5 unanswered questions from the True Detective: Night Country finale

Danvers’ discovery of a severed tongue at the Tsalal station was the first piece of evidence that the case of the missing research scientists was somehow tied to the unsolved murder of Annie Kowtok six years earlier. Without waiting for the DNA results to come back (which do eventually prove that the tongue was Annie’s), Navarro jumps at the excuse to reopen the case and start investigating again. In the final episode, after Bee (L’xeis Diane Benson) finishes telling the story of what happened to the Tsalal researchers, Navarro (Kali Reis) stays behind and asks her who put Annie’s tongue there. Bee has no idea what she’s talking about. “That’s not part of our story,” she says. She could be lying, of course, but what reason would she have for not being truthful at that point? She’s already admitted to worse crimes, and Danvers and Navarro have made it clear they aren’t going to take the case any further. So if the women didn’t plant it there for Liz to find, who did? The episode gives us one clue. When Danvers is in the station’s kitchen having a snack, an orange rolls off the table and she leans down to pick it up. Under the table, in the same spot where she found the tongue, she sees a wet footprint. We never find out who the footprint belongs to, though. Or if it’s even real. We’ve seen physical manifestations of spiritual objects before, like the gold cross necklace, so it could be supernatural. Another option is that Raymond Clark left it there, but he was hiding under the hatch when the police were searching the station. And how could he have gotten it anyway?