10 Best Episodes Of True Detective

10. The Secret Fate Of All Life

Cohle and Hart use the intelligence gathered from an undercover raid to get a location on Reggie Ledoux, their lead suspect in the murders. A sleep deprived yet determined Cohle, still recovering from the effects of the previous nights drug use, and an ill-prepared, trigger happy Hart converge on the meth cook house to dispense a justice of their own.

On one of the rare times that the two leads decide to actually work together, not only do they execute the suspect but then have to concoct a story to prevent them both being fired and charged with murder. It’s a high-octane action packed episode, told in flashback, that illustrates the need for a vigilante style of justice when the system (working against them from the outset) has let them down.

The episode gives us a false climax after the admission from Ledoux that there is a third party at the centre of the case, as Cohle has suspected all along. We see Hart shoot Ledoux point blank after discovering the scenes of torture and abuse, and Dewall is blown to smithereens by his own security system.

At the end of the episode, a new murder with an almost identical modus operandi is brought to our attention and the main suspect is Cohle himself – the Yellow King is still at large and the detectives must see past their differences to see the crime solved, at any cost.