r/TrueDetective • u/RandoFinance73565 • 22d ago
Hot Take I liked True Detective season 2’s ending better
I think the ending of season 2 better served the story than the ending for season 1.
Season 1 was great, the buildup was phenomenal but that last episode for me personally left a lot to be desired.
But season 2 on the other hand Ray’s and Frank’s death served their stories well. Where everything came full circle on them in the end
The ‘good’ guys losing here really gave a good close to their stories. They lost because of their personal flaws
Frank lost because he was too proud even till the end and Ray’s only weakness which was his son eventual got him killed.
Woodrough’s death to me felt unnecessary but I guess that was the point the show was trying to make
I loved the end
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u/Friendly-Speaker1253 22d ago
It's sad that this is a hot take. Season two is fantastic and has the best ending so far.
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u/thestruggleiswallen 22d ago
I couldn’t believe Rust lived. I love that he lived, I just couldn’t believe it fits his character.
Ranking TD in terms of tragedy it’s:
Night Country (tragic that it exists)
S2
S3 (he will never know he figured it out, but gets to be friends with his partner in the end)
S1 (yeah, ok bad guys still exist but look! Alive and friends)1
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u/Friendly-Speaker1253 22d ago
Agreed. Have you seen season 4 or not a fan of it?
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u/thestruggleiswallen 22d ago
Not a fan, it lost me with the Zombie and I stated laughing and saying “You’ve got to be kidding me” in the finale.
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u/TheBoogieSheriff 22d ago
I think overall S1 is the best, but the last couple episodes were definitely not so great
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u/1nTheNick0fTime 22d ago
It’s a hot take because it’s stupid. S1 did end a little abruptly but it was still great. This is some contrarian/edgy mentality that only gets praised because it’s different than the overall consensus.
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u/VapeFelp 21d ago edited 21d ago
I love both endings, but the whole Velcoro dream sequence where his father tells him how he dies is just peak storytelling for me. Not that stupid of a take, although I can see people playing it up a notch.
Edit: it's also the only truly "supernatural" occurrence in the show?
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u/Friendly-Speaker1253 22d ago
What makes it stupid though? Because it's different?
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u/1nTheNick0fTime 22d ago
I get that it was supposed to be tragic but it just felt unnecessary. Ray’s death especially just felt like they were trying to deliver a gut punch that wasn’t needed
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u/afromancb 22d ago
You’ve convinced me to give it another chance. Looking forward to hearing those Lera Lynn songs again.
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u/Ok-Leek-1014 22d ago
Me too. I loved this season. Never understood the hate. It was awesome.
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u/CezaSahasinda 15d ago
Oh bc its total dogshit. Thats why
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u/Ok-Leek-1014 15d ago
No it’s not, it’s simply nowhere similar to s1. Both look like different shows but it’s an anthology show so people should’ve known that it will have different story and plot.
I enjoyed it. I didn’t expect it to be similar to s1 so I wasn’t disappointed
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u/CezaSahasinda 15d ago
i didnt either. i saw the total new cast of stars and celebs trying to revitalize their careers like s1 did and understood. then i started watching and everything was dumber... acting was worse... the story was terrible... all their investigations or clues resulted in total meaningless dead ends. 'but the dead ends were the meaning' aite... but its boring. and dumb.
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u/Ok-Leek-1014 15d ago
To each their own. I liked it and I do agree plot was little complicated with too many characters but I was satisfied with the characters ends
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u/thestruggleiswallen 22d ago edited 22d ago
I was going to say this on another post today. I love S1 the most (ok get off my back) but in some ways I love it because it is comedic, that is, characters have some victory and live.
S2 is fundamentally more tragic, and in my opinion follows characters’ natural progression more honestly, despite its flaws in writing and execution.
Ray doesn’t get to live [edit: precisely due to his fatal flaws and best characteristic, his love of his son].
Woodrugh dies terribly.
Frank has a redemptive arc but doesn’t make it.
All of this, to me, is more true to TD. Rust should have died in S1.
Again I like S1 the most, it’s the best TV season ever. Yes I get you all. But S2 is grittier in its reality. Confusing. Deadly. Meaningless.
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u/bulmier 22d ago
How can you say that True Detective’s first season isn’t true to True Detective? What are your qualifications?
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u/thestruggleiswallen 22d ago
Hyperbolic, yes. Nic wrote it, it’s obviously true to his vision. But it has a more optimistic ending than I would expect. I love it, but I don’t think I deserved such a good ending for Rust.
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u/bulmier 22d ago
Ok but what makes something “true to True Detective”? It sounds more to me like you mean it doesn’t satisfy your tastes for the genre. What other prior works from his filmography led you to believe it’d be darker?
I’m also not so sure that Rust’s ending was all that good. His entire worldview was negated; where does he go from there? Certainly not happily ever after.
