Note: This post contains spoilers of the finale episode of True Detective

On Friday, I wrote about the outsize importance of the final chapter of a narrative constructed around a mystery, and opined that the finale of True Detective would reveal the identity not just of the killer, but of the show itself. Well, the finale was last night, and we now know that the true identity of True Detective is…

…just another murder mystery.

True Detective was so unique in so many ways that it’s surprising, in hindsight, how closely the show’s plot hewed to that of any number of hourlong police procedurals: gruesome crime scene, cops follow clues to a weirdo perv killer, climactic/cathartic violence ensues, moralizing coda, roll credits. These conventions aren’t bad—they’re durable because they’re fundamentally satisfying—but I was hoping for more. Revealing Errol the creepy lawnmower man to be the killer fulfilled the minimum requirement of letting us know whodunit, but it didn’t generate any new or surprising meanings, nor did it advance or deepen the emotional and intellectual resonance of the show in any way.

What interpretations do exist in the show’s finale were spelled out for us in a rather hamfisted coda, in which Cohle emerged as a sort of moralizing existentialist Jesus. (Visually, McConaughey’s appearance in these scenes calls to mind a children’s-Bible Christ, his long hair loosed and his hospital gown looking like biblical robes.) Having head-butted his way out of a painful crucifixion at the end of Errol’s knife, Rust is resurrected from the (near) dead to bring back a message from the other side: the universe is not, at base, a nihilistic void, but a mystical oneness ruled by love. I can’t bring myself to dump on that sentiment, but I will observe that it’s the most boring thought to escape Rust’s lips in eight episodes—that is, until Marty and Rust turn their eyes to the stars and wonder aloud who will win the eternal war between the light and the darkness. Snore.

I’m being churlish. If True Detective is nothing more than an immaculately executed exercise in the crime genre, one season after another, then it’s worth having on TV, and I will watch the shit out of it as long as HBO sees fit to keep making episodes. With grotesque crime scenes, damaged cops, and larger-than-life baddies, it could be a sort of American Prime Suspect or Luther—which wouldn’t be bad at all.

As the credits rolled, I also thought of the works of Thomas Harris: Silence of the Lambs, of course, but also that book’s predecessor, the modern serial killer story par excellence, Red Dragon. There’s one way I wish that True Detective had taken a page from Red Dragon‘s book, and that is Harris’s decision to reveal the killer early. About halfway through the book, Harris switches POV away from FBI profiler Will Graham to the psychotic Red Dragon killer, delving into the details of his psychosis and goosing the suspense as the psychopath prepares to kill again. If True Detective was always going to end so conventionally, it might have benefited from the same strategy: revealing the killer a few episodes earlier, painting a more vivid picture of the specific “darkness” Hart and Cohle were facing, and wringing some more suspense out of that final confrontation in Carcosa.

But enough. True Detective’s merits, in the final accounting, far outweighed its faults. Through its first season, it was rarely less than thought provoking and riveting. And as for the finale? It is what it is.

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