‘True Detective’ Season 2 Episode 8 Review – ‘Omega Station’

(Written for Filmoria)

The second series of HBO’s True Detective has been incredibly hit and miss; it took it’s time to pick up the pace and get us interested in the new characters, but there were enough big moments of action and intriguing drama to keep us coming back. But it all came down to this finale.

Would it end on a high and convince us all that it was worth the slow journey? Or would it be an average conclusion rounding up to an average series?

Sadly, ‘Omega Station‘ lacks any real progression from last week’s episode, making it all seem like a wasted trek, much like the one Frank takes in the vast desert land of Vinci to bring the series to an end.

With an extended run time, it was only right to assume that some big shocks, possibly some more gruesome revelations, and a lot more action, at least, was on its way. But 90 minutes of jam-packed drama was not what we were faced with. Instead, the episode was predictable and uneventful, and what should have been an intense conclusion to a puzzling mystery was nothing more than a tie-up of loose ends.

The exciting prospect of a final episode is that you finally get the answers to all of the questions you have been asking. But it turns out that we had already pieced everything together about who had done what in the case of Caspere’s murder from the information given over the past couple of episodes, as the big revelations were all hinted at last week.

So there were no surprises at all, just a number of lengthy conversations that told us what we already knew. And that’s because there was so little story left for this finale that what we were left with was a lot of wasted time between characters discussing how they had changed over the past eight episodes.

Too much extra dialogue was left to fill the gaps on background plots that were not important at this point, and whilst the rest of the series has been successful in being very character driven, the final needed to be more about the case rather than how everybody was feeling by the end of it.

These constant flaws in the episode made it impossible not to compare the finale to that of the first series. With season one ending on a tense, disturbing, dark, and powerful conclusion to their case, it was only too easy to expect something more from the end of season two.

Throughout the new series there had been many dark undertones, and the scene where Ani infiltrated one of the infamous sex parties was quite haunting, but I was still expecting something really twisted to be unravelled on top of everything we already knew.

That’s what made the first series so original: it had a dark edge that made you sick to the stomach but filled with an uncomfortable excitement at the same time. But the best of the series had obviously all been and gone.

What this final episode should have been was a series of flashbacks, showing us exactly what happened and exactly what part people played in it. Instead, we were just given a list of even more names with the only purpose to get the case quickly over with.

Many of the scenes were beautifully shot but they either held little purpose or they didn’t go in-depth enough, although the final scene was quite heartfelt and ended the series in the best what it could.

But it was far too late. The performances were all on top notch, yet again, but what mattered – the mystery – was long forgotten about, and the characters we had come to be invested in were quickly resolved of their past traumas, only to be given a quick demise.