True Detective Season 3: 8 Ways It's Saved The Show

Following on from the idea of a return to basics, there are two central mysteries that make great fodder for fan theories: who killed Will and what happened to Julie?

Will’s murder and Julie’s disappearance/kidnapping are likely connected, but by what, and to who? Early theories implicated one (or both) parents, Uncle Dan, Amelia, the rowdy teenagers and even Julie herself, although as the series has progressed several of those theories have fallen apart in their weavers’ hands.

Still, even as the candidates are narrowed down, more mysteries reveal themselves. Who ordered the bag to be planted at Woodard’s porch? Was Lucy murdered? What does Dan know, and how? What’s inside the pink room?

Of course, the deeper mysteries involve Hays himself. There’s a good deal of evidence that Hays did something in the past and is either struggling to remember to keep it a secret, or has already forgotten it. When he’s haunted by the ghosts of his Vietnam days, a mysterious man in a suit lurks in the shadows too. He also keeps a gun in his drawer and tells his son he’ll shoot himself before he ends up in an old folks home, plus things clearly ended badly with Roland.