True Detective is finally back! Here's what we know about season 4

Brace yourselves.

The highly anticipated True Detective fourth season has landed and is available on Sky Atlantic or Now in the UK. It’s been five years since True Detective wrapped its alternately spellbinding and frustrating third season, which was a lot more successful than its impossibly convoluted second season (but still less of a smash than its beloved first season).

If anything can recapture the magic of Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson’s original double-hander, though, maybe it will be True Detective season four, which boasts a new showrunner, a new setting, and an exciting new cast headlined by Jodie Foster. Here’s everything you need to know about the anthology drama’s next era, which is already being described as ‘scary as hell.’

Who’s in True Detective season four?

We'll say it again: Jodie Foster! The Oscar winner plays one of our titular detectives, Liz Danvers. This marks the Oscar-winning Jodie's first leading role in a TV series as an adult. The Silence of the Lambs star, 61, is better known for acting in films, including her latest Netflix sports biopic Nyad, opposite Annette Bening. It's the first time that True Detective has been headlined by two women and Foster's partner, Evangeline Navarro, is played by professional boxer turned actor Kali Reis, making her TV debut. The main cast is rounded out by British relative newcomer Finn Bennett and Irish stage and screen legend Fiona Shaw. Christopher Eccleston, Isabella Star LaBlanc, and John Hawkes play supporting roles; Anna Lambe, Aka Niviâna, June Thiele, Diane Benson, and Joel D. Montgrand all have guest starring roles.

Who wrote it?

Issa López, who has previously worked mostly in her native Mexico. True Detective: Night Country is her first purely English-language project. She’s also working on unrelated movies with Guillermo del Toro and Fargo auteur Noah Hawley.

Who produced it?

López again, as well as Foster and her fellow Oscar winner Barry Jenkins. The show’s long list of executive producers also includes True Detective OGs McConaughey, Harrelson, Cary Joji Fukunaga, and Nic Pizzolatto.

What’s True Detective season four about?

Decades after being emotionally terrorised by Hannibal Lecter, Foster may have another mass killer on her hands. Or maybe not. The official synopsis reads:

When the long winter night falls in Ennis, Alaska, the eight men who operate the Tsalal Arctic Research Station vanish without a trace. To solve the case, Detectives Liz Danvers (Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Reis) will have to confront the darkness they carry in themselves, and dig into the haunted truths that lie buried under the eternal ice.

Though further details are scant, the story seems to be inspired by a mysterious event that transpired in Russia’s Dyatlov Pass in 1959, in which nine expert hikers were inexplicably found dead, with no obvious cause of their demise. Theorists have fingered a variety of possible culprits over the years, including espionage, supernatural monsters, aliens, and (most recently) an avalanche. But since this is True Detective we’re talking about, on season four, at least, the guilty party is probably a human murderer.

Did True Detective season four film in Alaska?

It actually filmed in Iceland, and was apparently one of the largest projects that country has ever hosted—which is really saying something!

Is there a trailer?

There are, in fact, two very atmospheric teasers, featuring snowy expanses, fabulous parkas, burning bones, protests, an incongruously happy child’s birthday party, and Foster crouching in an icy cave. In the first clip, her steely Danvers explains that some people come to Alaska to escape. It’s unclear whether Danvers is or used to be one of them—but she’s convinced that the men who disappeared into the night were murdered, despite the doubts of her partner, Reis’s Navarro.

Who, by the way, does not seem to be particularly enamoured with Danvers. “You think I want to work with you?” Navarro sneers by way of introduction in the teaser. “Take a look in the mirror. No one can stand you.”

“Dead bodies, weird circumstances—you need to get this shit under control,” Danvers’s male superior tells her at one point in the second trailer. We can’t see into the future, but it seems likely that Danvers will not, in fact, get this shit under control.

What are critics saying?

The show is already receiving largely positive reviews, Vicky Jessop of The Evening Standard singled out Foster’s performance, calling it “predictably superb” in her four-star review and Rolling Stone TV Critic, Alan Sepinwall, praised it as “must-see TV” in his review.“True Detective is back, baby and this time it's a full-fledged horror show,” tweeted Inverse’s Hoai-Tran Bui. “Season 4 is the best season since the first, and Jodie Foster gives a performance so steely she could cut armour. Chilling, evocative & so good.” Fangoria Magazine contributor Scott Wampler agreed, writing that the new season is “an absolute knockout from start to finish…Also? Scary as hell. Jodie Foster’s excellent, Kali Reis is a goddamn revelation, and Issa Lopez’s phone is about to be ringing off the hook. Get hyped, friends.”

True Detective: Night Country is available to watch on Sky Atlantic/NOW on Mondays.

This article originally appeared in Vanity Fair.