The first season of True Detective is some of the best television I've ever seen (second only to Twin Peaks: The Return, as far as I'm concerned), but there's something I don't understand about the ending. Or rather, there's something I don't understand about how people see the ending. It seems that the general consensus was that the ending was disappointing, with the build-up towards the paranormal abandoned for a more-or-less mundane antagonist, with the larger conspiracy untouched, and with a seeming tonal shift for Matthew Mcconaughey's Rust Cohle that doesn't match his character in the preceding episodes. I've seen plenty of folks let down by it, or who feel the show was more drama than horror, or who chafed at the sudden character turn. Even the great Laird Barron has said an in interview that Cohle's remarks about how the light is winning rings untrue. Obviously I'm not here to tell Mr. Barron about horror -- the man knows his business better than I ever will -- but I have a different take on the ending, one I haven't seen anywhere else in the years since the season ended. In short, I'd argue that the ending is the perfect capstone in the downfall of Rust Cohle.

When makes Rust Cohle special, what makes him able to get confessions from suspects whom no other detective can crack, what puts him at the center of the story? It's his pessimism, his insight into the essential nature of the world, which is the classic reality of all cosmic horror; humanity is an aberration in an uncaring and inimical universe. Cohle, via the death of his daughter and his time spent undercover, has seen past the veil and truly understands what kind of story he's in; the show tells us this via Cohle himself in episode one, when he says of his philosophy that he "sees [himself] as a realist." He's not choosing to see things in the worst light, he's seeing them as they are. This is reflected in some of his hallucinations, like the Carcosa spiral made by the birds near the wrecked church at the end of episode two. As Cohle says, "back then, the visions... most of the time I was convinced, shit, I'd lost it. There were other times... I thought I was mainlining the secret truth of the universe." In a Lovecraftian reality, what's the difference?