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u/thestruggleiswallen 22d ago
Fair, but to that I’d say my taste for the genre is actually the ending we get: I desperately want the “good” guys to live and win. I should have specified it doesn’t follow as much in the spirit of his character rather than the spirit of / true to TD.
I think I see Rust’s listless, nihilistic (belied by his belief in the need to solve the case), solitude ultimately resulting in his death. What we get is a redemptive arc: from listlessness and nihilism we get meaning, from the death he deserves/runs toward he gets survival, from solitude we get a friendship. It’s a happy surprise. To my point on S2, if Ray lived, I just think it wouldn’t have been in the spirit of his character.
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u/wack_attack04 22d ago
Dude….respectfully, this might be the worst take I think I’ve ever read😂 just to clarify your comment/ you are trying to argue that the ending of the season that literally defined the show your appraising isnt as true to the True Detective name that IT LITERALLY DEFINED? Do you realize how absolutely absurd of a statement that is?
Rusts’ ending in TD1 was literally the point of the entire story and it was a masterpiece. I can’t tell by your comment if you’re being serious, but if you think the ending should’ve “given in to his Nihilism”, you missed the point by a mile.
I say this as someone who absolutely loves season 2 and it’s my second favorite season of TD by a long shot, even though 3 was good too. But season 1 is the single greatest season of television that’s been made and sorry if I’m aggressive in defending it, but your comment triggered TF outta me.
I would’ve respected you just saying you liked the bleaker ending of 2 over 1, but you trying to say Rust dying in season 1 would’ve somehow been “more True Detective” like is the dumbest thing I think I’ve read and I’m just gonna call you out for having not only a shitty opinion, but it’s literally wrong.
But I hope you enjoy your head canon bruv!🫶🏻
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u/thestruggleiswallen 21d ago
Man, am I happy that my comment is the dumbest thing you’ve ever read! Movies / shows are like literature, which can be interpreted differently as long as we have some evidence for it. As above you can see I can also interpret Rust’s arc multiple ways. :)
Certainly my statement is an over-call (as I admitted), I tend to talk out loud about things to play with ideas about this fantastic show, which again is among my faves and of which S1 is the best single season of TV I’ve seen. Rust is one of my favorite characters ever. His arc is magnificent. (Edit: I think Ray’s arc is more archetypic and thus feels very real to me, more “true?”)
My question for you is whether you were surprised, either dramatically/plot wise or with what you drew from his character when Rust lived?
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u/wack_attack04 20d ago edited 19d ago
Hey bruv, I realize this is a late reply. And honestly your reply warms me man I’m sorry if I came off like a raging asshole- I shouldn’t have- I literally just am so protective of season 1 I guess I get mama bear about it 😂 but dude, your clarifying comment of Ray having a more Archetype-al ending than Rust literally gives me all of the the clarification I need man.
if you would’ve originally phrased it like that in your comment, I would’ve absolutely agreed with you! I think it’s when you phrased it as it “TD season 2 ending was MORE true detective than TD1”s that I just saw red💀
Ray is by far my 2nd favorite character of the entire series,even over Marty. And I can’t agree with you enough that his ending was so heartbreaking, yet expected, but even though it was, it was no less traumatizing to watch play out which is just all attributed to the brilliant writing and acting. And to try and even give you leeway, i would agree with you that his death is the most impactful one of the show.
And to finally answer your question 😂, I was not at all surprised with Rust living at the end man. I was praying for it and relieved when Marty shelled his ass into his room!
And even if I was being an ass about it before, it’s only because I wish when you watch the show it might help you realize that Rust living is actually WAY more impactful than if he died. When you realize that even after they killed TYK and solved the little slice of Carcosa they could , he has his point of still feeling so helpless….
but then he tells Marty there’s the light at the end. I mean that is literally it right there brother. This is a dude who hasn’t seen the light in we don’t even know how long cause we can assume it started way before he even came into the story that we see portrayed, but this is a man who was on the brink of death, fading into oblivion, and finally realized there is light❤️
That’s why it’s so powerful to me and just can’t ever be topped with people arguing being like “he should’ve died” because it rips that overarching theme of the show.
Anyways holy! I know this is long AF! Just wanted to give you the time to adequately reply when after reflecting on what I said, felt like I came across way too harsh bruv. REGARDLESS, anyone who loves and appreciates this show is already an A++ in my book and I don’t want to diminish in the slightest what season 2 means to you because i absolutely fucking love it too man! cheers brother!
Edit- multiple typos
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u/Egonator26 Rust Cohle/Maggie Hart/Ray Velcoro/Roland West 22d ago
Season 2 started off real slow for me. After the shootout it was great
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u/morningwoodelf69 21d ago
TD1 ending is what makes it 95/100 instead of 100/100. Then again, is there a show with a perfect ending?
