Given our deep and elaborate interest in season 1 of True Detective, The Stake would be remiss to avoid mentioning a bit of news about season 2 that is making the rounds this morning.

Nic Pizzolatto has said season 2 will be about “hard women, bad men, and the secret occult history of the U.S. transportation system.” Well it looks like Pizzolatto might have found his hard woman. According to Huff Po (and everyone), the lead role for True Detective season 2 has been offered to Jessica Chastain. If you don’t know the name Jessica Chastain, you know the face. The Oscar-nominated Chastain has been everywhere in recent years, and for good reason. She’s incredible.

Chastain starred in two of my favorite films of recent years. The first is Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life, in which Chastain played the tender, loving mother of two boys in the 1950s. After losing one son, she becomes the idyll of the other, an oasis of compassion providing relief from a stern father.

There’s something Chastain’s smile in Tree of Life, as Malick and his photographer Emmanuel Lubezki see it. More complicated than most.

The second is Kathryn Bigelow’s excellent Zero Dark Thirty, and Chastain’s role as the inimitable CIA analyst Maya Lambert. Chastain’s work in Zero is a dominating, powerhouse performance. There are certain memorable performances that linger in my mind for years, and this is one. She takes over the film in the way you just won’t forget.

I hope these reports are accurate because if they are, this is good news through and through. Jessica Chastain is more than capable of filling whatever expectations Rust Cole and Marty Hart may have left behind for viewers, or HBO.

Not to mention, she’s already got the glasses.

Given how masculine True Detective season 1 is (not just in casting, but in how the show imagines its world and the role of women in that world) Pizzalotto would do well to feature a woman in the lead role. For his sake and ours, let’s hope it’s Ms. Chastain.

**UPDATE: Boo. E! (who is not at all sorry to burst our bubble) reports that Chastain will not be a part of True Detective Season 2.