In my previous article, I documented True Detective‘s Top 11 Problems and explained how the series faded down the stretch, devolving into a mundane buddy cop drama. The show’s glorious potential withered and choked, dying amongst a tangled bramble of cliches and broken logic.

Yet despite its many flaws, True Detective remains a personal favorite. The first three episodes could be the best three hours of television I have ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of TV. Too much to be healthy, really. So that debacle of a finale crushed me. I spent the next few days in a depressed stupor, searching for a way to salvage my True Detective love. There had to be something I had missed, some deeper meaning that had escaped me. I had to find a reason the show still worked.

I kept thinking back to something series creator/writer Nic Pizzolatto said in an interview with Andrew Romano of The Daily Beast. Romano had questioned Pizzolatto about Rust Cohle’s spectacular “flat circle” speech from episode five, prompting this exchange:

“You could see Cohle as Job crying out to an unhearing God,” he explained. “Or you could see him as something else.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Cohle describes the possibility of other dimensions existing, and he says that’s what eternity is,” Pizzolatto continued. “He says that if somehow you existed outside of time, you’d be able to see the whole of our dimension as one superstructure with matter superimposed at every position it had ever occupied. He says that the nature of the universe is your consciousness, and it just keeps cycling along the same point in that superstructure: when you die, you’re reborn into yourself again, and you just keep living the same life over and over. He also explains that from a higher mathematical vantage point, our dimension would seem less dimensional. It would look flattened, almost.”

Pizzolatto took a bite of his branzino. “Now, think about all the things Cohle is talking about,” he said as he finished chewing. “Is he a man railing against an uncaring god? Or is he a character in a TV show railing against his audience? Aren’t we the creatures of that higher dimension? The creatures who can see the totality of his world? After all, we get to see all eight episodes of his life. On a flat screen. And we can watch him live that same life over and over again, the exact same way.”

The thought was dizzying. Sure, True Detective is a page-turning crime yarn. But at least according to its creator, it’s also a meta-page-turning crime yarn—a story about storytelling. Pizzolatto had transformed m-theory into a metaphor for television—and television, perhaps, into a metaphor for existence itself.

And there you go. That’s the interpretation that works. While it failed miserably as a mystery, True Detective remains brilliant when seen as metafiction.

In its simplest terms, metafiction is self-aware fiction. This self-awareness may take many forms, but one common example is characters who know they’re characters. Think Don Quixote discovering he’s a book character, Garry Shandling knowing he’s the star of his own TV show in It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, or Daffy Duck defying his animator.

Three True Detective characters are self-aware: Marty Hart, Rust Cohle, and Errol Childress. To some extent, all three men know they are trapped in a fictional narrative, specifically a buddy cop drama featuring a ritualistic homicide.

Marty senses something’s weird, because he recognizes his inability to change and his repeating the same mistakes. Consider the silent epiphany he has after sleeping with Beth. But Marty isn’t smart enough to figure it out.

Rust has everything figured out; he knows he’s caught in a loop. But he doesn’t know what to do about it.

Errol not only knows he’s a fictional character, he takes action. He believes worshipping the Yellow King and committing ritualistic killings is how he can “ascend,” essentially going from a character in a flat circle to the higher-dimensional viewer.

The recurring spiral theme represents the ascension portal. That’s why Rust hallucinates and sees the vortex when he comes face to face with the Yellow King. Notice the vortex is also far more detailed, appearing three-dimensional compared to all the previous flat spirals, such as the numerous tattooed symbols or the bird pattern. That’s because the vortex is the gateway to a higher dimension, from the flat circle world of a TV character to the three-dimensional sphere of the TV viewer.

Rust miraculously survives what should be a mortal wound because he must survive. Even when he “lets go” during his near-death experience, he doesn’t die. He can’t die. As Marty says later during the final scene, Rust is “unkillable.” Rust will always be trapped in the narrative; he will always be chasing Errol.

The final three episodes are so cliche heavy because Rust is knowingly in a buddy cop story. He must live those cliches over and over. That’s why he doesn’t recognize Errol’s scars in episode three. He can’t. He’s Sisyphus pushing the rock. And just when you think it’s over, flip on episode one and it starts anew. Marty and Rust can’t bust the entire conspiracy. Because in this world, “nothing gets solved.” Taking down the whole conspiracy would be akin to Sisyphus parking the rock at the top of the hill.

The police interrogation is Rust’s confessional. He spills his guts, telling the officers about the flat circle and how they’re fated to repeat the same lives over and over. Once he leaves that interview room at the end of episode five, he’s outside in the scripted world again. He’s back in the loop, and the cliches abound. Even the most ardent True Detective fans would have to admit there is a decided drop in quality after episode five. Nothing is ever the same once Rust leaves the interview room. That’s the dividing line between freedom and scripted reality.

Marty and Rust act out a trite buddy cop ending and decide “the light is winning.” Maybe, just maybe, if they perform their parts enough times, the light will win.

From this perspective, cliches become satire. Lazy writing is now clever parody.

I’m not saying this is what Pizzolatto intended. Every interview he gave following the season finale indicates he was genuinely satisfied with the show’s conclusion, apparently blind to its many flaws. I am only sharing the interpretation I use to prevent me from hating those final three episodes.

The theory is my buoy. And I will cling to it like grim death.