Entertainment
Who Was The Yellow King on 'True Detective'? 8 Theories You'll Want to Read
How’s everyone doing? Have you recovered from the True Detective Season 1 finale yet? Has your heart rate gone from “SERIOUSLY GET OFF THE TREADMILL” back down to “Mmmmm warm apple pie”? Okay, good good. Let’s spike it back up again with one huge burning question we still have left from the finale: Who or what was the Yellow King?
Maybe we were all a little too distracted by the hatchet throwing, the flower-making, and the gut-wrenching final monologue of Rust Cohle to wrap our heads around the fact that the finale didn’t necessarily answer the series’ greatest mystery. They did indeed catch the bad guy and we know our (anti) heroes shockingly survived the gruesome ordeal. However, the whole unraveling the truth of the Yellow King wasn’t wholly realized. Not to mention the fact that the show pointed out that there are still more killers out there attached to the story who have yet to be found and the Tuttles weren’t brought to justice.
And since we know Rust and Marty won’t be returning from Season 2, all we are do is left to wonder. Here are our theories on the Yellow King.
Image: True Detective/HBO
A Hallucination
If you’re familiar with the BBC Series Sherlock and the episode titled “The Hounds of Baskerville”, you know that drugged-up crime, hallucinations, and mysteries can go hand in hand. We also know that Rust himself often hallucinates — like the massive cosmos he saw in the moment right before he was gutted like a fish. We also know that the devil-worshippers and white supremacists Rust and Marty infiltrated were way WAY deep in the drug ring. Maybe the Yellow King was just a side effect of a very convoluted spiral of chemicals and sin.
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IT'S TOTALLY RUST
Even though the show’s creators have debunked this cuckoo-brained theory time and time again, we’re all still on board with it. Right? All signs point to JK.
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Multiple People, Possibly Over Generations
Louisiana is steeped in mytical history and traditions. One of the most famous VooDoo priestesses was Marie Laveau — and there wasn’t just one Marie, there were three: herself, her daughter, and granddaughter. Perhaps the Yellow King is some sort of Carcosa deity who is embodied through generations. Errol Childress is the current incarnation and perhaps the title gets passed on after a certain level of sacrifice has been reached. Why else would he have been so excited for the confrontation with Cohle? It’s as if he was preparing for some sort of ascension.
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The Dead Man Tied to the Bed
Why else was Errol so intent on keeping him around? The small blood-stained shed was more like a temple than a murder room. He also says, “Bye Daddy” to the man, and we are left to believe the decomposing corpse is his father (or brother-father, considering his relationship with his half-sister).
Image: True Detective/HBO
An Organization
So Errol’s half-sister told Marty that the Yellow King was “everywhere” — it seems that there is a power much stronger than just one man in the backwoods of Louisiana at play here. It could be an entire network, as Rust proposed, that could include everyone from the corrupt church leaders, to heads of government, to the police and the insane drug cults.
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Billy Lee Tuttle
Well for starters, LOOK AT ALL OF THE YELLOW THINGS HE’S WEARING. He’s also completely wrapped up in the shady business of missing children and has lots of connections with lots of powerful people. Yep, this guy.
Image: True Detective/HBO
