‘True Detective’ Star on Why Liz’s Fears For Leah ‘Make Sense’ & Season 1 Connections

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for True Detective: Night Country Season 4, Episode 4, “Part 4.”]

The cold dark days of True Detective: Night Country‘s ongoing story grow a tad more frigid in the latest installment as Christmas Eve arrives for Detective Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Detective Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis).

While the holiday season may brighten most spirits, things are dimming for this duo as they deal with personal struggles and the ongoing mystery behind Annie K’s (Nivi Pedersen) murder after uncovering a horrifying video at the end of Episode 3. As Danvers sets her sights on the case, she continues to drift further apart from her stepdaughter Leah (Isabella Star LaBlanc).

Although viewers see a bit of softness from Liz as she checks on Leah in her sleep, their contentious relationship boils over when the teen vandalizes the Silver Sky Mines office building, spray painting the word “Murderers,” across the entrance. Picking Leah up from the facility, they get into a major fight with Leah taking off to stay with Pete Prior’s (Finn Bennett) family with his wife Kayla (Anna Lambe) picking her up.

Leah’s exit sends Liz into a downward spiral as she continues to rewatch Annie’s death video over and over again while guzzling down vodka. Meanwhile, Leah is embraced by Kayla and her grandmother who include her in their holiday traditions. And things don’t seem like they’ll be getting better for the mother-daughter duo anytime soon.

(Credit: HBO)

“The really painful thing is that Leah doesn’t understand why Liz is the way she is,” LaBlanc tells TV Insider. “She doesn’t make the connection [between] the danger of being an activist and being a proud Indigenous person. She doesn’t see that from Liz’s perspective, and I think that Leah believes that Liz just doesn’t care about her, that Liz doesn’t care about who she is, the community that she comes from, that she doesn’t have respect for her.”

This is essentially the argument that Leah makes before leaving home, feeling unwelcome by Liz and her coldness, unaware that the detective is fearful about what could happen to her if she keeps up this activism like Annie K once did. For LaBlanc, that conflict was difficult to portray. “The hardest part was that Leah and Liz have such a contentious hard relationship, and I have so much love for Jodie,” LaBlanc admits. “I’d get to set and I’d be like, okay, forget the fun lovely Jodie, and we’ll pretend we hate her. It’s the hardest acting I’ve ever done.”

As the season unfolds, there are a lot of misunderstandings between the characters as Liz is seen visiting the family of a recent stillborn that was the result of dirty water from the mines. She’s prompted to check in on them after Leah informs her about the worsening conditions and reasons for ongoing protests.

(Credit: HBO)

But even those small acts go unnoticed as LaBlanc says, “In my opinion, I don’t think Leah knows that she ends up going to that service and so watching it… you just want Leah to be able to see it. Liz talks about Leah a lot, and it’s clear that she does care about this kid.” LaBlanc adds, “In reality, they both care so deeply about each other and think that the other doesn’t reciprocate it.”

The lack of connection and mutual understanding is even more difficult to watch as viewers see the close relationship between Navarro and her sister Jules (Aka Niviâna) torn apart when the latter sneaks out of the care facility Navarro puts her in. Stripping her clothes, Jules walks naked out into the frozen expanse, ultimately falling into the ocean, and committing suicide. It reiterates the tenuous nature of life for the characters in this latest chapter of HBO‘s hit.

Could Liz learning about the fate of Navarro’s sister change her approach to her relationship with Leah? Only time will tell. But as LaBlanc explains, “You watch Liz looking at these horrible crime scene pictures of what happened to Annie K and how she was silenced in a horrible and very sad way. It does make sense to me why Liz is so scared for Leah.”

And while Leah is safe at the Priors’ for now, it’s clear that a potential murderer is still on the loose as Danvers and Navarro follow a tip to an abandoned warehouse where they find Otis Heiss (Klaus Tange) wearing Raymond Clark’s (Owen McDonnell) coat. In the warehouse, Navarro and Danvers encounter that recurring spiral symbol from past seasons once again as well as a ghost or two for Navarro.

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“I really loved all the Easter eggs, and it was funny that even being on set and stuff, there’s some that I’m still discovering now that I’m watching it,” LaBlanc muses surrounding these little nods to past seasons. “I just keep thinking back to Season 1’s classic quote, ‘Time is a flat circle.’ And I do think that there’s so much to be said about the ways in which violence all around the world is connected even if it’s not in a very literal sense.”

“I do think that there is a thread that ties all the stories from the series together,” LaBlanc continues. “And it’s something I think that this season and Issa Lopez does so brilliantly, making the connections between violence against women, violence against culture, and violence against land.”

As for the show’s more supernatural elements in Night Country, which is especially apparent through at least four or more ghostly visions in Episode 4, LaBlanc notes, “As an Indigenous person, all of the supernatural elements just feel so Native to me because of how I was raised with a belief that we don’t know everything. Not that we know that there are supernatural elements, but we just don’t have answers for everything. That’s what I kind of love about it.”

Stay tuned to see how Liz and Leah’s relationship continues to evolve and where the ongoing case will carry Liz and Navarro into the final episodes of Night Country.

True Detective: Night Country, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO and Max