Why is True Detective’s Second Season Moving to the Summer?

By Reuben Levine | Sep 2, 2014

The first season of True Detective premiered in January of this year and ran through the winter. We had Rust and Marty to keep us warm through the snow, which turned out to be quite a lot of snow for New York. In some ways it was a fitting pair, with True Detective’s creeping sense of dread and existential issues matching the increasing cold and desolate-seeming snow-covered terrain.

The physical setting of Louisiana doesn’t exactly fit the metaphor, but we’re going to let it slide.

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True Detective’s second season is far set to premiere in the vague “Summer 2015,” which gives them a bit a time to figure out casting between now and then. A move like this can be done for a variety of reasons including scheduling, production time, and audience.

It’s possible that HBO thinks that the second season can make a bigger splash in the summer, and that just might coincide with Pizzolatto’s writing schedule and needed production time. As a series with only a single writer and a high profile cast, True Detective must take some time to put together.

Various other HBO series have moved seasons around, including The Sopranos, which premiered in January and slowly moved toward the warmer months over its six seasons. The Wire made a similar seasonal switch in reverse, with a summer premiere of the first season and a January premiere of the last.

Whatever the reasons for the change are, it’s certainly not unprecedented. HBO may have decided that True Detective’s darker tones are more suited to a summer audience. Regardless of the reasons, we’ll be there to see it all go down.