Original “True Detective” creator Nic Pizzolatto is once again making headlines for seemingly bashing the show’s fourth season, “True Detective: Night Country,” which was the first not to be created by Pizzolatto himself. “Night Country” hailed from Issa López, who directed and co-wrote all six episodes. Pizzolatto was still an executive producer on the show, but he distanced himself from “Night Country” during its run and generated significant backlash after reposting criticisms of the finale to his Instagram story.
Pizzolatto did not provide any personal commentary on the “True Detective: Night Country” finale. Instead, he chose to share negative reactions from other people who slammed the new season as “disrespectful and insulting” and a “hot mess.” He reposted several fans who were outraged with the finale and its “lazy, nonsensical” resolutions and claimed that Lopez had “butchered” his original writing given the connections between “Night Country” and the first season of “True Detective.”
Backlash against Pizzolatto caught the eye of Kali Reis, the wrestler-turned-actor who headlined “Night Country” alongside Jodie Foster.
“That’s a damn shame,” Reis wrote on X (formerly Twitter) about Pizzolatto’s decision to amplify negative reactions to the finale. “But hey I guess ‘if you don’t have anything good to share, shit on others’ is the new wave lol.”
Pizzolatto originally dissed “Night Country” in since-deleted Instagram comments in which he called Season 4’s ties to his first season “so stupid.” He also told one fan, “I certainly did not have any input on this story or anything else. Can’t blame me.”
López wasasked by Vultureabout Pizzolatto’s criticisms earlier into the run of “Night Country,” to which she answered: “I believe that every storyteller has a very specific, peculiar, and unique relation to the stories they create, and whatever his reactions are, he’s entitled to them. That’s his prerogative.”
“I wrote this with profound love for the work he made and love for the people that loved it,” López added. “And it is a reinvention, and it is different, and it’s done with the idea ofsitting down around the fire, and [let’s] have some fun and have some feelings and have some thoughts. And anybody that wants to join is welcome.”
“True Detective: Night Country” centers on a murder mystery involving an Indigenous Alaskan woman. The new season wowed TV critics, withPvNew‘s Alison Herman calling ita “rewarding reboot” and “a haunting murder mystery,” adding: “The six-episode season also takes a notably different approach to the supernatural, a background motif of past installments that here becomes a central theme.”
All episodes of “True Detective: Night Country” are now available to stream on Max.
