Time is a flat circle, and finally, after a crazy long time, True Detective is back.

HBO dropped the first footage of the third season of the brooding crime series ahead of Sunday night’s Sharp Objects finale. Mahershala Ali – ahem, Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali – stars in the new season as Wayne Hayes, a detective in North Arkansas. Much like the first season, this one will also play with time, jumping back and forth between not two but three time periods. We see a little taste of that in the trailer as the footage cuts to an aging, grey-haired Ali.

According to Entertainment Weekly, the new season will be set in the Ozarks and follow a “macabre crime.” That sounds about right for what we’ve come to expect from the show, but thankfully the new teaser trailer recalls Season 1 more than the best-left-forgotten Season 2. Nic Pizzolatto wrote the new season with some help from Deadwood‘s David Milch, who co-wrote the fourth episode, while Pizzolatto is directing along with Daniel Sackheim (The X-Files). The season also stars Carmen Ejogo as a school teacher, Stephen Dorff as Wayne’s partner, and Ray Fischer as Wayne’s son.

True Detective Season 3 debuts in January.

More From 96.1 The Eagle