True Detective Season 3: 8 Ways To Fix The Show

1. A Less Complex And Convoluted Plot

There was the death of Ben Caspere to kick things off, which prompted the investigation and brought the leads together. That apparently tied into a scheme to make money off selling the land. However, it also tied back in a diamond theft back in the early 1990s. There was a missing person that Ani needed to find; Ray's son possibly wasn't his, but actually yeah he was; Frank and his wife couldn't have kids; Paul was not-at-all gay; some twins popped up from somewhere; and all this was soundtracked by a lonely, miserable guitar playing songstress in that dark and dingy bar. There's probably a lot I've missed, but they're a few of the key points from Season 2.

What that means, basically, is that no one really had any idea what was going on. As mentioned previously, it took a huge breakdown of it just to have some clue. When that's the case, you know you've really overcomplicated things. There was a crazy amount of exposition, and more twists and turns than the labyrinth of highways they were centred on.

Season 1 had everyone theorising about the Yellow King, but at its heart it was a more straightforward detective story, instead using its offbeat setting and characters, religious iconography, and Fukunaga's lush direction, to control the flow of the narrative and take things in interesting and unique directions.

Season 3 needs to strip things back and focus on telling a much simpler story. One that doesn't require reading 4000 words before you watch the finale just to know anything that has happened in the past seven hours.

What would you want to see from a third season of True Detective? Let us know down in the comments.