True Detective Season 3 recap: The 5 takeaways from If You Have Ghosts

This week on True Detective, Detective Hays reunites with a much older Roland West to solve a 30-year-old case. Here are the five takeaways from the latest episode!

Last week on True Detective, Hays and Roland found themselves in a blowout confrontation outside of Brett Woodard’s home. This lead to a climactic cliffhanger of a shootout about to take place as an angry mob was about to kick down Woodard’s door that was rigged with explosives. We also found out that the kids might’ve been kidnapped by a man with a dead-eye. It was an episode that answered many looming questions from previous episodes.

This week we find out how the battle outside of Woodard’s house ended and so much more. The episode also has a chilling moment that might make viewers rethink their position on Tom Purcell. We also finally come face-to-face with Roland in the present day timeline who appears to be an isolated lonely old soul. That said, the two old men seem to be ready to finish what they started in the 1980s.

This and so much more happened on the latest episode of True Detective. Without further ado, here are the five takeaways from the latest episode!

1. The Brett Woodard shootout

The episode partially picked up where last week’s left off showing the mass devastation that would ensue outside Brett Woodard’s house. As the man kicks in his door, the bomb goes off killing several of the men outside his home. From here, the detectives start firing and Woodard starts firing back. In the mix of the shootout, one of the hillbillies pop a round off in Roland’s leg–thus explaining his injury in the later timeline.

The confrontation comes quickly to a halt as Hays sneaks in from the back and catches Woodard off-guard from behind. As the two men exchange unpleasantries, Woodard explains he will unload his weapon on Hays in three seconds. Before he can count to 2, Hays drops a round in the back of his head. We later understand that the police are suspicious of how Hays handled the shootout and that Roland is at risk of losing a leg–which seems to be just a limp in the 90s timeline.

2. Small details come to the surface

Last episode Hays was able to find an image of Julie Purcell from the grocery store surveillance video. In this episode, it led the detectives to get information from a runaway male who knew her. While talking to this stranger a few details are conveyed about the girl who might be Julie: 1) She calls herself Mary July, 2) she is not aware what year it is, 3) and the big one being she had a brother she lost or can’t find.

This leads Hays and Roland to get any info from the stranger of anyone who might know her. So they start pressing as many runaways as possible regarding her whereabouts. That said, nothing comes of any of it. Not until a huge bombshell later in the episode!

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3. A trail of corruption

To make things stranger, it seems like someone on the inside was tampering with the case. The first sign of this is revealed when Hays goes back to check old evidence and finds that old fingerprints that were never identified are no longer in evidence. Almost like someone wanted them removed to protect a possible suspect. But who?

After the confrontation at Woodard’s, the crime scene officers recovered Will Purcell’s backpack from under the porch and Julie’s sweater which appeared to be burnt. In the 90s timeline, Hays notices the backpack was too clean for it to be a near an explosive blast, which would suggest someone planted it there to frame the man. But who would do this?

In the present day, Eliza the documentarian mentions an officer–named James Harris– who processed Woodard’s house, went missing during the 90s. And from the way Hays reacts to her bringing the subject up, it seems like he might know why the officer disappeared. That said, he tells Eliza otherwise. Did this cop plant evidence at the crime scene?