True Detective Season Two: Should it Have a Different Name?

By Reuben Levine | May 4, 2015

True Detective is an anthology series, which means that everything fans fell in love with in the first season will be changing. An anthology series is arguably more work, as it means tearing down and building from the ground-up all over again, but True Detective season two’s greatest chance for success lies in severing itself totally from the first season.

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But then there’s the name.

Which it to say, it’s not changing. True Detective should always be True Detective, but a subtitle could go a long way in helping fans let go of the first season and hop on board with the new one.

It would also cut down on the inevitable confusion, since in a year’s time we’ll be having conversations like this:

“You watched True Detective, right?”

“Oh, that show with Vince Vaughn?”

“No, the one Matthew McConaughey.”

It’s almost face-palm worthy. It could even be as stupidly simple as something like True Detective: California. This isn’t really our forte, so please bear with us. It makes all the morse sense since season two won’t be featuring any references or cameos from the first season. Why not go the extra mile and separate it just a bit more?

This may come off as nitpicking, but that’s because it’s not really a problem yet. This is a tactic that American Horror Story uses, which is also an anthology show, to disguising new seasons from previous ones.

On the other hand, it’s not something that a show like Fargo would need to do since Fargo isn’t truly an anthology series; the new season will serve as a prequel to the first and feature one or two returning characters.

For now, unfortunately, and most likely for the foreseeable future, we’re stuck with the series being simply True Detective. Is this a problem that other fans of the series are having, or are we just being a bit too particular?

Don’t be shy.

Next: The True Detective Seasons are now one.

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