Godless star Scoot McNairy has been cast opposite Mahershala Ali, Carmen Ejogo and Stephen Dorff in the third season of Nic Pizzolatto’s HBO crime anthology series True Detective.

Season 3 will tell the story of a macabre crime in the heart of the Ozarks and a mystery that deepens over decades and plays out in three separate time periods. Ali will play the lead role of Wayne Hays, a state police detective from northwest Arkansas.

McNairy will play Tom, a father who suffers a terrible loss that ties his fate to that of two state police detectives over 10 years.

As with the breakout original installment of True Detective, Pizzolatto is the sole writer of the third season with the exception of Episode 4, which he co-wrote with David Milch. Jeremy Saulnier is the Season 3 director alongside Pizzolatto, who will make his directorial debut.

Pizzolatto, who also serves as showrunner, executive produces with Saulnier and returning executive producers Scott Stephens; Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, who toplined Season 1; Cary Joji Fukunaga, who directed Season 1; along with Scott Stephens, Steve Golin, Bard Dorros and Richard Brown.

McNairy stars in Netflix’s Godless and recently wrapped The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter with Josh Brolin and Danny McBride. He also was recently cast in The H Collective’s upcoming feature The Parts You Lose and is coming off a four-season run on AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire, which ended in October.

McNairy is repped by WME and John Pierce at The Group Management.