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Why What You’re Thinking About Who The Killer Is On ‘True Detective’ Is Probably Wrong

Though I’ve been burned by them on several occasions, I love a good theory post as much as anyone. It’s fun as hell to speculate, to try and get inside the minds of the showrunners, and figure out where they’re going before it’s revealed. The Internet is working overtime to do just that with True Detective, and in the process, have come up with some insane (and insanely amusing) theories about where the show is headed. They are all completely wrong (for the reasons specified below), but I love some of the theories the Internet has come up with.

1. One guy has suggested a little Fight Club trickery, stating that based on a statement Rust made about futility that he wrongly attributed to himself (when it was in fact Hart who spoke of futility), that both Rust and Hart must be the same person. Someone further bolstered this theory by pointing toward the pink tricycle that Martin ran over when he visited Lisa’s house, possibly a reference to the fact that Rust’s daughter was run over while riding her tricycle. This somehow suggests they are the same guy?

2. Another person has suggested that the flashback scene involving Hart’s daughter arranging dolls in an orgy/execution scene isn’t actually real, but a memory of Hart’s that he juxtaposed with a memory of an actual crime scene while recounting the story to the 2012 interviewing detectives. However, I don’t think that Nic Pizzolatto is going to throw in any trickery like that. I think the narrative in True Detective is fairly straightforward.

3. Another person suggested that, based on Rust’s ability to immediately find clues in several instances, and the fact that he had stated that he had seen a ghost, that Rust is actually a medium of some sort. But, no: The ghost is most likely another of Rust’s hallucinations, which often result from sleep deprivation, although the “ghost” does look like the missing girl, Marie Fontenot.

4. Someone else has suggested that Hart’s daughter, Aubrey, is the victim of the serial killer in 2012 but that, during the interview, Hart doesn’t know that yet (Hart’s interview took place five days after Rust’s). Someone else points to foreshadowing of that in a scene when Rust and Maggie are talking and the girls are watching a cartoon on television in which a wolf attacks a sheep. This is actually a fun theory, and I love the idea of that foreshadowing, but I doubt that it’s foreshadowing Aubrey’s death specifically.

5. This one is terrific: Apparently, Hart is an old English way of saying stag (or deer), and so maybe Hart is connected with the killer, who stages his victims with antlers. This particular image provides a small bit of validation. Are these Hart’s antlers?