The premiere episode of True Detective Season 4 opens with shots of a wind-swept Alaska tundra and a herd of reindeer.

The scene is bright and beautiful but strangely ominous.

Those feelings of foreboding increase when a hunter appears, only to be startled by a sudden stampede.

The sun rises over the horizon, and it might be the last time we see it for the remainder of this season, as the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska is bathed in darkness for months at a time.

From there, the action shifts to the Tsalas Research Center located above the Arctic Circle.

Inside the facility, a TV eerily plays a clip from Ferris Bueller's Day Off on repeat, and the scientists appear to be in good spirits -- until, that is, one of them whispers, "She's awake," and the lights go out.

Later, a delivery man arrives to find an empty lab -- and a disembodied tongue on the floor.

Following an eerie opening credits sequence with music by Billie Eilish, the action briefly shifts to a fish cannery, where State Trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) cuffs an abusive drunk who showed up to his wife's work unannounced (and got clocked in the head by a protective female coworker).

Navarro receives a call on her cellphone while apprehending the wife-beater, and she's clearly distressed by the news she receives.

Then it's back to the research lab where detectives Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster), Hank Prior (John Hawkes) and Hank's son Peter Prior (Finn Bennett) are investigating the strange disappearance of the eight scientists who once manned the station.

And with that, we're off to the races.

This is classic True Detective territory, but the traces of familiarity don't make this episode any less enthralling.

Danvers deduces that the men have been missing for at least 48 hours.

We also learn that the father-son cop team who are assisting with the investigation are not on the best of terms with one another. 

It's unclear what happened at the lab, but when Danvers discovers the severed tongue on the floor, she concludes that something truly disturbing transpired.

At her office, Danvers is confronted by Navarro, who believes the tongue has to do with a cold case that was obviously very personal to her.

It's eventually revealed that Navarro believes the tongue belonged to a Native American woman named Annie, who went missing after protesting the construction of a mine -- a mine that many locals believed was essential to the economic survival of their town.

There's bad blood between Navarro and Danvers, but they're working toward the same goal -- albeit independently.

Navarro meets with Annie's brother, while Danvers instructs Peter to retrieve the missing woman's files from the home of his increasingly suspicious father, who took a pile of documents home from the office in response to a recent flood.

At least he says that's why he took the files.

Danvers explains to Peter that the subject of the cold case is Annie Masu Kowtok, or "Annie K.," who was stabbed 32 times and that Navarro -- during her days with Danvers' Ennis PD -- was the first cop to arrive at the murder scene.

She reveals that Navarro is still "obsessed" with the case and hints she quit the Ennis Police Department due to Danvers' refusal to reopen the investigation.

Navarro left Danvers' force to join the state troopers, but the Tsalas and Annie K. cases appear to be related, a turn of events that has brought the former colleagues back into one another's lives.

When they both converge at the research center on independent fact-finding missions, the tension between the women is thick, but it's clear that they're willing to collaborate and share clues -- clues that include a torn parka that seems to be related to both investigations.

The episode concludes in truly eerie fashion when mysterious loner Rose Aguineau (Fiona Shaw) discovers a cluster of frozen corpses.

Adding to the creepiness is the fact that Rose was led to the scene by a mysterious figure named Travis, who has apparently beern dead for quite some time.