HBO's True Detective gets season 3 trailer and release date

True Detective looks to return to the heights of season one with this haunting, time-distorted teaser trailer.

Jackson Ryan Former Science Editor

Jackson Ryan was CNET's science editor, and a multiple award-winning one at that. Earlier, he'd been a scientist, but he realized he wasn't very happy sitting at a lab bench all day. Science writing, he realized, was the best job in the world -- it let him tell stories about space, the planet, climate change and the people working at the frontiers of human knowledge. He also owns a lot of ugly Christmas sweaters.

See full bio

Jackson Ryan

Aug. 26, 2018 8:52 p.m. PT

We know time is a flat circle and so it is that HBO add another season of True Detective, three years after season two premiered.

The detective, in this case, will be Academy Award winner, Mahershala Ali. According to HBO's official spiel, the new season will follow his character, Wayne Hays, through the Ozarks in Arkansas as he investigates a "macabre crime" involving two missing children.

The short trailer feels a lot closer in tone to True Detective's acclaimed first season, which followed Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as they tried to hunt down a Louisiana killer in a compelling, time-bending (flat and circular, of course) eight episodes. While the first season was a global phenomenon, the show's second season wasn't received quite as warmly and HBO has taken its time readying it for a comeback.

Nic Pizzolatto, who scripted both the first and second seasons of True Detective has again written eight episodes for the show's third season. This time round, he's also slated to direct.

You can watch the trailer below.

"I want to know the whole story," says Ali's character Hays in the teaser trailer.

Same, buddy.

True Detective season three will premiere on HBO in January 2019.