True Detective Season 3 Premiere Review: 7 Ups & 3 Downs From Episodes 1 & 2

5. A Beguiling Murder Mystery

While the characters are important, True Detective wouldn't work if the mystery at its heart isn't compelling enough. It's that which pushed the first season to become a Reddit-breaking hit, and the second to fall flat.

Thankfully, Season 3's setup, so far, is much more in line with Season 1, although without just falling back on repeating the same old patterns. With the disappearance of Will and Julie Purcell, it looks to be a little straightforward, before things take a major twist at the end of the first episode: Will's dead body is discovered by Hays, in what is the new season's most haunting scene so far, but Julie is nowhere to be found. Then comes the double-whammy, as it turns out in the 1990s that Julie is actually alive, or so it seems.

We're given, then, mysteries on two different fronts, with suspects coming into the frame without quite fitting and new evidence coming to light. It maybe lacks some of Season 1's inherent weirdness, but there's enough creepiness here to suggest that won't be much of an issue, especially with those horrifying straw dolls (and, interestingly, a little nod back to the spirals of Season 1). It doesn't feel as convoluted as Season 2's mystery, but without oversimplifying things either, ensuring there'll be plenty of internet chatter and theorising as we move along, and enough to make sure you'll be tuning back in for more.