True Detective Season Two is all about the Antihero

By Reuben Levine | Jun 22, 2015

True Detective season two had its premiere last night, introducing fans to the new California setting and new players. If you haven’t yet read or review, you can do so here. It also hit us over the head with the idea of the antihero, something that True Detective season two is running with like they invented it. That may sound negative, but it’s not meant that way.

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Not entirely, anyway.

Every character in True Detective is more than what they seem, that much is made clear. We have three supposed “good guys” in Ani Bezzerides, Ray Velcoro, and Paul Woodrugh (Rachel McAdams, Colin Farrell, and Taylor Kitsch.) But thinking that way when it comes to True Detective isn’t all that helpful.

The first season of True Detective introduced us to a world in grey, where characters can be good while stilling doing bad things. True Detective season two has taken that to the extreme, creating some serious antiheroes.

In fact, Ray Velcoro comes off as more of a villain than Vince Vaughn’s character, Frank Semyon does. True Detective season two is populated by antiheroes, and it’s something that has the potential to become tiring. We get it, everyone is damaged. Nobody is what they seem and heroes do not exist.

Those are not traits that are necessarily issues in their own right, but we’re now dealing with a larger main cast. That means there is even more brooding and more damaged people walking around like they’d rather be dead. It’s grim.

But True Detective is grim and the antihero is a grim character. True Detective season two just has to figure out how to balance it all out to avoid those “eye-roll” moment. With so many rough backstories to carry, we’re honestly not sure how it’s all going to work it. Maybe it’s not.

But we’re still excited to find out.

Next: Go behind the scenes of True Detective season two in a new clip.

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