True Detective's Isabella Star LaBlanc and Anna Lambe on the 'Badass' Finale: 'It Feels So Earned'

[Editor's Note: This interview contains major spoilers for the True Detective: Night Country finale, Part 6.]

In the closing minutes of the True Detective: Night Country finale, "Part 6," the sun finally rises over Ennis, Alaska. The residents emerge from polar night forever changed by what they've experienced over the past six episodes.

After solving the mysterious deaths of the Tsalal researchers and Indigenous activist Annie Kowtok (Nivi Pedersen), Police Chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) comes to see her police work in a new light, while her former partner Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) takes a step back (and possibly disappears altogether) to focus on herself. While questions remain about Navarro's whereabouts and the fallout from the closure of the Silver Sky Mine, a sense of calm has washed over Ennis — the direct result of a group of women choosing to tell "a different story, with a different ending" for themselves.

As Danvers and Navarro learn in the finale, the Tsalal deaths were an act of retribution for the murder of Annie K., who discovered the scientists were pushing Silver Sky to release more pollutants into the ground in order to advance their research. When the researchers caught Annie destroying their work, they brutally attacked her; later, they called the mining company, which funds the lab, for help, and Detective Hank Prior (John Hawkes) was sent to move Annie's body to the edge of town.

Despite Navarro's best efforts, Annie's murder went unsolved for years — until the Indigenous women who cleaned the facility stumbled upon the truth. Rather than go to the police, who have ignored their plight for decades, the women took matters into their own hands, storming into Tsalal and forcing the researchers to venture out onto the ice in the nude. Notably, they didn't kill the scientists, but instead left their fates up to the supernatural entity haunting Ennis. "I guess she wanted to take them," explains Bee (L'Xeis Diane Benson), the group's de facto leader. "I guess she ate their f*cking dreams from the inside-out and spit their frozen bones."

Actors Isabella Star LaBlanc and Anna Lambe tell Primetimer that the reveal is a fitting cap to a season about the epidemic of violence against Indigenous women and the complicated relationship between the predominantly white police force and the Native communities they're tasked with serving. "It feels so earned," says LaBlanc, who plays Danvers' stepdaughter Leah. "There's a world in which you could do something like this and it would feel cheap, but Issa [López] spends so much time investing thematically that by the time you get to the end, you're just craving for this to happen, and you don't even know it. So then when it's revealed, it's so satisfying and so cathartic."

Neither saw that final twist coming — and creator Issa López kept them in the dark for as long as possible — but they agree that it's a "badass" and "beautiful" turn of events. "The resolution of the story is just so unexpected and incredible," says Lambe, who plays Kayla Prior, the wife of Danvers' protégé Peter Prior (Finn Bennett). "I remembered sitting in my hotel room just like, tears in my eyes. And wanting to text everyone, 'So, what happens to your character postseason?'"

Though Leah and Kayla aren't involved in the murder mystery, they're both deeply affected by the investigation, and they form a strong bond over the course of Season 4. As Leah navigates her fraught relationship with Danvers, who actively discourages Leah from exploring her Indigenous roots, Kayla fights for Prior's attention, and their marriage suffers as a result of his devotion to his boss. Leah and Kayla would be well within their right to move on from the people who have wronged them, but in the finale, they extend grace to Danvers and Prior, acts of kindness that bring a sense of closure to their respective storylines.

"For Leah, she doesn't have a choice. Liz is who she's got, and even though it's difficult and it's painful and it might feel easier to just be like, 'You know what? I don't need you. I can be out on my own,' I think she does need Liz," explains LaBlanc. "And she does need a mom. There's a part of her that can't let go of that, and I think that's what's so lovely in the finale of finally getting to see that maybe there is a future where they take better care of each other and they're able to show up for each other in the ways that they need."

Kayla's arc ends on a more "open-ended" note, says Lambe. "Her final scene is like letting Prior go and realizing that as much as she tries to pull him back, he makes his own decisions, and he has a responsibility to his boss and to his job. It's sort of a release for her, and just a final moment [where] she can breathe, and she doesn't need to fight anymore," she tells us, adding, "It's a really powerful act of self-love and self-respect to say, 'Hands off, I let you do you, and I do me.'"

And while the finale doesn't reveal what's next for the Priors, Lambe is hoping for a reconciliation: "Finn [Bennett] and I, from the moment that we'd both read the scripts, it's been a back and forth, like, 'Do they stay together? Do you think they get a divorce?' I'm an optimist, and I think they stay together and fall in love again."

These developments also ensure neither character falls back on familiar tropes (Leah, the rebellious stepdaughter, and Kayla, the nagging wife of a devoted cop). "So often we write off teenagers and we underestimate them, both in life and especially in film and TV," says LaBlanc. "They're written off as being dramatic or naive or dumb, and I don't think Leah is any of those things. I'm sure people are going to project all sorts of things onto her, but I think she's actually very grounded and very smart, and she's got a good head on her shoulders. I'm proud of her, and I'm proud to have gotten to live in her shoes for a while."

In addition, the actors credit López with creating a "collaborative" environment where they felt seen and heard as Indigenous women. "With Kayla and Prior's relationship– growing up in the North, it was a story that I'd seen play out so many times and something that felt incredibly personal to me. I had many discussions with Issa just on how much I relate to Kayla and how much this representation of this story meant to me," says Lambe. "It was such an honor to play a character who I think a lot of Indigenous women are going to see themselves represented in, and a character who, through to the end, stands for what she believes in."

"I was a Leah once upon a time, and I feel like I know so many Leahs," adds LaBlanc. "Sometimes it can feel like a lot of pressure to be a Native kid. The stakes feel very high, and I remember that. In that, 'I have to do good, not only for myself, not only for my future, but the wellbeing of who I come from and who I care about.' And that can feel lonely. That can feel like a ton of pressure to a kid who's just getting their feet on the ground. So, I see the ways that Leah and Kayla are there for each other and there to hold a little bit of that burden for each other, to take some of the weight off. I'm grateful for that."

True Detective may have closed the book on this particular mystery, but Lambe and LaBlanc want viewers to remain focused on the bigger picture. "This isn't just a storyline; it's a very real part of many of our lives and something that impacts a lot of us personally," says Lambe. "So, I hope people enjoy the story, but I also hope they realize it's so much more than that."

"Something that I love about the way Issa tells this story is that it does really show how we can't have any of these conversations without talking about all of it," insists LaBlanc. "To talk about violence against the land you have to talk about violence against women, you have to talk about violence against culture. The more that we can see the ways that these stories are all interconnected and these realities are all interconnected, the faster we'll be able to be connected together and maybe figure some stuff out."

True Detective: Night Country is streaming on Max. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.