True Detective Season 3: What Does The Ending Really Mean?

3. Was Hays Dead The Whole Time?

The very ending of the show is extremely ambiguous. That's a deliberate choice from PIzzolatto, especially given we've heard Hays say: "You do your best, and learn to live with ambiguity.”

So what is this ending trying to tell us? One theory, proposed by Vanity Fair among others, is that Hays was dead the entire time. The reason for this are the references in the ending to that of 1990 movie Jacob's Ladder, with the final sequences - Amelia and Hays walking out together, then Hays in Vietnam - very closely echoing the final shots of that movie.

In the film, we see hallucinations and visions from a Vietnam veteran. The very end of the film, however, finds him being led up the ladder to heaven, before then revealing that he was in a tent in Vietnam, dying, and everything else in the film had been him hallucinating his life as he approached the afterlife. Given how closely the scenes match up, it's possible that we're seeing something similar to play here.

It's an intriguing theory, and one that can't be ruled out given the ambiguity of the closing moments, and it would fit with Pizzolatto's sensibilities. Would it undercut the journey, knowing all of this was Hays learning to embrace death? Not really, but it's also not the only interpretation either.