‘True Detective’ Season 4 Episode 3 Finally Reveals What a “Powerful Force” Annie K Was Before Her Murder

True Detective: Night Country Episode 3 on HBO opens with a flashback to a time when the enigmatic Annie K (Nivi Pedersen) was still among the living of Ennis, Alaska. We see a pivotal encounter between the Indigenous activist and a younger Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis). Navarro has figured out that Annie is squatting on private property. What is supposed to be a simple arrest soon shifts into something far more profound for Navarro: Annie is actually running a birthing center for at-risk Indigenous women. Navarro has crashed a live birth.

Navarro watches on in a mix of concern and awe as Annie safely delivers a baby who seems at first stillborn, but then survives through the young woman’s help. The room is full of other Indigenous women, all united to aid Annie and their sister struggling to bring new life into the world. Navarro finds herself swept into the group and ultimately reclaims her position as an outsider when Annie bluntly offers herself up for arrest once all is safe and sound.

The flashbacks to Annie K’s life come at a pivotal moment in True Detective Season 4’s run. So far we’ve only seen the murdered woman through still images. We’ve seen the mug shot taken after she was arrested for protesting the local mine, secret photos taken of her with lover Raymond Clark (Owen McDonnell), and close ups of the grisly state her corpse was left to rot in. By opening True Detective: Night Country Episode 3 on a time when Annie K was still alive, we not only see the light she shone on her community, but why Navarro feels so passionate about solving her murder.

“That’s the driving force of this entire thing,” Kali Reis said when Decider asked her about this sequence. “Annie K is a connection to — you see, it goes even deeper than Annie K — because [Navarro] has no answers to where her mother went. That’s why I think she identifies with that: protecting women.”

Reis continued that this scene allows the audience to see “what a powerful force Annie K was for the community outside of the ‘bad’ she caused.”

“You know, she was harassing people, but she had a reason. She was well-respected and heavily involved in her community and the culture.”

Of course, the scene doesn’t just give us insight into Annie K’s motives and desires, but Navarro’s. Reis told Decider that busting up the birthing center didn’t necessarily align “intuitively and morally with [Navarro’s] own beliefs…She was doing what she had to do, not what she wanted to do.”

So why would Navarro join first the military and then law enforcement if the work didn’t always match up with her morals? Reis compared it to Annie K’s service to her community, to a “pull” to help women in need.

Now that we know who the real Annie K was, we’re undoubtedly feeling the same pull as Navarro to see whoever killed her brought to justice.