Rust Cohle

Rustin Spencer "Rust" Cohle is a

The series takes place in two time periods: 1995–2002, in which Cohle and Hart work together to find the killer; and 2012, when Cohle, who has by now quit the police force and become an alcoholic, submits to an interview with LSP detectives Maynard Gilbough and Thomas Papania regarding the murders. Cohle sees through the detectives, and realizes that they think he is the killer.^[5] He uses the interview to find out what information the detectives have on him and the case.

Character arc

The Dora Lange murder

On January 3, 1995, LSP CID detectives Cohle and Hart are assigned to investigate a ritualistic murder in rural

During their investigation, Cohle interviews prostitutes who may have known Lange; he purchases

Cohle becomes obsessed with reopening the case and pursues several leads, including a private Christian school run by Billy Lee Tuttle that had been closed amid rumors of child sexual abuse. He also visit the Ledoux's surviving victim, now institutionalized with catatonia, who tells Rust about a third attacker, and begins screaming when Cohle asks her about the man's apparently scarred face. Tuttle complains to Cohle's superiors, who suspend Cohle and order him to leave the case closed. That night, Maggie arrives unexpectedly at Cohle's apartment and seduces him as revenge for Hart's infidelity. Hart finds out and gets into a fistfight with Cohle in front of the entire department. Cohle quits the force the same day, and becomes a drifter and an alcoholic. He initially returns to Alaska and supports himself as a fisherman. Upon his return to Louisiana in 2010, he works as a part-time bartender.^[8]

In 2012, a murder similar to the Lange case from 1995 occurs and Cohle is seen in the vicinity of the body, arousing the suspicion of LSP detectives Gilbough and Papania. They believe that Cohle may have been the killer in 1995 because he led Hart to every break in the case and seemed to know everything about the killer's frame of mind. They interview Cohle and Hart, who both refuse to cooperate once the purpose of the interview becomes clear.^[8]

Cohle meets with Hart, who has also quit state CID and runs his own private investigation firm; he tells him that he has found evidence leading to the killer. Hart is skeptical and still resentful, but Cohle convinces him to help with the investigation by showing him a videotape he stole from Tuttle's home. The video is over twenty years old, and shows numerous masked men abusing and killing Marie Fontenot, a missing child whose name had come up in their investigation seventeen years prior. Cohle and Hart track down the original case's chief investigating officer, Sheriff Steve Geraci, and interrogate him at gunpoint. Geraci tells them that his superior, the late Sheriff Ted Childress, ordered him to halt the investigation; Childress was one of Tuttle's relatives.^[9] They soon discover that the Tuttle and Childress families—to whom both Reggie and Dewall Ledoux belong—are related, and have long histories of child abuse and murder. They ultimately discover that the killer is a Childress, and go to a relative of the late sheriff's home to investigate.^[4]

Carcosa

Cohle and Hart travel to the Childress house, where they find that Errol, the son of Billy Lee Childress, a relative of Sheriff Ted Childress, is the killer. They discover the remains of his father tied up in a shed. They also encounter Betty Childress, his intellectually disabled half-sister, with whom he is having an incestuous relationship. Cohle pursues Childress into the catacombs behind the house, which Childress identifies as "Carcosa". Cohle discovers an idol draped in yellow and covered in skulls—the "Yellow King"—and has a hallucination of a spiraling vortex, the same symbol that had been drawn on Lange and many of the other victims. Childress attacks Cohle and stabs him in the abdomen with a large knife. Hart arrives and engages Childress, who attacks him with an axe; Cohle saves his partner by shooting Childress in the head, killing him. Gilbough and Papania, whom Hart had called, arrive at the scene. Additionally, Cohle and Hart's full investigation evidence is mailed to various media and law enforcement agencies across the country. Numerous bodies and other evidence connected to missing persons are found on the Childress property, including Dora Lange's.^[4]

Recovering in the hospital, Cohle falls into a coma for a number of days. After he wakes, Cohle informs Hart that while in the coma he felt the loving presence of his deceased father and daughter. Cohle leaves the hospital with Hart and looks up at the night sky, telling his partner, "Once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light's winning."^[4]

Later developments

In 2015, documentarian Elisa Montgomery shows retired

McConaughey received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Cohle, and has won and been nominated for several awards,[11] including:

• TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Drama (Won)
• Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series (Won)
• Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film (Nominated)
• Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Nominated)
• Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series (Nominated)

See also

• "An Inhabitant of Carcosa", an 1886 short story by Ambrose Bierce
• Carcosa, a fictional city invented by Ambrose Bierce
• The King in Yellow, an 1895 book of short stories by Robert W. Chambers
• Yellow Sign
  , a fictional glyph described in The King in Yellow
• The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, an American non-fiction book

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to True Detective (TV series).

• Official website
• True Detective at
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