Clark tells the story about how Annie K died with the other scientists stabbing her, but he leaves out the part of Annie not being quite dead and him strangling her to death - he loved her and that was not part of the story he wanted to portray. I’m sure there were more.
Here, the cleaning ladies tell the story of how the scientists died. I’d guess, they left out something of their story - they’d rather the tongue be a myth/ghost of Annie. If not them, then someone choose not to include that part in their story (ie, Hank said he moved the body, but didn’t mention the tongue).
The tongue needs two explanations, though. Not just who cut it out of Annie’s mouth, but also who left it at the lab after the researchers were killed. And it’s tough to come up with a scenario that explains both. It makes a certain amount of (grisly) sense for the cleaning ladies to have left it, because it ties the lab to Annie’s death, but it doesn’t make any sense for them to have taken it in the first place. It makes some sense that the corrupt cop/oil company might cut it out, to make her death look like a warning to other protesters, but it doesn’t make any sense for them to have left it in the lab. Plus, I can’t think of any good reason any party in the show would have for keeping the thing for years after Annie’s death.
You’re right, and I have no idea. So I’ll just speculate wildly, but let’s see if I have the timeline right.
6 years prior (or whenever Annie died):
Annie killed at Tsalal station by the scientists
Body is moved to the to outskirts of Ennis; presumably by Hank
Body is found near outskirts of Ennis
It’s not clear when the tongue was removed and who found it. But Danvers “story” was Annie was found without her tongue. We need to know what “found” means…I presume that means found by police - like officially. I don’t think it means the first person to come across Annie on the outskirts of Ennis prior to police finding Annie - Danvers couldn’t know that anyways. I might be missing some stuff here, but again, it’s all based on “stories” anyways.
We also can presume it would be easy to preserve the tongue pretty much anywhere for 6 years - it’s really cold everywhere - it doesn’t have to be kept in a refrigerator/freezer.
Present time:
Cleaning ladies finally figure out who killed Annie by accidentally finding the underground lab/evidence - it was the scientists!
Cleaning ladies kill scientists
Tongue is found at Tsalal station by police
With that, Hank could have cut the tongue out when he moved the body. Hank could have kept the tongue himself or left it by the body on the outskirts of Ennis. If tongue left by body, someone else could have taken the tongue. Or one of the scientists cut it out before it was moved by Hank and kept the tongue at Tsalal. No idea who, but you could probably narrow it down to those three groups: Hank, the cleaning ladies, the scientists.
Why? I don’t know, but it doesn’t have to be for one reason. Meaning, Hank could cut it out to send a message, and, if left by Annie’s body, the cleaning ladies could find and keep it for a different reason. Not sure about the scientists, but Clark would be my first guess as to who - he was guilt-ridden and a little nutty.
