{"id":249,"date":"2019-01-22T04:07:35","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T04:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/?p=249"},"modified":"2026-08-14T02:52:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T02:52:49","slug":"true-detective-s3e3-the-big-never","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/?p=249","title":{"rendered":"True Detective S3E3: \u201cThe Big Never\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The third episode of\u00a0True Detective<\/em>\u2018s third season continued the show\u2019s promising start from last week, when we saw the first two episodes air back-to-back. True Detective<\/em> S3E3 saw relationships take center stage, really allowing us as an audience to see Roland West in particular in a better light and ending any worries that he might be a watered-down version of Marty Hart. We also got more insight into the dynamic between Wayne and Amelia, both in 1980 and in 1990, leading to a pretty surreal and cryptic moment in the modern day that we as an audience will surely debate over for weeks to come. While we aren\u2019t much closer to figuring out the larger questions being asked, a world has been created in these first three episodes that I am more than happy to live in for a while. Let\u2019s get into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1980<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our investigation picked up where we left it last week. During a car ride, Wayne questions if the Purcell kids have perhaps been lying about their after-school activities for a while. This suspicion is confirmed when they question the classmate who had previously told them about Julie and the doll. Roland and Wayne go back to the Purcell home to search for more clues. In Julie\u2019s room, Wayne finds several cryptic notes inside a tote bag from Hoyt Foods, a local food company where her mother used to work. Wayne puts these notes in his pocket, separate from the other evidence collected. Before they leave, Wayne also finds a photo album which includes a picture of a ten-year-old Will at his confirmation, with his hands folded exactly how they were when he was found dead. As an audience playing detective, the first question we have to be asking ourselves is who all has seen that picture? Are we looking at a scenario where one of the parents (or Uncle) is going to be looked at as a suspect?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later in True Detective<\/em> S3E3, we see Wayne in the woods, still desperately searching for some clue that can help him find Julie. What he finds instead is a bag of toys and a bloodstained rock, which indicates that this is where Will was killed. Wayne and Roland question an older man who lives nearby, who claims to have seen the children numerous times in the area. He also tells them that he\u2019s seen a brown Sedan in the area before, with a black man driving and a white woman with him. The car is noticeable because it is said to have been nicer than most cars in the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This all gets the mind going. Did the Purcell children know Will\u2019s killer \/ Julie\u2019s abductor? The toys in a bag\u2014toys their father says he didn\u2019t buy for them\u2014 seem to indicate a relationship. Was Will perhaps being distracted with the toys so his killer could nurture their relationship with Julie? The notes hidden in her room seem to indicate a more intimate relationship, which plays well considering she was kept alive and her brother wasn\u2019t. Did the killer murder Will after he felt he had won Julie over enough to come along with him? Kids from a distressed home would seek out adults who pay attention to them. Whoever did this seems to have knowledge of the kids\u2019 home life and the picture of Will. If it was a black man and a white woman, should we be looking at Lucy Purcell as a suspect?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another theme from this part of the story was the many leads the detectives were chasing, some credible, most not. In a scene that could easily be forgotten about in a tightly packed hour of television, the detectives visited the Ozark Children\u2019s Outreach Center, founded by a man named Hoyt (of Hoyt Foods) whose wife lost her daughter. When talking with our other\u00a0True Detective<\/em>\u00a0writer here at 25YL, Laura Stewart, she asked me if I thought Hoyt could have arranged the kidnapping of Julie to give his wife a \u201cnew daughter\u201d and if Will was killed because they \u201cdidn\u2019t need him.\u201d It\u2019s an interesting theory, and one worth noting after True Detective<\/em> S3E3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other big arc from 1980 was the beating of Brett Woodard, dubbed \u201cTrashman\u201d by the locals. He\u2019s an easy target as he\u2019s mysterious, lives alone, and is considered \u201cdifferent\u201d by the locals. This is a story that will pick up next week, as after his beating, Woodard goes to his shed and grabs a large green bag. While the internet is buzzing about what\u2019s in the bag, my guess is weapons and not a body. What could his revenge look like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1990<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The show\u2019s middle time frame was perhaps my favorite this week. While light on big-picture clues, this portion certainly gave us the most insight into relationships and perhaps even motivations. Roland really had a chance to become a three-dimensional character in this episode, between checking on Tom Purcell (more on him in a moment), standing up for Wayne in the deposition, and then in a final scene, verbally sparring with his former partner before asking him if he wanted to be a detective again\u2014giving him an opportunity to look for Julie again, this time with Roland as his boss. Roland stood out as an individual of high character who genuinely cared about not only his former partner Hays, but also people in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Roland
