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Spoiler alert: we are recapping True Detective after UK transmission. Please don't read on if you haven't watched episode six. If you have seen further ahead in the series, please do not leave spoilers.

Read Gwilym's Mumford's episode five recap here.

Louisiana's finest homicide partnership is no more. This is hardly breaking news: from the very first episode of True Detective we've known that the relationship between Rust and Marty went south at some point in 2002. But, as is the way of this teasing puzzle box of a series, it has taken us half a dozen episodes to finally piece together exactly how things fell apart. And for all the "smoke-and-mirrors" techniques utilised by the show's creator Nic Pizzolatto – obscure literary references, unreliable narrators and the like – the dissolution of Cohle and Hart's partnership is as uncomplicated as it gets: two men beating the hell out of each other in a car park after one found out that the other had slept with his wife.

Given that we already knew that Hart and Maggie were divorced by 2012, and that Hart and Cohle had also gone their separate ways, it doesn't seem too much of a leap to infer that one might have influenced the other. Nevertheless, Haunted Houses does the heavy lifting for us, juxtaposing the events leading up to the fight – Maggie's realisation that Hart is again having an affair, Maggie's revenge sex with Cohle – against Maggie's testimony to Gilbough and Pappania in 2012. On paper, plonking Maggie in the interview room might seem like a good idea, allowing Pizzolatto to maintain the show's time-skipping structure despite Rust and Marty having cut short their respective interviews, but in reality it adds little, both in terms of plot and in expanding on Maggie's character.

Part of the problem here is the show doesn't have much to say about Maggie. Her role so far has largely been reactive; she's there to facilitate exploration into the psyches of the characters the show is really interested in – Hart and Cohle. Even her big scene in this episode, her seduction of Rust, seems to be more focused on Rust's horror after the act, than what it means for Maggie. Likewise, the most revelatory moments of her conversation with Gilbough and Papania are when she's discussing Rust and Cohle, and the differences between them. "Rust knew exactly who he was, and there was no talking him out of it," she says, before contrasting him with Marty, a man who "never really knew himself, and so never really knew what to want".

Did Rust and Cohle ever truly enjoy, rather than merely endure, each other's company? I'm not so sure, despite their long and prosperous partnership. Sure, in True Detective's opening episodes, their contrasting worldviews were played largely for laughs – Hart's one-liners undercutting Cohle's philosophical ponderings – but, in truth, their differences were probably insurmountable. For Rust, crucially, Marty outlived his usefulness. His unwillingness to follow Rust back down the rabbit hole when the serial-killer case resurfaced deprived his partner of that layer of legitimacy that allowed them so much leeway in the original investigation. In Rust's eyes, Hart became little more than a secretary. "I get people to talk, you write the stats. It's worked out well for you so far," he says. Even worse, in Rust's eyes, is that, by failing to back Rust on the serial killings, Hart is complicit in the unquestioning "flag-and-faith" mentality governing Louisiana. Things are done a certain way, impeding proper investigative work and allowing the serial killings to happen.

Each step of Rust's own unsanctioned investigation into the killings seems to confirm further his damning impression of a Louisiana poisoned by religion. The reverend, Theriot, who Rust interviewed back in 1995, is now out of the ministry and a drunk, his faith shattered by the discovery of a folder of obscene images of children and the intimidation he suffered when he tried to reveal the source of those images. The girl Cohle and Hart rescued from LeDoux's compound is in a psychiatric unit, still haunted by the abuse she suffered by a "giant" with scars on his face. Meanwhile, the reverend Tuttle, who Cohle is convinced has some sort of involvement in the killings, sits in his gleaming modernist building, untainted.

Cohle's unsanctioned visit to Tuttle is perhaps the episode's most engrossing scene; a tense, pointed conversation between two people silently attempting to suss each other out. In person, Tuttle is unflappable, responding calmly, if a little vaguely, to Cohle's requests about Wellspring (the program tied to those schools in the region which Rust believes are connected to the killings). But his complaint to the department which leads to Cohle's suspension is proof enough for Cohle that something is up. Tuttle's death eight years later, we learn, was from an "accidental overdose". Gilbough and Papania again suggest that Cohle may have been responsible; just what was he up to during his period "off the grid"?

We're surely close to finding that out, going by the final scene here, which sees 2012 Cohle and Rust meet for the first time since that bruising encounter in 2002. Cohle suggests the pair get a beer and talk, and Marty agrees but, tellingly, checks his gun is loaded. Perhaps just as telling is the episode's final shot, with the camera fixing its gaze on Rust's taillight, still broken from the fight a decade earlier. It brings to mind something Maggie said during her interview with Gilbough and Papania: "Cohle said there's no such thing as forgiveness … people just have short memories."

Loose threads and observations

The woman Marty has the affair with? Beth, the underage sex worker at the Bunny Ranch back in episode two. Back then Marty tried to get her to leave the ranch, handing her a wad of dollars. "Was that a down-payment?" Rust asked mischievously at the time.

Can anyone recall Cohle suffering any more hallucinations? I assumed when he first had them back in episode two that they would be a regular feature in the series.

Quote of the week

"You, these people, this place ... you eat your young and that's fine, as long as you've all got something to salute" – Rust to Marty.

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