True Detective Season 3: 10 Craziest Fan Theories
4. Hays’ Daughter Is Dead
There is clearly more than meets the eye about Rebecca not featuring in the 2015 arc. The conversation over dinner about her whereabouts were tragically uncomfortable to watch, and Hay’s memory loss forms the bulk of this theory.
The real reason Rebecca is not around is simply that she’s dead. Various theories blame Hays to different degrees; negligence, his faulty memory placing her in danger or general poor parenting leading to her suicide.
She may well have died another way instead, but this theory suggests whatever the case, he simply doesn’t remember. If that’s true, it means the gaps in his memory are much larger than we currently understand them to be. Rather than an end game, it may foreshadow something else huge that he’s forgotten.
An alternate version is that she’s not dead, but he is dead to her. Rebecca blames Hays either for the divorce or for Amelia’s death, and so no longer wants to see him. Suggestions that he murdered his wife seem too out there - he is living free and his son still cares for him - but he may very well have caused her to drink herself to death.