Season one of HBO’s brilliant anthology drama series True Detective comes to a close this weekend with Sunday’s episode, but there’s little doubt that the show will return for a second season.  The ratings have been stellar, buzz has been aplenty, and the anthology conceit of the show allows for an entirely new cast to take over the True Detective world in a second season.  One of the key aspects of the show that’s made it so engaging thus far has been that every single episode was written by creator Nic Pizzolato and directed by Cary Fukunaga.  It was a massive undertaking for one filmmaker to helm all eight episodes, but it provided a cohesiveness to the story that’s rarely found in episodic television.

Unfortunately, it sounds like season two won’t follow this exact same format, as directing every episode proved incredibly exhausting for Fukunaga and is time-prohibitive if HBO wants a new season every year.  Hit the jump for more on what Pizzolato had to say about season two.

Speaking with Buzzfeed in an interview that focuses on the lead-up to weekend’s finale, Pizzolato suggested that the second season of True Detective will have more than one director:

“We don’t have any plans to work with one director again. It would be impossible to do this yearly as we need to be able to do post while we’re still filming, like any other show. There’s some great guys I’ve consulted, and we’re all confident we can achieve the same consistency. Going forward, I want the show’s aesthetic to remain determinedly naturalistic, with room for silences and vastness, and an emphasis on landscape and culture. And I hope a story that presents new characters in a new place with authenticity and resonance and an authorial voice consistent with this season. Dominant colors will change. South Louisiana was green and burnished gold.”

Though it’s disappointing to hear that this one-director experiment likely won’t continue, it’s understandable.  Fukunaga has stated many times that it was exhausting directing all of the episodes himself, since he would have to spend his lunch hours and weekends location scouting, casting, and prepping future episodes.  Moreover, it took him six months  to complete post-production since he had no time to work on it concurrently with principal photography.

Pizzolato is now working on the scripts for season two, and he provided a vague outline for a timetable that would keep True Detective going annually:

“It’s very possible to do it once a year; the main thing that slowed us down was having to wait to do all of post-production until after we’d wrapped. I’d like to get two or three scripts exactly where I want them, then start getting the gears rolling in earnest. Casting is its own issue. Who we cast and what their schedule is will likely determine at least some part of scheduling, and scheduling will determine at least some part of casting.”

The scribe also recently hinted on Twitter that season two will have at least one lead female character, but he subsequently deleted the tweet.  Pizzolato says he did this so he wouldn’t be stuck with an idea should he change his mind:

“I deleted the tweet because I didn’t want to be beholden to a promise and then change my mind. I’m writing Season 2 right now, but I don’t want to divulge any potentialities, because so much could change. I just never want to create from a place of critical placation — that’s a dead zone. So I don’t want, for instance, a gender-bias-critique to influence what I do.”

As someone who has been thoroughly enjoying True Detective, I can’t wait to see what Pizzolato cooks up for the second season, and I hope it comes to fruition sooner rather than later.  The first season concludes this Sunday on HBO.