‘True Detective’ Creator Nic Pizzolatto Says ‘Nothing Occult’ About Season 2

The new season of ‘True Detective’ will feature a lot of new faces in new places and there won’t be any connection to the occult like the first year with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson…

The first season of ‘True Detective’ was not only a breakout hit for HBO, but a critical darling of reviewers and fans as a pair of former cops investigated ritualistic killings that stretched over 20 years.

It would probably be safe to call the first season of ‘True Detective’ a horror-centric piece that was based in reality, but still featured plenty of imagery and references to the occult.

From ‘The King in Yellow’ to the philosophical rantings of mad men, the first season of ‘True Detective’ offered up plenty of scary stories and while there are still very few details about the plot of season two, don’t expect any of the same horror elements this time around.

According to ‘True Detective’ creator Nic Pizzolatto in an interview with Medium, the second season was originally teased as being about, “Bad men, hard women and the secret occult history of the U.S. transportation system.”. Well some of that may still be true — just not part about anything having to do with the occult.

“It’s not, I’m afraid. There’s definitely bad men and hard women, but no secret occult history of the U.S. transportation system,” Pizzolatto said. “That was a comment from very early in the process, and something I ended up discarding in favor of closer character work and a more grounded crime story. The complexity of the historical conspiracy first conceived detracted from the characters and their reality, I felt, and those characters are ultimately what have to shape the world and story. So I moved away from that.”

Pizzolatto went onto say that much of the gothic feel of the first season of ‘True Detective’ was driven by the landscape where the show took place in the backwoods of Louisiana.

The new season starring Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn and Rachel McAdams takes place in California and while there will certainly be dark moments this year, don’t expect another ‘King in Yellow’ type story being tied to the crime investigated in season two.

“The gothic horror suggested by Louisiana’s coastal landscape didn’t feel appropriate in this place. These new landscapes have their own unique voice and their own unsettling qualities. While there’s nothing occult in this season, I think there’s a disconcerting psychology to this world, and its characters have other kinds of uncanny reality with which to contend,” Pizzolatto said.

Pizzolatto also confirmed that ‘True Detective’ season 2 will have no connection whatsoever to the first year investigation with McConaughey and Harrelson and there won’t be the same time jumps that were experienced in season one where the two detectives involved went back and forth between the early 1990’s and present day.

“We were conscious of not wanting to repeat ourselves or remake the same album in a different setting, but I try to be open to whatever structure the story and characters suggest, so I never drew a line through those things,” Pizzolatto said. “As the characters multiplied and their individual and group complications grew, a more integrated and linear structure worked best. And there was the conviction that if we were to do something entirely new, then we shouldn’t lean on past conceits, but really build from scratch.”

HBO also released new characters posters for ‘True Detective’ season 2, which you can see below. ‘True Detective’ season 2 will debut on HBO on Sunday, June 21 at 9pm ET.