This season was more of a character study than a mystery of any weight. Better than season 2 but not really that good. I guess his wife died of natural causes, was never really resolved

I thought this finale was better than S1, this season was pretty straight forward and most theories were just reached and wasnt as implied as S1 conspiracies were.

Pedo ring and crazy church cult were huge reaches.

The wife stuff was a huge waste of time this episode

Horrific episode. I want my time back. Season was way too slow but episode 7 gave it some potential to have a great ending and instead this is what we got.

So Hayes knew something was up Hoyt and Julie, Hoyt threatens his family and then for the next 20 years he just lets it go.

I have no idea what the purpose of showing Becca going to college in episode 7 or what she even adds to the final episode.

Then the documentary lady just disappears this last episode.

There are so many things that sucked about this season.

They kept playing that music and I was on the edge of my seat waiting to get crushed, waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me... but nothing. that really ****ing sucked.

Uhhhh....... okay than........ whatever the **** that was......

I think I'm fine with the end of the case itself, even though it was delivered lazily. But what the hell was the point of most of that episode? I need to read some reviews to see if they got more out of it, or if they though it was as lazy and boring as everyone here did.

Plus, wasn't implied in ep 1 or 2 that there was some rift between them? Like, Hays asked his son why Becca didn't come and visit more, and his son got annoyed and left the table, clearly a touchy subject. Fast forward to ep 7 and...everything's rosy? Okay...


Random questions:
- why did Tom go to the Hoyt mansion in the first place looking for Julie? He did so after confronting Dan, and in that scene Dan says he was going to give the cops the name of the guy who was paying Lucy (presumably Harris James), but the scene ends before we see Dan give up that information, and would Dan even have known James worked at Hoyt?
- what led them to the black woman who used to work for Hoyt and told them everything about Mr. June? The key to cracking the case turned out to be...interviewing some woman who they really should have talked to 25-35 years ago?

For being True Detectives, they're kinda **** at their job. Interviewer lady (if you've seen Alias Grace it's fun to picture her delivering her lines in an Irish accent) handed them half of the details they were missing - she correctly deduced that Lucy sold her off, she gave them the name Watts (though the pedophile ring stuff was totally off the mark and just a coincidental reason to mention season 1, I guess?). Hays' dead wife filled in for everyone that based on the Ardoin name, clearly the convent faked her death.

I thought it was funny that Mary July's tombstone had the word "AID" in it, given the cause of death.

yeah I cant think of a show with less payoff for such intense ominous music. I was anticipating a twist on the level of him realizing that he was never actually married to becca or something crazy.

the entire episode was a bunch of filler and 5 minutes of a guy telling us exactly what happened. its like he was reading off the wikipedia plot summary of the case.

Homecoming comes to mind. Idk if I just noticed it more but the ominous music in the finale seemed more prevalent and extra lol.

could be true that it was the worst since that, but homeland s4 finale might literally be the worst episode of television I have ever watched. this wasn't even in the same ballpark.

I thought the finale was solid. Not great, but solid, and I think it wrapped everything up nicely. In the last episode, they did set up like it was going to be this epic confrontation and big conspiracy/super villain thing with Hoyt so the way that played out was a bit of a let down. Ghost wife telling Wayne that Julie was still alive was also completely ridiculous.

I like the emphasis on personal relationships and the moments of phenomenal acting, but a bit annoyed at Pizza Boy for having a character who’s featured in about 1% of the season just sit down at his kitchen table and explain everything to us. Come on man.

uh yeah that was not good.

Most shocking to me is that someone wrote this, and then a higher up person reviewed it and said, yup, great ending! Let's go with that.

3/4 of the posters in this thread could have done better ffs.

Sounds like the consensus is "First seven episodes better than season 2 but worse than season 1 followed by a lol bad finale". Is that about right? If so sounds like it's not worth watching.

Who ended up being the True Detective?

the dead wife

subverting tropes!

Oh man, that was terrible.

It did NOT wrap things up nicely. Like no mention of how Amelia dies, or more on the relationship between Hays and his daughter (she just went to college? lol).

Plot stuff just getting explained by Amelia's ghost or half blind dude. Just bad.

I enjoyed Stephen Dorff's performance. But this ending makes me feel this 3rd season is not really worth revisiting, so I'll probably just rewatch season 1 to recover from this finale.

The entire story was told in the last episode. I am not a huge fan of confusion as a vehicle in general, and this season was a waste of time IMO. There was no way to guess, puzzle out or anticipate ANY of the details.

I loved season 1 like a fanboy, hated 2 and am fairly indifferent to 3.

I came here because I thought maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention. She's just not there anymore and nobody explains why or makes ANY reference to it? WTF?

And also btw every single thing you've wondered about in this show was a red herring and it turns out you haven't really heard anything about what actually happened. Ugh.

Episode had ONE redeeming moment and it's just because I'm such a softy.

One thing nobody mentioned, and I cant seem to make sense of.


When they went to the convent, the nun that helped them out had a big fake birthmark by her eye. Well what was the point of that? Then I noticed the little girl, Julie's daughter Lucy, appeared to have light scarring in the same place.

I don't know what the **** it means but it doesnt seem accidental. Because of how absurd the nuns birthmark was.

I did not mind the resolution to the story, just not how they presented it. The last half hour was shown in a way where the viewer kept expecting something missing to be revealed which would cause the happy ending to turn to ****.

*At first I thought the gardening company was connected to Hoyt and the guy actually killed Julie, and the nuns helped cover it up as her dying of aids.

*Then I thought Julie was alive but was again trapped by the guy running the gardening company, and Hayes was going to turn up there and set her free.

*Finally I thought when Hayes gave the paper to his son, that his son was going to reveal the drawer containing multiple papers with the same address or something weird like that, and that Julie/his son/interviewer lady were making him relive the case over and over again as some sort of ****ed up punishment for him not solving it when they should have.

Am I bad at watching TV or was it really shown in a way where the viewer kept expecting the ending to be bad? I don't mind a good ending, I just didn't like that I kept expecting a reveal. Was it meant to show us the darkness of living with dementia or some ****?

Also

This prediction was not that close to the actual plot, but did get some points right .

Nothing that crazy, but I was sort of assuming we were at least meant to think Henry was keeping the address to give it to Eliza knowing it must be important to the case. Which would lead to Eliza finding Julie herself.

Agreed.

not bad at watching tv. it was definitely leading you to believe that something was going to happen. some sort of discovery that his wife or the reporter or anyone was playing a bigger role than we all expected.

maybe we just all got leveled and the twist is that there was no twist. the otherwise completely unnecessary scene of a guy and his daughter named after julie's mom was just exactly as we thought it was