Does the Success of True Detective Lie on the Villain?

A good villain can separate good shows from poor ones. A villain that you love to hate or that has a certain charisma can go a long way to improving a series, even if other parts are lackluster.

There is an argument to be made that the first season of True Detective isn’t so much about the case as it is about Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey’s characters, Marty and Rust.

Their own trauma and troubles is what drives the season forward while the case is what shapes them and their lives. One weakness of True Detective’s first season is that it overreached and had trouble bringing it all back together in the end.

While building up the personal lives of Marty and Rust, creator/writer Nic Pizzolatto also slowly introduced us to The Yellow King himself, the man responsible for the murders through associates and urban legends.

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In the end Errol Childress turns out to be just another psychopathic hillbilly with a love of literary allusion and symbology that’s never explained. He’s also super good at impressions.

How much that revelation damages your perception of True Detective is proportionate to which side of the story you were most involved in: our heroes’ existential crisis or the mystery of the killer.

Because one side got a raw deal on that one.

Pizzolatto was unable to follow through with the promise of a compelling villain for True Detective’s first season. With the many accolades that True Detective continues to get, it’s obvious that it didn’t damage the series all that much.

But while the critical success of True Detective may not live and breathe on the strength of its villain, it is still hurt by it.

It’s akin to listening to a song from a favorite band that’s not up to snuff and knowing that they can do better. All the potential is there to present something more compelling. Pizzicato is a powerful writer, and perhaps one of the beset working in television right now.

So while it may not matter to many that the revelations of Childress were ultimately underwhelming — and frankly, unworthy of the mystery to begin with — it leaves us a little nervous with what season two has in store.

We know that Vine Vaughn is taking the villain role, a businessman this time around. The best thing that Pizzolatto can do is to let events unfold as organically as possible, without shoehorning in aspects that the material can’t support. True Detective is a series that is worthy of a great villain.

We haven’t gotten one yet, but there’s always next time.

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