Screenshot\/ HBO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Roland\u2019s home visit to see Tom shows Tom as a recovering alcoholic, reciting AA terminology, five years sober. In the conversation, we learn that Tom is clinging to the hope that he\u2019ll see his daughter again after hearing about her fingerprints. We also learn that Lucy died in Las Vegas. Whether that lends credibility to Lucy being a part of the original crime or not can be debated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At home, things are tense between Wayne and Amelia, with him seemingly in a personal decline and her career as a writer moving upwards. The case of the Purcell children really seems to be their common bond, something they\u2019re both obsessive about, although Wayne carries a guilt Amelia doesn\u2019t. Amelia seems to be enjoying playing the role of reporter whereas Wayne is still shaken, ten years later. The scene where Wayne takes his children shopping and loses his daughter Rebecca shows that, in his mind, she was going to be another Julie and he began melting down. Later that night at home, he takes those feelings out on Amelia after she comes home grinning ear to ear over a successful day chasing clues with cops over Julie\u2019s fingerprints found at a Walgreens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Wayne
Screenshot \/ HBO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

2015<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Accompanied by his son, Wayne is seeing a doctor who tells him he\u2019s going to have to make lifestyle choices, dancing around the fact that Wayne is apparently suffering from dementia. Wayne tells his son that he will kill himself if he\u2019s forced into a home, which is the last thing anyone with an elderly parent wants to hear. Wayne records more of his interview for the true crime documentary and this time, he\u2019s pushed on why the detectives didn\u2019t follow up with several witnesses who are on record claiming they saw a brown Sedan but were never interviewed. Wayne hears \u201cbrown Sedan\u201d and the gears are turning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scene from True Detective<\/em> S3E3 most likely to be studied and taken apart word by word begins with Wayne sitting alone at his desk, reading case notes. He hears his wife behind him and she begins to speak to him cryptically about his current mental situation. She pushes him to remember something, something he left in the woods, and then tells him to \u201cfinish it.\u201d Let the theories begin\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Between the reporter pushing Wayne about witnesses not interviewed, Amelia\u2019s cryptic messages, and Wayne\u2019s state of being in 1990, it\u2019s seeming likely that Wayne covered something up in 1980, leading to a false conviction being overturned in 1990. What did Wayne cover up? The internet is blowing up after True Detective<\/em> S3E3 with theories about Amelia being the killer, citing her fascination with traveling under new identities, eagerness to write a book about a subject that tortures her husband, and the recent trend of femme fatales on TV, but I\u2019m not buying it. It strikes me as being much more likely that Wayne made a mistake\u2014a mistake that perhaps he made in 1980 by allowing Amelia to be too close to the case. I could also see a scenario where Wayne finds himself in a situation assisting Brett Woodard in his confrontation with the locals who attacked him\u2014one Vietnam vet with serious baggage helping another\u2014and it somehow leading to a mistake being made. I\u2019m intrigued by the idea of Amelia being there for her husband as his mind fails him. She\u2019s pushing him to \u201cfinish it,\u201d to solve the case that has defined his life and was a big part of hers. To me, that feels like a love story: the deceased partner helping the living one to get over that final hurdle in life. Of course, this is\u00a0True Detective<\/em>\u00a0and we have five hours of story left, so there are no safe bets yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The third episode of\u00a0True Detective\u2018s third season continued the show\u2019s promising start from last week, when we saw the first two episodes air back-to-back. True Detective S3E3 saw relationships take center stage, really allowing us as an audience to see Roland West in particular in a better light and ending any worries that he might […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"saved_in_kubio":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[283],"tags":[17,287],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-recaps","tag-hbo","tag-true-detective"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":255,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions\/255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}