'True Detective' Finale Recap: As the Crow Dies

Warning: This recap contains storyline and character spoilers for this week’s season finale of True Detective.

With a season filled with red herrings and bewildering plot twists, it’s a good thing the True Detective finale was 90 minutes; the show needed at least that long to explain everything to us. And we did get plenty of answers (and plenty of action) in Season 2’s swan song. But if you were looking for a happy ending… well, you came to the wrong place.

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We open with maybe the saddest post-coital scene ever committed to film, with Ani and Ray in bed together after falling into each other’s arms last week. Are they enjoying each other’s company? Or even smiling? Of course not! No, they’re detailing their past traumas, with Ani telling Ray about her childhood molestation (“I was proud that he thought I was pretty”), and him telling her about murdering who he mistakenly thought was his wife’s rapist. Thank God these two found each other… so they don’t inflict themselves on anyone else.

But enough fun times: Ray calls Paul’s phone and finds out from a gloating Lt. Burris that Paul’s been killed. Burris adds they’ll be pinning Paul’s death, along with Katherine Davis’s last week, on Ray, so he’s officially a murder suspect. Ani and Ray mourn their fallen friend for a few moments, but quickly get back to cracking the Caspere case. And they hit upon the same theory we floated last week: What about the orphaned kids from the 1992 jewelry store heist? There must be a reason we heard about that case, right?

There is, as it turns out: Ray and Ani check out the house where those kids live, and find both the Japanese-looking mask worn by the guy they chased through the homeless camp in Episode 3 and the raven mask. They also find the girl, Erica, handcuffed to the fireplace. She tells them everything: Yes, she and her brother Leonard (aka “Len”) drugged and killed Caspere to avenge their parents. It’s a little surprising that she’s so forthcoming, but hey, this is the season finale; the clock is ticking!

So great, we know who killed Caspere. But it’s not over. No, not by a long shot! The brother Len, who handcuffed his sister to the fireplace, is still out there: He’s meeting Police Chief Holloway to hand over Caspere’s hard drive… and plans to kill him, too. Ray races off to intercept Len — and since he’s wanted for murder, Ray puts on a ridiculous cowboy hat and sunglasses to blend in with the crowd:

Ray finds Len and tries to talk him out of killing Holloway, but Len insists on dispensing more justice: “I am the blade… and the bullet!” (Alright, calm down, buddy.) Len does agree to let Ray handle the exchange and talk Holloway into confessing while Len sits by and records his incriminating words. But when Holloway talks about Len’s mother — and reveals Erica is Caspere’s illegitimate kid! — Len flies into a rage and attacks Holloway with a knife.

That sets off a bloody gunfight that ends with Ani saving Ray by shooting Burris (who was lurking nearby) in the arm, the tape recorder getting stepped on and destroyed, cops shooting and killing both Len and Holloway, and Ray and Ani somehow escaping to safety.

Related: Ken Tucker Reviews the ‘True Detective’ Season Finale

But hey, what’s going on with Frank? Oh, you know, not much: He’s just pulling together a metric ton of heavy weaponry and sending his wife Jordan off on a train to Venezuela as he prepares to get his revenge on McCandless and Osip for screwing him out of that lucrative land deal. He meets Ray and Ani in a secret room in the back of the Purgatory Bar, and Ray and Frank plan an all-out assault on the bad guys, using said weaponry. They’ll all escape to Venezuela afterwards; it has “s–t extradition,” Frank says, and they can live like kings. Hey, he makes Venezuela sound great, actually!

In a remote cabin in the woods, Ray and Frank find McCandless and Osip making the final $12 million handoff to consummate the land deal. But it doesn’t get consummated: Ray and Frank pump the place full of tear gas and expertly gun down all the bodyguards before raiding the cabin with gas masks on. Frank shoots McCandless dead, and then gets Osip in his sights. Osip pleads with him — “I saved you. You’re like my son” — but Frank puts a clip’s worth of bullets in him anyway. He and Ray make off with the cash… and boy, that was easy, wasn’t it?

A little too easy, as it turns out. We still have a half-hour left, after all, which is plenty of time for things to go wrong. And they do, starting with Ray. He’s supposed to meet Ani to get on a boat and head down to Venezuela, but he can’t resist driving to his son Chad’s school and getting one last look at his boy. Ray peers through a chain-link fence to see Chad playing a role-playing game in the schoolyard, Ray’s dad’s badge by his side. Ray catches Chad’s eye, and the father and son exchange… salutes? What the hell are we watching? A heartwarming Disney Channel movie? Forget it; let’s just move on.

Ray pushed his luck too far, though: When he gets back to his car, he notices a red flashing light underneath it. Yep, someone’s tracking his car. He considers cutting off the tracker, but instead, he just lights a cigarette and stands around thinking. Finally, he drives away, closely followed by a black SUV. He calls Ani (who’s dyed her hair black to disguise herself) and admits he went to see Chad and now he’s being tracked. He tells her to get on that boat without him, insisting, “I’ll be right on your heels"… but yeah, we’re pretty sure he won’t be.

And Frank’s in trouble, too: He’s about to start his getaway when he’s pulled over and accosted by those Mexicans who wanted a cut of his club business a few weeks back. (Oh yeah; almost forgot about them.) They drive him out to the desert, where the big boss man tells Frank he’s not happy that all the clubs he’s supposed to be making money from inexplicably burned to the ground. Frank offers them the million dollars in cash he has to settle the score — but the henchman wants Frank’s suit, too. A million dollars, fine… but a million dollars and my suit? That’s where I draw the line!

This, of course, gets Frank stabbed, and the Mexicans leave him to bleed out in the desert alone. (Maybe Frank knew he’d be killed anyway? Still, the suit seems like a strange hill to die on.) As blood gushes out of his abdomen, Frank treks through the desert, taunted by hallucinations of his father (who calls him a “lanky loudmouth” and a “f—-t”) before finally seeing a vision of his wife Jordan in an ethereal white dress. He tells her he’ll never stop fighting, but she sadly replies, “You stopped moving way back there.” Sure enough, Frank’s dead body lies a few yards behind him. RIP, Frank; thanks for all the vocabulary lessons.

Back to Ray: He knows he’s being followed and there’s no way out. He frantically drives his car into a thick wooded area while sending his son Chad one last voice message. He bursts out of the car with a shotgun and a pistol, and we see he’s followed by Burris and a bunch of dudes armed with high-powered rifles. Ray manages to pick off a few of them, but eventually he gives up the ghost and gets shot about fifty times. (Yeah, no riot shells this time.) And in a final indignity, his last message to Chad doesn’t even upload. Damn you, spotty service!

Although this scene would be a highly effective way for cell phone providers to brag about their superior coverage:

So Paul’s dead, Frank’s dead, and Ray’s dead. That leaves a black-haired Ani alone to escape to Venezuela. In a let’s-wrap-this-up epilogue, we learn that Ray was Chad’s father after all (!); Tony Chessani took his dad’s place as Vinci’s mayor; Paul got a highway named after him (yay?); and the high-speed rail line project went off as planned, despite the rash of murders surrounding it.

Finally, we catch up with Ani down in Venezuela; as the town parties in the streets below, Ani hands over all of her evidence to a visiting journalist. So justice will be done! Maybe! Then Jordan (she’s there, too!) hands a baby boy off to Ani — so that’s Ani’s baby? The Velcoro name lives on?!? — and the two of them escape into the night, with Frank’s henchman Nails right behind them.

So yeah, most everyone we cared about this season is dead, and corruption is alive and well in Vinci. It’s not a happy ending, exactly. But in the immortal words of Marge Simpson: “It’s an ending! That’s enough!"