(Plenty of spoilers ahead.)

Will Marty's gun tragically go off in the finale?

True Detective is a character study, and despite the awe-inspiring scope of Rust Cohle's mind, the man whose flaws the microscope has been more squarely focused on is Martin Hart. Cohle knows who he is; Hart's conscience has been in the balance for the entire season. As Maggie told Gilbough and Papinia, "Marty's single big problem was that he never really knew himself, so he never knew what to want."

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When things come to a head in Carcosa this Sunday — and what exactly that will entail we can only imagine — there's a good chance Hart will be tested in a way that will reveal whether he has changed. Will his base impulses once again get the best of him, or will he be able to exercise a little measured restraint for the good of himself and the case? It might all come down to how he decides to wield the .38 he's been conspicuously toting around since Cohle pulled him over for a drink after they left their questioning sessions at the precinct. When he flew off the handle and blasted Ledoux's brains out in '95, he and Cohle were able to cover it up. What if it isn't so easy in Carcosa, where such a rash, irreversible decision could result in a trip to Angola or worse?

Who could be on the other end?

There's the Lawn Mower Man or the surviving Tuttles or whoever else is behind the Yellow King, of course, but what if it ends up being someone in the CID? What if it's Geraci? What if Hart's father-in-law shows up again and Hart learns that he molested Audrey? Will Hart be able to check his emotions? Will he have changed? Or, as so happens on that flat circle of time, will the past repeat itself? We've always known who Cohle is and, to a certain extent, how he is going to react to given circumstances. Marty's nerves have been on trial all season. On Sunday we might get to hear the final verdict.

What's the explanation for Audrey Hart's sexual drawings and Carcosa-like toy setup?

"Who or what is the Yellow King?" has been the question burning a hole in the Internet all season, but finding out what inspired Audrey's sexually explicit drawings is just as intriguing. There's plenty of evidence to suggest that she was molested and/or exposed to what goes down at Carcosa in some capacity: the drawings, which feature a figure that appears to be wearing a mask; the Carcosa spiral symbol taped up to the Hart's kitchen wall; the identical toy recreation of the five-man rape ceremony.

Is Maggie's father the Yellow King?

One answer for who exposed Audrey to the rapes is Hart's father-in-law — named Jake Herbert according to IMDb — who looked pretty creepy throughout his time on camera in the second episode of the season. When he was first introduced, two things were made clear: Maggie comes from a wealthy family and Herbert is a cranky old man who thinks the world is getting worse. In other words, he's exactly the type — rich, angry, and powerful — who would be part of the Five Horsemen cult, or involved in covering up said cult. He also nails what Audrey's future holds by telling Hart, "I've seen kids today, all in black wearing makeup. Everything's sex." That could just be the standard old-man rant, but Audrey was clearly hyper-sexualized at a very young age. Was Maggie's father involved? Perhaps Audrey saw the video that Cohle and Hart watched in the most recent episode. Also, when The Daily Beast asked Michelle Monaghan if Maggie's family was going to be involved in the show, shesaid,"Yes, our family — everybody — is still going to be part of the plot going forward." Not only that, but Robert Chambers's TheKing In Yellow mentions a house by a lake, and Herbert's home is located right next to one. Oh, and one of Maggie's first lines in the show featured her lamenting, "You don't pick your parents."

How is Rust supporting himself working part-time in that dingy bar?

Rust works four nights a week at a bar that seems to be perpetually empty. We've only seen it during the daytime, but it's hard to imagine there's ever more than one or two conscious patrons in there at any point. (Those one or two probably aren't very generous tippers, either.) Rust doesn't lead a very lavish life, but he's boozing constantly and has to smoke at least a pack of Camel Lights a day. He's also flying solo on a vigilante serial murder investigation that involves renting an enormous storage locker, traversing the Louisiana coastline, cat burgling mansions, and God knows what else. We're not in uptown Manhattan or anything, but it's still curious. Maybe in Sunday's finale we'll learn that he won the Powerball in Alaska and that the newfound financial security is what really motivated him to return to Louisiana and resume his investigation.

What happens if Cohle and Hart's rogue, off-the-books detective work clashes with the formalized, naive, and possibly corrupt investigation of Gilbough and Papinia?

Last week's episode ended with Gilbough and Papinia outside the friendly confines of the interrogation room for the first time, clearly out of their element on the bayou backroads. We know at least that Hart and Papinia's paths will cross in the finale (a teaser shows them arguing in a coffee shop), but just how much will Hart and Cohle's pursuit overlap with that of the CID, and what effect will these two spheres of the investigation have on each other's agenda? Cohle and Hart's mission depends entirely on staying under the radar. If real law enforcement finds out what they're up to, it's all over. At this point, though, they're both so invested in and obsessed with a case 17 years in the making that even if the powers that be come in and try to squash their efforts, it's hard to imagine them relenting. This could get ugly.

What is Cohle going to do with Geraci after he's done interrogating him?

