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The big revelations start hitting before the opening credits here, as Danvers and Navarro bust into the ice cave system in the middle of a storm that looks formidable even by Ennis standards. Yet L\u00f3pez is still unwilling to part with the uncanniness that\u2019s been such an important piece of the intrigue: As they make their way through the caves, Navarro peels off through a narrow crevasse, certain that she \u201chears\u201d Annie leading her to where they need to go. That\u2019s more than a detective\u2019s instincts at work; that\u2019s a sixth sense. And L\u00f3pez validates the moment when the two discover the secret lab where Annie was murdered.<\/p>\n
The connection between Annie\u2019s case and the dead scientists had been something Danvers and Navarro had worked hard to connect, from the romantic relationship between Annie and Raymond Clark to the shady financial arrangement between the mine and the lab, which needed help in finessing its pollution numbers. When they find the underground facility and capture Raymond, their suspicions are confirmed, though the details are a little surprising.<\/p>\n
As it turns out, the lab\u2019s multiyear effort to extract DNA from a microorganism in the ice benefited from robust pollution from the mine, which softened the permafrost. Annie had gotten wind of the project through Raymond\u2019s notes and tried to destroy the research, leading Lund and the other scientists to stab her repeatedly.<\/p>\n
In an ironic twist, Danvers and Navarro are far from the first people to learn about what happened to Annie, despite having investigated the case so obsessively. We discovered last week that Hank had moved Annie\u2019s body at Kate\u2019s behest, strung along by the promise that she\u2019d use her political connections to secure him the police chief job. But later in this episode, Danvers uses Raymond\u2019s testimony about \u201cholding the hatch\u201d while his fellow scientists were attacked to deduce that there must be evidence of someone trying to get in from the top. That leads her to an Indigenous custodian who discovered the hidden lab, figured out what the scientists had done and took the law into her own hands.<\/p>\n
As staged, the flashback to the vigilante assault on the scientists seems like a bit of a stretch, too extreme an action for ordinary women to take. But L\u00f3pez has done well in laying the groundwork to make it semi-plausible, given the conspiratorial coziness between the mine and the authorities and the hostility directed toward Natives who have been paying the steepest price for profits. They cannot trust that justice will be done on Annie\u2019s behalf, and even Navarro and Danvers, two women of the law, have to concede the point. After all, one of their own helped cover up the murder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In the end, as Navarro says, \u201cStories are stories,\u201d especially in Ennis, where it seems like the most important business happens off the books. If Kate and Connelly have the gall to shrug off the scientists\u2019s fate as a \u201cweather event,\u201d then Danvers figures she has the same authority to use the official story to exonerate the women responsible for that abstract work of art that thawed on center ice. The same lie that had been used to cover up a conspiracy would be used to grant mercy to Indigenous people who had suffered the loss of one of their own \u2014 to say nothing of the stillbirths the mine had cost their community.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s still the matter of living with all of it. Peter spends the episode cleaning up a murder scene. When Rose helps him slip his father\u2019s corpse into the sea, she does him the mercy of having him turn away while she punctures the air out of his lungs to keep him from floating. But she\u2019s cold comfort to him otherwise, saying the worst part isn\u2019t over, but \u201cwhat comes after: forever.\u201d He will have that stain on his conscience. Danvers won\u2019t forget her son. Navarro may or may not follow her sister\u2019s path into the darkness.<\/p>\n
The finale of \u201cNight Country\u201d is finally about Ennis, a town that, in Danvers\u2019s words, \u201cwas here long before the mine, long before APF, long before Alaska was named Alaska.\u201d In a semi-tacky callback to the first season, Raymond moans \u201ctime is a flat circle\u201d in reference to Annie, who he says has been hiding in the caves before she was born and will continue to after they all die. Even after tying up all the loose ends, L\u00f3pez holds onto the idea of Ennis as a place where ghosts commune with the living, whether through fevered hallucinations or lingering guilt that flourishes in the dark like a mushroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody ever really leaves,\u201d Danvers says. That\u2019s a comfort and a curse.<\/p>\n