Kali Reis Explains The Vengeful Twist In True Detective: Night Country’s Finale

In late January, Kali Reis was settling back into her reality. Two episodes of HBO’s True Detective: Night Country were out in the world, critics were calling it the best season since 2014’s original, and fans were already buzzing with theories about the murderer. Reis, meanwhile, had returned home to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When she talks to Bustle via Zoom, she's sitting in her stepdaughter’s bedroom, with plushies and toys in the background. It’s a stark contrast to the persona of Evangeline Navarro, the stern state trooper Reis plays on the show.

Over the course of Night Country’s six-episode season, whose finale aired Feb. 18, viewers start to see beyond Navarro’s hardened shell — a credit to Reis, who worked with showrunner Issa López to add softness to her character. Major finale spoilers ahead.

“Navarro's strength and her real magic is in her vulnerability and her way to emotionally connect with things on a deep, intuitive level. So there were a few scenes that ended up being a little different than what it was on paper,” says Reis, a former professional boxer. “Navarro played out way differently than how I read, I acted, and how I saw it.”

This vulnerability is her saving grace in the finale. After giving in to her visions (the same ones that fatally haunted her sister, Julia), Navarro finally cracks the cases of Annie K’s murder and the scientists’ deaths.

She, along with Detective Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster), find the missing scientist, Clark, who confesses that he and the other scientists killed Annie, who’d uncovered that their lab was intentionally polluting the land and poisoning Ennis’ indigenous community for scientific gain.

“It was a really awesome thing to see indigenous women not be depicted as helpless victims, but taking power into their own hands and working with Mother Nature and the other side to get justice.”

The two detectives later pay a visit to the lab’s cleaning crew — all of whom are women members of the Iñupiat community — who reveal that they’d enacted their own form of justice upon the murderous scientists. (They stormed the lab, took the scientists hostage, dropped them off naked in the middle of the Alaskan tundra, and asked Mother Nature to decide their fate.)

The women stand by their actions, and Navarro and Danvers decide the case is closed, creating a cover story for the workers and reporting that the men died in a slab avalanche, as had been previously determined in Episode 5.

“As Native people, we're a very matriarchal community. Our women are strong and our decision-makers,” says Reis, who is Seaconke Wampanoag and Cape Verdean. “It was a really awesome thing to see indigenous women not be depicted as helpless victims, but taking power into their own hands and working with Mother Nature and the other side to get justice.”

Below, Reis answers burning questions about the finale, from Annie’s tongue to Navarro’s fate.

What was your first reaction when you read the finale’s script?

I was pleasantly surprised to see the ending, because it stuck with that theme: You'll get the practical, you'll get the scientific, but you also get the supernatural, and it's your choice [which to listen to]. I was so happy to see Navarro's journey. She finally got her name. That's what she'd been searching for.

How was it filming the big reveal with the lab’s cleaning crew?

It was emotional, because you got to see the power of the women in the community and how they stand in solidarity, and you see the respect from the community to Navarro. They're offering what happened, and they're trusting her with [the truth], which is huge.

At the end of the scene, Navarro asks how Annie's tongue ended up in the lab, and she doesn't get a straight answer. How did you interpret that?

I like that answer, because it suggests, it doesn't tell. You can make up your own theory. Did Hank actually cut it out and put it somewhere, or was it beyond the realm of the 3D world? Some of the best stories don't have clear answers. They keep you talking about it.

It made me think about one of the themes this season, knowing how to ask the right questions. Was Navarro’s question about the tongue the right one to ask?

It was the right question in the moment. I think the right question — my question for Navarro in the moment — would be: Who did cut out her tongue?

Navarro struggles with her visions throughout the show. What moment convinced her to stop holding them back?

When her sister passed away. Her sister, Julia, was the only thing holding Navarro together between the two worlds she was walking in. She had to be practical and take care of her sister. She had to make sure she was good, even though the same voice that was pulling Julia [away] was pulling at Navarro as well. But when her sister goes, she's like, It’s no holds barred now. I hear the stuff. It's going to take me soon, too. I'm gonna figure this out.

You said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that Navarro is made up of contradictions, like she's a badass with a big heart. By the end, how has that changed for her?

We get to see her journey, but I don't think she's turned a whole new leaf, or that she's just a brand new spiritual person [at the end]. She’s at peace with everything that happened. Will she get all her answers? No one ever really does.

The final shot with her and Danvers on the porch is very powerful. What’s your takeaway from that moment?

The audience can decide whether she walked on the ice like Julia, or went somewhere else and left. Maybe Navarro needed to get some things together, and she’d be back. Whatever you want to believe, the one person she's going to come back and see, whether she's in the spiritual or physical world, is going to be Danvers.

Why do you think that is?

Because they have a deep, deep history. It's like having a sister, that one person that no matter how much you two go through good or bad, you still have that soul bond. They have that. Navarro helped Danvers finally go over that hump, and say what she needed to say about losing her son. Danvers has been ignoring that, just burying herself in work, being mean to everybody. Navarro got her to see and believe a bit in the spiritual world, because she was denying it so much.

What did you think of some of the callbacks this installment makes to Season 1? Clark has the line, “Time is a flat circle,” in the finale.

People are so hooked on the first season, rightly so. Issa didn’t try to duplicate it. I think this is more of a love letter [to that]. Issa was trying to call back to the feeling we had in the first season, the feeling we had, as an audience, to watch this crazy story.

There were a lot of fan reactions to Rust Cohle’s dad being mentioned in the season.

I was especially glad when Episode 2 came on, and [people realized] Travis is Rust’s daddy. As much as all these hardcore fans were trying to say, “This is not Season 1,” you’ve got to appreciate that that's a good connection. It made a lot of sense since Rust’s dad is based in Alaska. I think it’s dope that [this season] provides a use for the spiral, in the spiritual sense. The supernatural part is [connected to] the indigenous people of the land, their creation story. So what we loved about the first season is reflected in this season in its own way.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.