One loose — or at least frayed — end that we probably won't see tied up in the finale is what exactly happened to Ginger after Cohle and Hart found Ledoux's cook house. Did Cohle really just duct tape him up and leave him in a ditch to die? We know Cohle despised him and that they had a history together from Cohle's undercover days, but that's pretty cruel even for Cohle. We also know that Cohle has a contentious history with Geraci and that last week's episode ended with Cohle sticking a gun in his face and Geraci threatening to have his ass split in Angola. So yeah, we're pretty sure Cohle isn't going to turn Geraci loose. Could he end up in the same ditch as Ginger? Could Hart's "If you were drowning, I'd throw you a barbell" line have foreshadowed Geraci getting bound, weighted, and thrown to the bottom of the fishing lake?

So is the Yellow King one singular human figure, or what?

All right, so who or what the hell is the Yellow King? Is it one person? Is it a group of people? Is it an ambiguous deity or ethos? If it's some sort of god that the captured children are being sacrificed to, then who made the payphone call to the skeevy pharmacy thief who slit his wrists on the side of the prison bed? Who's running the show here? We're pretty sure the ceremonies, at least, involve five people. We know the Tuttles were involved. We know Billy Lee is dead. So how many of the five are left? Is this a country club-style situation with a waiting list of rich, devil-worshipping white men ready to step in when a spot opens up? When Cohle and Hart descend on Carcosa, are they all going to be lounging around drinking mojitos as a distant Ledoux relative administers LSD to the children they've abducted? There's no telling what kind of hierarchies or rituals this perverted mythology dictates. Of all the questions True Detective has yet to answer, the big one, "What is the Yellow King?" remains the most mysterious.

How many times does Matthew McConaughey watch each episode?

More times than you do. He says: "I've found myself going back and watching each one of them about three times during the week and fucking really enjoying it."

Why is Marty using Match.com when eHarmony is the #1 Trusted Singles Online Dating Website?

It's not like Marty is the most discerning consumer. He cheats on Maggie with a crazy court stenographer and a crazy former child prostitute. He owns a T-Mobile phone. But the likeliest reason Marty is using Match.com is that it's part of the mystery. Think about it: Match.com was founded in 1995. The case began in 1995. People meet on Match.com and have sex. People have (occasionally non-consenual, ritualistic, inexplicably-documented-in-black-and-white) sex on True Detective. Presumably Martha Stewart is somehow involved. We haven't checked but assume there is already a subreddit exploring this.

Was the sex scene between Rust and Maggie hot?

An informal poll reveals a gender divide on this. If you are a man, the scene was creepy and sad. If you are a lady, it was the consummation of seven years of building sexual tension. Plus, McConaughey ass. Good news for men, though: turns out it doesn't matter if we clean or remove the symbolic deer antlers and photos of dead women festooned on the walls before a date!

Will Martin Hart ever find true love?





Click here to see a larger version of this artistic rendering of Hart's Match.com dating profile.

Are Detectives Papania and Gilbough friends? If so, what's it like when they hang out together?

Detectives Papania and Gilbough are so unintentionally hilarious that we hope they're buddies away from the job. When interviewing Cohle and Hart, they don't do much aside from nod, yet they somehow manage to make it obvious right away that they suspect Cohle is involved in the murders. They even agree to get Cohle drunk, which we don't think is typical police procedure. In the latest episode, the duo gets lost and asks a probable serial killer for directions. We smell a sitcom.

If it turns out that the Lawn Mower Man is indeed the "Scarred Man" and Tuttle was the Yellow King, will people be disappointed by the finale?

Despite all the crazy theories out there, it does seem that the Lawn Mower Man is our killer and Tuttle is/was our Yellow King. If that's how it plays out, we're sure some people will be disappointed. But we won't, at least not too much. True Detective was never meant to be supernatural. It only used the supernatural as a tool to create an ominous mood. There don't have to be any huge surprises in the finale for it to work. We'd be happy with Cohle and Hart cracking the case, proving once again that the only thing they're good at is being detectives.

No matter how things end, will any other season live up to the standards set by this one?

Regardless of what happens in Sunday's finale, the first season of True Detective will be considered brilliant television. That's a problem, albeit a good one to have. Nic Pizzolatto has backed himself into a corner. How will any other cast live up to Cohle and Hart's brutal portrayal of the difficulty of being a good cop and a good person? Pizzolatto's best bet is to make the second season's cast much different from the first. If that means two female detectives, that works for us. Because what makes True Detective so gripping is the acting. The crime, the case, and the solving of that case are all secondary.

Is the weather always that gloomy in Louisiana?

The National Weather Service says that Louisiana can be quite rainy, especially during January and June, when the state typically gets soaked by over six inches of precipitation. But True Detective takes things to the extreme. The sun never shines and the sky has one shade: leftover milk from a bowl of Count Chocula. Perhaps the real reason why Cohle is so peculiar is that he's suffering from seasonal affective disorder.

—Written by Ryan Bort, Chris O'Shea, and Anna Peele. Design by Ryan Ilano.

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