True Detective season 5 setting revealed as HBO nears production

The crime series will jump states once again for new episodes

The return ofTrue Detective is hotting up, with a setting for new episodes announced by HBO.

News of True Detective season five follows hot on the heels of a successful fourth run, set in Alaska. Starring Jodie Foster, that series was titled True Detective: Night Country.

Night Country’s showrunner Issa López is returning for the new instalment, which HBO has confirmed will be switching states.

“It’s set in New York, in Jamaica Bay,” Francesca Orsi, HBO’s Head of Drama Series and Film, said at the premiere for season three of The White Lotus.

“Issa has a lot to say, not unlike she did with Night Country,” Orsi told Deadline, adding: “It’s a different milieu but just as powerful.”

Production is set to begin in the next few months with casting expected to be announced imminently. The season will premiere in 2027.

According to reports, the show will have three leads and hold connections to Night Country – much like that season had controversial connections with season one.

Orsi continued: “I’m really excited about it. We have a small writers room going with Issa; she’s excited. We just gave notes on the first two episodes, the entire season.

“Honestly, I can’t wait for this to go. It’s all about casting and getting this ready.”

Jodie Foster in ‘True Detective: Night Country’ (HBO)

Lopez previously told the New York Post about the forthcoming season: “There’s going to be some important connections between everything that happens in Ennis, Alaska, and the characters in Ennis, Alaska, and what happens in the new [season]. That said, it’s a new story, new characters, everything.”

In a development that proved divisive to a contingent of long-time fans of the HBO anthology series, season four was revealed to have direct links to characters and symbols featured in the acclaimed debut run, which aired in 2014.

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Set in Ennis, Alaska, the series, which was review-bombed by “bros” upon its release, follows detectives Liz Danvers and Evangeline Navarro, as they investigate the sudden disappearance of eight men from a research station. Two episodes in, a spiral symbol heavily featured in season one appeared.

Elsewhere, eagle-eyed viewers highlighted how one character in Night Country was actually the father of Matthew McConaughey’s character Rustin “Rust” Cohle appeared.

The Independent asked López about the reasoning behind these references during a preview screening of the finale.

According to López, it was a convenient way to convey that the shows share a universe, and nothing more. The Mexican writer-director was already working on a murder mystery set in Alaska when HBO called and asked her “what she’d do” with True Detective.

Issa López has written ‘True Detective’ season five (Getty Images)

After deciding to transpose a new series of True Detective onto her existing idea, the writer-director “set out to create it in the very same universe”.

López told The Independent: ”It’s very important to me to say the world where Dora Lange died in 2007 in Louisiana is the exact same world where the scientists disappear in 2024. So how do you establish those realities? Just to say, ‘This is the same world.’

The showrunner said it was nothing more than a coincidence that Rust’s father had died in the place where her series was set and thought it would be another convenient way of linking the worlds. She also suggested the use of the symbol was not designed to be a hint that the cases featured in each season were in any way linked.

“While you’re creating your situation in Alaska, and the father of [Rust] died in Alaska, you mention it,” she continued, adding: “Then it turns out I need a symbol that signifies to these characters that they’re in the proximity of the beyond – well, there’s a symbol that did that in the first season. I’m not going to put a triangle in this one.”

Matthew McConaughey in ‘True Detective’ season one (HBO)

López said: “It’s organic – and there’s members of the audience who are going to adore it because it connects it and it’s recognisable and you’re that meme with Leonardo DiCpario, right?”