True Detective season 5 moves the setting to Jamaica Bay, aims for a 2027 premiere

Tigers Are Not Afraid filmmaker Issa López, who directed and co-wrote all six episodes of the fourth season of the HBO anthology crime series True Detective (a season that’s known as True Detective: Night Country), is coming back to do another season of the show – and HBO’s Head of Drama Series and Film Francesca Orsi has just revealed the setting for True Detective season 5 to Deadline!

Orsi told Deadline that season 5 is “set in New York, in Jamaica Bay. Issa has a lot to say, not unlike she did with Night Country. It’s a different milieu but just as powerful.” In case you’re not familiar with Jamaica Bay, it’s “an estuary on the southern portion of the western tip of Long Island, in the U.S. state of New York. The estuary is partially man-made, and partially natural.”

Casting on the new season is already in the preliminary stages and filming is supposed to begin sometime in “the coming months” – but we shouldn’t expect to know much about the season for a while, because it’s not going to premiere until sometime in 2027.

Orsi added, “I’m really excited about it. We have a small writers room going with Issa; she’s excited. We just gave notes on the first two episodes, the entire season. Honestly, I can’t wait for this to go. It’s all about casting and getting this ready.“

True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto was the mastermind behind the first three seasons of the show, but once the third season wrapped up, his HBO deal expired and he signed a new (short-lived) deal with FX. HBO retained the ownership rights to True Detective, and with Pizzolatto gone they were interested in bringing in someone who had “a fresh voice with a different point of view” to oversee the show. That search led them to Issa López.

True Detective: Night Country was the most-watched season of the show, averaging 12.7 million cross-platform viewers, with 3.2 million checking out the season finale on the day of its release.

López has previously said that True Detective season 5 has a “fun, dark, f*cked up story.” The story of Night Country took place in Ennis, Alaska, and López told the New York Post that “there’s going to be some important connections between everything that happens in Ennis, Alaska, and the characters in Ennis, Alaska, and what happens in the new [season]. That said, it’s a new story, new characters, everything.“

Are you looking forward to seeing True Detective season 5 in 2027? What do you think of the setting moving to Jamaica Bay? Let us know by leaving a comment below.