{"id":264,"date":"2019-02-03T04:33:46","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T04:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/?p=264"},"modified":"2026-08-14T02:53:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T02:53:22","slug":"true-detective-s3e5-if-you-have-ghosts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/?p=264","title":{"rendered":"True Detective S3E5: \u201cIf You Have Ghosts\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

True Detective<\/em>\u00a0Season 3 is not Season 1, the sequel. There\u2019s no Yellow Kings, no \u201ctime is a flat circle,\u201d no elements of American Gothic cult-like behavior. It\u2019s different, it is its own story while at the same time being a \u201creturn to form\u201d after Season 2 notoriously fell off the tracks. Season 3 does have a compelling mystery but it\u2019s more than that. Season 3 has offered us a story that touches on very real cultural issues in American history, wrapped inside a mystery but layered with a very real tale about coming to the end of one\u2019s life and wanting to take care of unfinished business before you die. It\u2019s a concept we all can relate to because we\u2019re all going to die one day. No, this isn\u2019t Season 1, but it\u2019s time we quit comparing the two and realize exactly how powerful of a narrative with top-notch acting we have on our hands here. Let’s get into True Detective<\/em> S3E5. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fifth episode, titled \u201cIf You Have Ghosts,\u201d went a long way in terms of pushing the story forward. We found out Brett Woodard was the one who took the fall for the Purcell children\u2019s kidnapping \/ Will\u2019s murder. We learned that things got really<\/em> bad between Hays and West in 1990 and it sounds like someone else died, with Lucy Purcell\u2019s creepy cousin Dan still being the obvious guess. We learned that in 1990, Julie Purcell wants nothing to do with her father and seems to blame him for what happened to her and Will. We learned that Roland\u2019s life turned into one of solitude and booze, presumably after the events of 1990. We also learned that Amelia\u2019s book was something Wayne really should\u2019ve read a long time ago and figures to be a big part of the story moving forward. We also learned that Hoyt, founder of the Ozark Children\u2019s Outreach Center and Hoyt Foods (where Lucy Purcell once worked), paid a visit to Wayne in 1990, which adds to previous speculation that he was perhaps after Julie in an attempt to give his wife a daughter to replace the one they lost. While these were all big steps in advancing the story, there are still many questions left to ask as we the detectives at home try to piece together this case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Last week ended on a cliffhanger, with the local hillbillies chasing Woodard back to his home, which was packed with explosives, trip wires, and the numerous guns at his disposal. Woodard was very much back in a war state of mind and this episode showed us exactly how lethal this confrontation was. Explosives were detonated and many shots were fired. The local men were all taken out and so were some of the FBI agents who were in town working on the Purcell case. West took a bullet to the knee, explaining the limp we see him walk with in 1990 onward. Hays made it into the house and got the drop on Woodard, leading to a conversation between the two Vietnam vets. Here we got to see how broken Woodard was and how this was ultimately a way for him to end his life and his suffering. Woodard wanted to die and he chose Hays, a fellow soldier, to be the one to end his life. As if Hays didn\u2019t already have enough ghosts, now he can add Woodard to the list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1990 timeline, we learned that Woodard was posthumously convicted of the kidnapping of the Purcell kids and Will\u2019s murder. Hays, while looking at crime scene photos, comes to the determination that the evidence found at Woodard\u2019s house (clothing of Julie\u2019s and Will\u2019s backpack) was planted there, which seems to be true. The big thing that stuck out to me here was when West tells Hays that he was stuck behind a desk for the past ten years for not falling in line with the higher ups. Could this mean that Hays disputed Woodard\u2019s guilt even back in 1980 and West didn\u2019t back him?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another major scene from the 1990 timeline in True Detective<\/em> S3E5 was when Tom Purcell was brought in to hear a recording of his daughter Julie calling the police department. In her message, Julie repeatedly says she wants her father to leave her alone and is blaming him for what happened to her and Will. She also doesn\u2019t seem to know that Will is dead. A few thoughts on this: first, it would seem that there were two adults in the woods with the Purcell kids that day in 1980. (Could this be the black man and white woman who were mentioned by the man who lives in the woods?) One adult took Julie, probably without force as it seems like the kidnappers had developed a relationship with the children prior to this day. The other adult killed Will, either because they didn\u2019t want him or because he put up a fight. Another observation is that Julie\u2019s blaming of her father should make us want to suspect him, but my guess is that she\u2019s suffering from Stockholm Syndrome and her captors blamed her father for her unhappy home life. This would also fall in line with her mother having a part in them being taken. Lucy gave them up to Hoyt (or someone else) so the captors portrayed her as the good parent and assigned Tom all of the blame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wayne and Amelia\u2019s relationship was once again prominently featured in True Detective<\/em> S3E5 in both 1980 and 1990. In 1980, Amelia rushed to the hospital the night of the incident at Woodard\u2019s home. After Wayne tried to push her away, he wound up going home with her and they slept together for the first time. In 1990, we saw them at Roland\u2019s new home with his girlfriend\u2014the same woman he was hitting on at the church in 1980 in last week\u2019s episode<\/a>\u2014where they awkwardly fought about Amelia\u2019s obsession with the Purcell case. The fight continued when they got home and the line that stuck out the most to me was when Amelia said that Wayne uses the case as an excuse to not be home and part of his family. My current theory is that after the events of 1990, Wayne quits being a police officer in an attempt to save his marriage and heal his family. How successful it was I don\u2019t know, but it obviously didn\u2019t bring him the personal closure he can only get by solving this case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2015, we see Wayne sitting alone, reading his deceased wife\u2019s book. When he gets to the part about Amelia\u2019s visit with Lucy in 1980, he makes the connection that the note sent to the house also references how children should laugh, which is what Lucy said to Amelia. To Wayne, this is a clue that Lucy sent the note as a way for Tom to try and move on. It\u2019s also further evidence in my opinion that Lucy was in on the kids\u2019 abduction. Seeing how excited Wayne was to get this information from his wife\u2019s book seems to indicate that the book will be frequently referenced moving forward. It\u2019s a great narrative choice to have a way for his wife to continue to help him from beyond the grave, while Roland helps him with the gaps in his memory, so the two most important relationships in Wayne\u2019s life can be equally impactful here on his quest to finally close the Purcell case for good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