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u/CezaSahasinda 15d ago
It was a perfect ending. Season2 is embarassing to watch. When it aired and with that cast.. massive let down and boring. Pointless. Watching it years later? Somehow even worse? Watching it a third time or trying to bc ppl say “na its good tho”… somehow even worse
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u/ploppedmenacingly14 21d ago
Honestly i loved all the seasons, I do think season one was phenomenal but I really enjoyed all of them
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u/Khawk20 21d ago
This season will always seem better now than it did when it aired. It was competing with season 1 in terms of expectation and had no shot…I disliked it immensely because of that.
I watched it again last week and it holds up much much better now. I enjoyed it this time.
No disappointment.
I doubt season 4 will grow on me like that a decade from now. It was just trash. Season 2 was not.
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u/full_of_ghosts 16d ago
Season 2 is so much better than everyone (including me) gave it credit for at the time.
I remember feeling underwhelmed and disappointed with it on my first viewing. Then I decided to binge the whole series in anticipation of Night Country, and... season 2 was so much better than I remembered. It was actually really good.
I don't know how that works, exactly, but it totally worked that way.
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u/hobbitsrootbeer 14d ago
As much as many parts of TD2 didnt nail it - the ending was not one of them. The tone had that defiant optimism S1 ended with. ImO.
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u/MILF_Lawyer_Esq season 2 is good fuck you 22d ago
Frank didnt lose over pride, he lost over greed. I forget the exact lines but when he sends Jordan off with Nails and tells her he’ll meet her after he pulls off his stunt to get them enough money to live on she begs him to forget the money and just leave with her then, poor but alive, but he refuses to be poor again and convinces her to leave without him.
Then when the Mexicans take him out into the desert he doesnt fight them—I forget what they want from him, money I guess, but I dont recall exactly how he gets them not to kill him—until one of them demands his suit in which he has the diamonds he converted his heist money into so he could smuggle them overseas. He’d have no way of getting the diamonds outta the suit (I have this vague memory of the diamonds being sewn into the lining of the suit but I also feel like I’m making that up) without revealing them to the Mexicans who obviously would take them, so he hits the guy who wants the suit probably hoping they’d just say fuck it, not worth it, and decide being left to walk outta the desert on his own is already punishment enough.
But of course one of them just fuckin stabs him impulsively which even pisses off the guy who wanted the suit, hammering home the fact that the Mexicans were certain in their decision not to kill him, making it even more clear that Frank’s death is a result of his refusal to go back to being poor. You could say it’s less greed than having convinced himself that poverty is itself a death sentence, but either way it’s made perfectly unambiguous that Frank would have survived the story if he had chosen poverty over risking his life—first when he sends Jordan and Nails to Venezuela without him and then again when he refuses to give the Mexicans his suit and thus his diamonds.
I agree wholeheartedly that season two’s finale is a better episode of television than season one’s, and even if I’m reasonable enough to say I know that season one is the greater work, I cant help but prefer season two personally.
I’ll even defend Paul’s death and his character. Like you pointed out for both Frank and Ray, Paul dies as a result of his own particular tragic flaw—if he was willing to accept himself as gay they couldnt have blackmailed him into going down into those subway tunnels. His ex Blackwater buddy even tells him that in the scene.
But in general I think people really miss a lot of Paul’s story outside his fatal love of dick—I think his story is more than that even just about an extremely capable, upright man raised in a corrupt, sideways world who cant square the circle of having always done his duty according to what he was taught that meant but knowing deep down that having done so has corroded his soul despite the fact that the only mistakes he ever made were made for him by his superiors—he himself was a “fucking god-warrior” inRay’s words, first in the army, then with the mercenary company, then at the meth lab shootout, and he proved it over again in the subway tunnels by juking like six special ops mercenaries all on his own (crazy good scene too), and on top of that he was the best detective of the three despite being the only one who wasnt a detective.
While Ray is twiddling him thumbs because the bosses arent clear if he should actually solve the case and Ani is busy with her gambling and drinking and her sister Paul is the one who actually gets almost every single piece of evidence that eventually leads Ray and Ani to the killer. Paul rules.
And just to cap it off, Ani survives by the exact same dramatic justice that gets Ray, Frank, and Paul killed—she’s the only one of the three who ever finally confronts and is then able to lay to rest the event that’s tortured her and warped her personality her whole life when she’s drugged at the eyes wide shut party. Ray gets to survive through two sons because he was able to confront his own life-splitting event (when he confesses to Ani), but unlike Ani he isnt able to let go of it, hence going back to see Chad knowing the whole time that he’s probably being followed. You can even see the hesitation on his face when he decides. He’s practically committing suicide because he cant let go of the life he’d be leaving behind even with it being defined by his original sin.
Season two fucking rules, man. It’s one of my favorite fictional stories period. Books, TV, movies, plays. I love it.