Although True Detective: Night Country has come to an end, there will be more to come—HBO announced on Thursday that it has renewed the series for a fifth season, with showrunner Issa López returning as part of a new overall exclusive deal with HBO. Lopez said in the statement announcing the news, “From conception to release, Night Country has been the most beautiful collaboration and adventure of my entire creative life. HBO trusted my vision all the way, and the idea of bringing to life a new incarnation of True Detective with [HBO CEO] Casey [Bloys], [executive vice president of HBO programming and head of HBO drama series and films] Francesca [Orsi], and the whole team is a dream come true. I can’t wait to go again.”

When López went deep with hosts Hillary Busis and Chris Murphy for a special bonus episode of Still Watching, the news wasn’t official yet. But she still had plenty to say about the inspiration for the series, her favorite fan theories, and the ideas she already has for season five. 

López revealed that she took inspiration from antiquity and an infamous figure from the more recent past when determining who the various murderers would be for her installment of True Detective. “I’m very, very fond of Greek tragedy,” she said. “The undoing of the hero is always ambition and sometimes generosity. The tragic mistake is more interesting when it comes from an ambition to do good. I conceived this around the deepest end of the pandemic. I remember that I was watching [an] Elizabeth Holmes documentary, and interestingly, they had a philosopher as one of the talking heads, which I had never seen in a true-crime thing. The guy was saying, ‘It’s kind of a disease—the feeling that you have a mission to do good.’ When you have a mission for the greater good, nothing will stop you from doing horrible things.”

And thus López came up with the Tsalal research scientists, who are wholly dedicated to their research that they believe has the potential to change the world for good, but are simultaneously responsible for the murder of Annie K. “I knew that justice had to come to them,” she said of the scientists. “In my initial three pages that I always write to myself, I knew exactly who had done it.” Enter the Indigenous female community of Ennis, Alaska, who avenged Annie K’s death by leaving the Tsalal scientists in the frozen tundra. “The fact is we don’t pay attention to certain people, and that’s exactly what the series is about,” López said. She name-checks the receptionist at the mine, the woman who washes the dishes at the police station, the woman who cleans at the hospital—women who appear throughout the series but many would never have expected to be involved with the central mystery. “That’s exactly the cardinal sin that hopefully the audience will make…. All of these women that we don’t pay attention to, as happens with the victims of these crimes, are the ones that had enough and decided to change the story.”

Although López constructed an airtight narrative to explain the murders of Annie K and the Tsalal scientists, she quite enjoyed the various fan theories that emerged as the season progressed. “What I find super entertaining is the obsession that people are developing with the color blue,” she said. “There’s a lot of blue in the art and the photography style that [director of photography] Florian Hoffmeister went for and what [production designer] Daniel Taylor did comes together pretty blue. It makes sense because the first season was very yellow and very ochre and there was a yellow king in it, and this is very blue.” While the color yellow ended up playing an important part of the first season, the color blue was not, in fact, an Easter egg in Night Country. “The crab factory is called the Blue King,” López says. “There is nothing beyond that.”

Another color—or fruit, rather—had a bit more significance in the story. “I love the idea of the orange,” López said. “The orange comes from a scene that I wrote in one of the earlier passes of drafts where Navarro was sent to do a super pedestrian thing in the middle of all of this. Because of ice in the roads, a truck of oranges had toppled and there were oranges all over the road. [Navarro] was super bored, picked up an orange. She throws the orange into the darkness, gets a call, and then the orange comes back. Then the orange started to move into the story.” The significance of the oranges was slightly influenced by The Godfather and Navarro’s supernatural connection with the deceased. “I did think of The Godfather because it is the announcement of death coming to us,” she says. “At the very end in episode six, [Navarro] says, ‘My mother loved oranges.’ So it does feel that [her mother is] sending them back as part of her call of ‘Don’t forget who’s on this side.’”

Speaking of sides, True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto has made it no secret that he is not a fan of López's iteration of the series, reposting fan comments on social media criticizing Night Country. Despite serving as executive producer on the season, López told Still Watching that she has had no contact with Pizzolatto or first-season stars and executive producers Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. “I never met any of them,” she said. “I do know that Anonymous Content, [the production company] that developed this, they saw their series and mine and they loved it.” As for other vocal critics of the series, López always knew her version of True Detective was bound to have some haters. “I knew it from day one,” she said. “They were not going to just quietly go, like, ‘Oh, they made it into something else.’ But that said, they’re watching, which is so much fun.”

She’s right. Night Country was the most watched of any of the four seasons, with the season finale drawing 3.2 million viewers—a record for the series. Critics aside, López signed on to True Detective because she was a fan of the series. “It was done because I love what they did, and I think that three seasons, not only the first season, but three seasons of exploring the male psyche and the male disillusionment and the desires and the obsessions were really well done. After three seasons of that, I think it’s so much fun to try the same thing with the female psyche.” 

As for the potential of helming another True Detective season, López stayed mum. “That’s a question for HBO,” she said. “I have my ideas, but we’ll see.” López did reveal that after finishing Night Country, she wanted to go even darker for her next project. “It was so weird. When I finished this, I just felt that there was a way to go deeper into the dark,” she said. Perhaps season five of True Detective will bring a place even darker than Night Country—if such a place exists. 

For more from López, listen to the full conversation on Still Watching.