‘True Detective’ Season 3 Early Buzz: The HBO Series Is A Compelling Return To Form
True Detectiveseason 3 comes four years after the second season of the HBO crime anthology series debuted to abysmal reviews, a far cry from the pop culture phenomenon and career renaissance for star Matthew McConaughey that season 1 spawned. Since then, the show has gone from phenomenon to meme, to embarrassment, with the aforementioned McConaughaissance waning just as the anthology series trend begins to fade.
But creatorNic Pizzolattobrings back the HBO crime drama armed with Oscar-winning starMahershala Ali, who leads a season that critics are calling a return to form. See what critics are saying in our round-up of theTrue Detectiveseason 3 early buzz.
Todd VanDerWerff atVoxwrote that “in some ways,True Detectiveseason three is a baldfaced redo of season one. But maybe there’s nothing wrong with that,” adding:
In many ways, season three feels like season one with the latter’s more idiosyncratic edges sanded off. There are hints of some terrible horror lurking in the heart of Southern rural America (in this case via the form of strange dolls that keep turning up at the scenes of children’s murders and disappearances). There’s a fascination with how systemic corruption approaches the level of Lovecraftian horror (which I’ll discuss further below). There are long, philosophical ramblings in cop cars.
Indiewire’s Ben Travers agrees that “season 3 gets back to basics — and gets good again,” and praises lead Mahershala Ali’s performance as Detective Wayne Hays, who becomes obsessed with a case over the decades.
Lindsey Romain agrees in herPolygonreview that the season is a reminder of what made season 1 a pop culture phenomenon in the first place:
The result is a season that, at least in the first two episodes — which played to a handful of lucky Alamo Drafthouse audiences in preview screenings in late December — returns largely to the successful formula of the first, in which clever flashbacks and small-town secrets stoke the fires of conspiracy and mysticism.
Collider’s Allison Keene calls season 3 “an engrossing return that learns from the past,” writing that the season marks a vast improvement from season 2:
There has been much hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth since the advent ofTrue Detective’s mostly derided second season after the heights of its first, leading to a very fair and natural question of where its third season might fall on that spectrum. So let’s go ahead and address this right away:True Detectivecreator Nic Pizzolatto has taken the right lessons from the successes of Season 1 and failures of Season 2 to pen a highly engaging whodunnit, one which borrows heavily from the show’s debut season to great effect.
Daniel Daddario writes in hisVarietyreview that by keeping things simple in season 3, the “fleeter installment feels so refreshing”:
But what’s striking about the latest iteration of a show that’s worn its taste for excess proudly, even as the audience recoiled, is its leanness. Tightly directed (in its first episodes by Jeremy Saulnier) and plotted, and with a performance at its center that steers away from calling attention to itself, the new “True Detective” transcends hype and amounts to 2019’s first pleasant small-screen surprise.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Daniel Fienberg agrees with the consensus that the third season improves from the “muddled” season 2, largely thanks to Ali’s powerful performance:
Den of Geek’s Alec Bojalad also calls the season “a return to form,” for the series, but to “a form that pop culture has since moved past from”:
HoweverUproxx’sBrian Grubb disagrees with the general consensus, arguing thatTrue Detectiveseason 3 tries and fails “to re-discover the magic spark that made the first go-round so fun”:
The main takeaway here is that the third season ofTrue Detectiveis not quite up to the level of the first, so far, in large part because substantial hunks of its plot come off like a store brand version of the original. It is so much better than the second season, though. So, so much better.
True Detectiveseason 3’s makes a smart choice of returning to its roots to recapture the appeal of the first critically acclaimed season. While some critics are mixed on how successful this “back to basics” move is, the universal consensus is that the third season is a vast improvement from the poorly-received second season. Was the long wait worth it? We’ll have to see whenTrue Detectiveseason 3 premieres on HBO onJanuary 13, 2019.