True Detective<\/em> S3E5 ended with Henry taking Wayne to see his old partner. We learned that Wayne quit the police force in 1990 and hadn\u2019t spoken to Roland since. Roland is defensive about his drinking, never married the woman from 1990, and seems quite content \u201cwasting time.\u201d He wants to be alone, despite having always been a \u201cpeople person,\u201d as Wayne described him to Henry. What happened to Roland in 1990 to take him off his promising career path and a seemingly bright future with a woman he appeared to really care about and make him a drunken recluse? I keep coming back to Tom Purcell. We\u2019ve seen that Roland has really taken an interest in helping him in both 1980 and 1990. He cares about the guy. Is Tom falsely accused of the crimes in 1990? Could be, but Tom is a very fragile man, driven by emotion, and he\u2019s lost it all. It would not take much to push him over the edge and either drive him to kill someone he suspected of hurting his family or to take his own life. Either of those outcomes would be incredibly damaging to Roland and could start him on a path leading to where we see him in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ending of True Detective<\/em> S3E5, even more than being about the case and connecting the dots, was showing us that this season is about these two men trying to find closure in the latter years of their lives. The Purcell case ruined them and now here they are\u2014Roland drunk and alone and Wayne alone and battling dementia\u2014together again, wondering if they can do things right this time. Can they face their ghosts and live out their final years free of the burdens this case brought them? That remains to be seen, but in a day and time when ageism is a highly discussed topic in Hollywood,\u00a0True Detective<\/em>\u00a0is telling a story about two older men, facing not only the wreckage of their past but also the reality of their own mortality in both a respectful and compelling manner. No, this isn\u2019t revisiting the magic of Season 1, but it is something unique and thus far has been an incredibly powerful story that I can\u2019t wait to see fully unfold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

True Detective\u00a0Season 3 is not Season 1, the sequel. There\u2019s no Yellow Kings, no \u201ctime is a flat circle,\u201d no elements of American Gothic cult-like behavior. It\u2019s different, it is its own story while at the same time being a \u201creturn to form\u201d after Season 2 notoriously fell off the tracks. Season 3 does have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":269,"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-264","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\/264","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=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}