Part 1 (True Detective)

On December 17, a man in Alaska is hunting caribou during the last day of sunlight. As the sun sets, the entire herd of caribou suddenly become erratic and leap to their deaths off a cliff.

At the Tsalal Arctic Research Station, a team of scientists go on with their daily routines. Suddenly, a senior researcher named Raymond Clark has a seizure and declares "she’s awake" before the lights turn off. Three days later, a delivery man arrives at the station with food, but no one is there. As he inspects the area, he discovers a severed tongue.

After handling an assault case at a seafood factory, Alaska State Trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) is recalled to the police station in the town of Ennis, near the research station. The department is run by Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster), the Ennis police chief whom Navarro formerly worked with as a detective before being transferred.^[1] Danvers is present at the research station where her colleague, Peter Prior (Finn Bennett), explains the station's purpose. The eight scientists have disappeared, leaving just the words "We are all dead" written on a dry erase board. Finding that the tongue belongs to a Native woman, she instructs Peter's father Hank (John Hawkes), a veteran detective, to check on local corpses.

Danvers returns to the police station, where Navarro insists on getting involved in the case. Navarro claims that the woman must be Iñupiat, the same ethnicity as activist Anne Kowtok, who was infamously murdered six years prior.^[1] Danvers is forced to leave the station when her teenage stepdaughter, Leah (Isabella Star LaBlanc), gets in trouble for making a sex tape with her girlfriend. As she scolds her while driving, they witness a car crash. She arrests the drunk driver, Stacy Chalmers, who is despondent that her child won't talk with her.

Navarro speaks with Ryan, Anne's brother, who is surprised to learn that Navarro believes in God. Navarro then goes to check on her sister Julia (Aka Niviâna) who claims someone was inside her apartment despite it being locked from the inside. Like their mother before them, Julia suffers from mental health issues, but Navarro tells her she is not like their mother and promises her she will not be hospitalized. Elsewhere, Rose Aguineau (Fiona Shaw) is disturbed by the presence of a barefoot man outside her house, whom she greets as Travis.

Despite not seeing a connection to the case, Danvers gets Peter to retrieve Anne's file from his father's home, though he is unsuccessful in hiding this act from Hank. It is revealed that Navarro was the first to arrive at the scene where Anne was found dead; she died from multiple stab wounds and had her tongue severed, but the weapon and the culprit were never found. Navarro became so obsessed with the case that she started harassing and assaulting people from the local mine, believing that they were involved in her death. Hank made an arrangement for Navarro to join the State Police to keep her from making any further trouble. The case was reassigned to then-Detective Danvers, where it later went cold.

After having sex with her lover Eddie Qavvik (Joel D. Montgrand), Navarro sabotages the truck belonging to the man she arrested earlier for assault. Danvers is unable to sleep, as she is haunted by the voice of a child named Holden who calls her "mommy". Both Navarro and Danvers hear the words "she’s awake", with Navarro also encountering a polar bear with one eye (eerily resembling a teddy bear Danvers has at home) while driving through town. This prompts Danvers to continue her investigation, finding a connection from the eight scientists to Anne. Rose follows Travis on the outskirts of Ennis, who wordlessly guides her to a nearby area.

Danvers returns to the research station, encountering Navarro. Danvers reveals that she found a possible connection through a parka worn by both Anne and Clark, one of the scientists. Their encounter turns hostile as both accuse each other of failing to solve Anne's case. They are interrupted when Peter calls Danvers to inform her that Rose has found something in the ice. The two greet Rose after arriving via helicopter, where Rose states that Travis led her to the site, despite confirming to Navarro that he is already dead. Authorities discover three men frozen in the ice, all of whom have terrified looks on their faces.

The episode was written and directed by executive producer Issa López, marking her first writing and directing credit.^[2]

When questioned about the constant mentions of "she is awake", Issa López explained, "Well, we know what happened to Annie, which is terrible, but we don't know if this is the "she's awake" we're talking about. We have no clue at this moment. We do know that the events at Tsalal are in a certain strange way speaking to Danvers and speaking to Navarro and calling to attention that something has changed."^[3]

The original concept for Danvers was different from the final version. López envisioned "a woman on the verge" of a breakdown that eventually grows stronger. This version conflicted with Jodie Foster's vision of the character, so López asked if she wanted her "to make her an asshole?", which Foster enthusiastically agreed. She also changed Danvers' depiction of grief, with López saying, "there's a lot of meanness and arrogance and a bad sense of humor that's not really funny. All of that comes from this place of pain she's hiding. It's more interesting, and it better serves Navarro’s story, who is the central voice of the piece, the Indigenous voice. I wanted Danvers to serve that."^[4] Finn Bennett described the relationship between Danvers and the Priors, "They're just the police. They really run that town. I guess you could say in some aspects there is a maternal element to Danvers and Peter Prior's relationship."^[5]

López said that the Iñupiat culture was a challenge, as she was not familiar before writing the scripts. She said, "the more I understood about the location where I wanted to set the story, the more I knew that 70% of the population is Iñupiaq, at least Indigenous, in these parts of Alaska, and it would be unfair to make my characters any other color. So, the representation of these characters, in a way that was not only respectful, but a chance for them to see themselves in TV, was enormous. That part of the work required a lot of research and dialogue."^[6]