True Detective Season 5 Confirmed And It’s Already Making People Mad
True Detective: Night Country, starring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, helmed by showrunner Issa López, has become the most-watched incarnation of the HBO crime anthology series. So it’s not a surprise that Warner Bros.-Discovery has already given the greenlight to True Detective Season 5, but not everyone is jumping for joy over the news.
Issa Lopez Has A True Detective Deal With HBO
The Hollywood Reporter announced López’s new deal to start working on True Detective Season 5. López took over the series starting with the Night Country season from True Detective’s creator Nic Pizzolatto. The deal also gives López more chances to develop new projects and series for HBO.
True Detective: Night Country Was A Hit For HBO
True Detective: Night Country raked in 12.7 million viewers surpassing the first series starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson that ran on HBO 10 years ago.
HBO’s drama chief Franchesca Orsi (that’s the head of dramatic shows and not behind-the-scenes drama, of course) praised López’s bold new take on the Night Country series. It took the crime anthology to the cold town of Ennis, Alaska, during the “polar night.”
Orsi called her “that one-of-a-kind, rare talent that speaks directly to HBO’s creative spirit.”
True Detective Season 5 Will Have New Ideas
López says she’s already working up ideas for True Detective Season 5. She didn’t tell The Hollywood Reporter much about what she’s got planned for the detectives in the new season except that she would “weave the mystery” around them for the fans.
Unfortunately, some aren’t excited that López is sticking around for True Detective Season 5. Pizzolatto is working on a western series for Amazon and a few other projects since López took over the HBO series.
Original True Detective Creator Hated It
Pizzolatto has been a vocal critic of Night Country all season on social media. He openly criticized Night Country’s connections to the first season and called the series “stupid.”
He even reposted a negative review of the series on his Instagram that said the show “couldn’t stick the landing or maintain suspense without a cheap reliance on jump scares. Final opinion: oof.” He also responded to a negative review of the show with the comment “Can’t blame me.”
True Detective: Night Country A Critical Hit
Reis stood up for López and brushed off Pizzolatto’s critiques saying on Twitter, “If you don’t have anything good to share, shit on others.” Ouch.
Pizzolatto’s opinion seems to be in the minority column as the series heads into True Detective Season 5. Night Country currently holds a 92 percent rating among critics on Rotten Tomatoes. The New Republic’s Phillip Maciak called the show an ushering of a new type of TV mystery series that stays away from the old formula of a satisfying “Whodunit?” style conclusion.
Maciak called Night Country “a revision, eager to preserve the anthology’s signature funk while feeling free to let go of Pizzolatto’s gallery of men in crisis.”
True Detective Has Been Up And Down For HBO
There’s also a very good reason why HBO decided to go with a new showrunner for its newest season. True Detective’s first season became a critical and ratings blockbuster that felt like the start of something new and fresh but the second and third seasons saw a very noticeable drop-off and felt like the first series may have just been a case of lightning in a bottle.
Will True Detective Season 5 be able to buck that trend or is it doomed to suffer the same fate as seasons 2 and 3? We’ll see.
