I wrote a post in here two episodes ago, but removed it because it was too early to say. But now, it's completely obvious. The show was basically "The Philosophy of Nic Pizzolato". Rather than letting the character's lead the story, Pizzolatto used techniques and devices in the last 3 episodes to get it to where he willed it. The whole show was basically an allegory for this type of philosophy. Which isn't necessarily theist at the end, but more along the lines of pessimistic gnosticism, but in a completely forced way. I not only think the show was cheesy in this last episode, but I thought eps. 1,5,6,7 were equally cheesy in the words/devices/character types (TYPES) forced by the author to unfold his ideas. Here's an example:
If anyone saw "The Counselor" by Cormac McCarthy (an author like Pizzollato) and "No Country For Old Men" and adaptation of McCarthy by Coens, those are two completely bipolar ways of letting the truth seep out of its philosophy. Counselor just felt like McCarthy used his characters as his sadistic philosophical peons, while No Country feels like each character is not serving anything more than who they truly are, which is much more full of depth than philosophical masturbation. I'd say True Detective should be placed in the middle of these two, but leaning more towards the former.