Dream Detective: Ideas for "True Detective" Season Two

Do you hear it? It's the sound of no True Detective. Last Sunday, the HBO series that captured the Internet's attention, and had everyone reading Lovecraft and idly taking screengrabs of amusing celebrity pairs—last Sunday, that ended. We journeyed through the long, bright dark together with our pals Matt McConaughey and Woodrow Harrelson, and emerged on the other side, changed. The cosmos in its infinite blackness and strangeness opened up to us; indeed, swallowed us, and we played in the mystery.

Sucks that we won't be able to do it again until season two, right? While we wait for creator Nic Pizzolatto to spill more of the beans on what the next incarnation of the show will bring, we can only use our imaginations to predict the future. Thus, Dream Detective: Ideas for True Detective Season Two.

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Directed by: Amy Seimetz (director of Sun Don't Shine)
Setting: New York City
Scenario: Experienced but unstable Sgt. Schultz (Cage) reluctantly teams up with antisocial, hard-nosed first-year detective Megan Starr (Temple) to investigate a series of bizarre murders—all of the victims are twenty-something males who frequent nightclubs and whose bodies are left without hearts. Their primary suspect is Samantha Jones (Elizabeth Olsen), a hotshot therapist who's been under suspicion of experimenting with radical brainwashing techniques and whose sister is, famously, a jailed serial killer known as The Heartbreaker, a woman with a shaved head who'd drug men, remove their hearts, and replace them with pictures of her abusive father (she's played by Tilda Swinton).

As seen in this year's True Detective, creator/writer Nic Pizzolatto isn't one for upbeatness. Fittingly, The Cage and Ms. Temple are the best transmitters of unhinged psychosis of their respective generations (see: his Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and her Magic Magic). This TD edition would up the demented ante, reaching a fever pitch when Sgt. Schultz finds a victim with a hive where his heart used to be. Schultz's reaction: "The bees! Ahhh!" —Matt Barone

Directed by: Jeff Nichols (director of Take Shelter)
Setting: Indio, California
Scenario: After a crop circle of graves of twin children is inadvertently discovered outside a commune in Indio, CA, a jaded FBI special agent (Chiwetel Ejiofor), paired with a genius but stubborn rookie forensics expert (Chastain) are sent to investigate the seemingly calculated killings. As they delve deeper into the case, they uncover a tangled web that leads them to their primary suspect: a nationally renown southern California doctor (William Hurt).

If the formula is to take two of the most compelling actors in Hollywood right now and stick them in a murder mystery series, then Ejiofor and Chastain are no-brainers. Ejiofor's quiet intensity, evidenced by 12 Years a Slave, and Chastain's manic-pixie-dream-girl-meets-GI-Jane steez (see: Zero Dark Thirty and The Help) would make for a captivating dynamic. —Tara Aquino

Directed By: David Cronenberg
Setting: Somewhere in California
Scenario: Series creator Nic Pizzolatto's brief preview of season two teased "hard women and bad men." When you think A-list actress that can match the star pedigree of Woodz and McCon, that can also be "hard," who else is there but the queen Uma Thurman? You want someone who can be tough as nails but hasn't already done the cop thing before? Bring in Quentin's muse and have her tap into the well of badass rage she channeled in Kill Bill and watch the Internet go nuts.

Meanwhile, last season avoided the hardened veteran partners with eager rookie trope, freeing season two to have fun with it. Anyone who's seen Community's Se7en/Zodiac parody episode (and if you haven't, what's wrong with you?) should know Alison Brie has the chops to kill it as the green but zealous rookie who's just waiting to have her outlook ruined by a brutal case.

As for the nature of that case, I have no fan-fic preferences as long as it's occult-influenced again in a picturesque setting (somewhere in NorCal, perhaps?). In fact, let's go even more Lynchian this season, stopping just short of hiring the man himself. Instead, how about David Cronenberg to replace Cary Funkanaga to ratchet the gothic weirdness up. He should have no problem coming up with a sequence to match episode four's 6-minute tracking shot through Hell.
—Frazier Tharpe

Directed by: David Lynch
Setting: Oregon
Scenario: One morning, a young woman wakes up from a dream with the strong feeling that she must travel to Cottage Grove, a small town in Oregon about a two hours drive from Portland. So she flies from New Zealand to America for the first time. When she changes planes at LAX, she's seated next to a young woman who claims a similar dream has prompted her flight. They fly into Portland, where they eat delicious donuts and have trouble renting a car. Neither is a detective. And yet the mystery is very real.

You're probably thinking, none of this makes sense/could feasibly happen.

And just know that you're exactly right. —Ross Scarano