‘True Detective’ Season 3 Release Date Announced by HBO

The third season of True Detective will be here within three short months. The HBO series announced that season 3 will return on Jan. 13, 2019.

“Starring Mahershala Ali, #TrueDetective returns January 13, 2019,” the show’s official Twitter account wrote alongside a video promo of Ali.

A teaser trailer was released in August for the upcoming season starring Ali as the new detective, revealing that this season will be set in the Ozarks, with Ali as Detective Wayne Hays, an Arkansas state police detective on a “macabre” case.

“Before you ever knew me, I wasn’t scared much. I wasn’t a fearful man,” Hays says in the trailer. “The things I’ve seen… the things I know… won’t do anything but cause harm. My whole brain’s a bunch of missing pieces.”

Then, in one shot from a later time period, an un-aged image of Carmen Ejogo’s character Amelia Reardon tells an older Hays, “Did you ever think you could go on and never once have to look back?”

“My job… there’s no certainty,” Hays continues. “This case, it’s more haunting than anything. I want to know the whole story.”

Three decades will be covered in the highly anticipated third season.

Aside from Ali (Moonlight, Luke Cage) and Ejogo, Stephen Dorf (Blade), Ray Fisher (Justice League), Deborah Ayorinde (Girls Trip), Scoot McNairy (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), and Mamie Gummer (Emily Owens, M.D.) will also star.

Dorff will play Hays’ partner, Roland West, while Fisher will play Hays’ son.

Series creator Nic Pizzolato told the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette over the summer that the setting will play a big role in season 3’s tone. “The mystery of the deep woods. The fog over the mountains. The rivers. The water. The sense of scale when you get out to some of this nature. Also, what the buildings say about the lives behind them,” creator Pizzolato said in July. “So I feel like people will see it as an extension of character, something that embodies characters’ emotional journeys while influencing those journeys.”

He continued, saying it would have been a “disservice” to the show if they did not shoot on location in Fayetteville, Arkansas, “because it’s such a character in the story.”

Pizzolatto is back as the lead writer, but was joined by Deadwood creator David Milch after the mixed-to-negative reception season two received. Jeremy Saulnier (Green Room) directed the first two episodes but left after that due to scheduling conflicts. The remaining installments were directed by Pizzolatto and Daniel Sackheim (The Americans, Game of Thrones).