Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon), the Navajo reservation cop in AMC’s terrific Seventies period mystery series Dark Winds, is described by his longtime friend and colleague Gordo Sena (A Martinez) in the third-season premiere as “the most capable person I’ve ever met.” This is not hyperbole on the part of a fellow tribal cop; everything we saw of Joe in the first two seasons suggested a figure every bit as indomitable — and, for that matter, as visually striking — as the sandstone buttes that give the show’s Monument Valley setting its name.
That’s why it’s so shocking, and effective, for Season Three to begin in medias res, with Joe in the middle of the desert at night, injured, confused, and terrified that some kind of monster is coming for him. What could possibly have happened to this flinty statue of a man to have so thoroughly broken him?
Those who watched Dark Winds Season Two — specifically, the part near the end where Joe led millionaire B.J. Vines, the man he held responsible for the death of his son, into that same desert at night and left him there to die of exposure (or worse) — already have some idea. Joe comes into the new season having committed the kind of crime he’s dedicated his career to preventing. And even if he could justify it then, or now, it is clearly weighing on him, and making him far more prone to mistakes than the master investigator we thought we knew so well. It makes for a more unpredictable season, and a new kind of showcase for McClarnon, who continues to give one of the best dramatic performances you will find anywhere on television.
Once again, Dark Winds is combining the plots of multiple Tony Hillerman novels featuring some combination of Leaphorn, his partner Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon), and his protégé Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) — this time, Dance Hall of the Dead and Sinister Pig. Because Manuelito spends the season in a new job, and at a different locale, working as a border agent for the Customs department, the blending of the stories — one involving the murder of a boy on the reservation, the other about a shady businessman (the reliably sleazy Bruce Greenwood) smuggling something over the border — is a bit less graceful than previous attempts. Chee gets a bit lost in the narrative as he travels back and forth between the two areas as a unifying element.
Jessica Matten as Bernadette Manuelito. Michael Moriatis/AMC
Still, McClarnon is such an arresting screen presence, and even more so in this extra-vulnerable mode, that any structural fuzziness doesn’t much matter. Other characters come and go from the story, including Jenna Elfman as an FBI agent trying to convince Joe’s wife Emma (Deanna Allison) to refute his alibi for the night of Vines’ death, and Raoul Max Trujillo as Budge, a killer from the Manuelito subplot who is styled as something of a Dark Leaphorn. But attention always returns, as it must, to the actual Leaphorn, who’s going through a pretty dark phase himself at the moment.
The first two seasons were lean and mean at six episodes apiece, which allowed the creative team (these days led by showrunner John Wirth) to adapt Hillerman’s books without dragging things out. But there’s something to be said for the roominess of a longer TV season, and by expanding this one to eight episodes, Wirth and Co. get to take breaks from the plot to more deeply explore both Joe’s psyche and his Navajo spirituality — in a show that has always taken the latter subject very seriously. The season’s sixth chapter is absolutely stunning, as a wounded Joe either suffers an extended hallucination or takes a long visit to the spirit world in order to reckon with a dark secret of his past that ties into several of the problems he’s recently brought upon himself. We’re still pretty early in 2025, but it’s definitely a contender for episode of the year.
With sequences filmed throughout the Navajo Nation, this remains one of the best-looking shows being made today. And the creative team continues to find great joy in placing classic Western tropes in a more Native-oriented context, like a scene where Chee rides to his partner’s rescue on horseback, the score sounding like something that wouldn’t be out of place in the classic movies the legendary John Ford (Stagecoach, The Searchers) once shot in this same region.
When we see a frightened Joe in that opening flash-forward, he gets on the radio and pleads with the police dispatcher, “Send everyone. Now.” In that moment, he needs help. But as the main character of this outstanding series, he requires no backup to take command.
The third season of Dark Winds debuts March 9 on AMC and AMC+, with episodes releasing weekly. I’ve seen all eight episodes.
