In what is both just generally good news for fans of AMC’s neo-noir Western series Dark Winds, and a vote of confidence for the show’s upcoming fourth season, AMC announced today that it’s already renewing the series for a fifth. The show will begin filming the eight-episode new season in March, with an eye toward airing the new episodes in 2027. (Annual TV: Who’d a thunk it?)
As for season 4, it’s sounding, if anything, even more gritty and darkly compelling than the first three, as the show follows Navajo Tribal Police officers Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon), Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon), and Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) as they’re forced to leave Navajo Nation for the grime of 1970s Los Angeles. The trio will be in Southern California hunting for a missing Navajo girl, which will unfortunately bring them into direct competition with the “obsessive killer” (Franka Potente) who’s also apparently hunting her. The new season debuts on AMC and AMC+ on February 15.
We here at The A.V. Club haven’t been shy about our affection for Dark Winds, which was created by Graham Roland, executive produced by Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin, and based on the novels of Tony Hillerman. (John Wirth serves as showrunner.) Although it doesn’t exactly go light on the murders, kidnappings, and other usual signifiers of the thriller genre, the series is also much more interested in the psychologies—and, maybe even more refreshingly, the hopes and other more positive aspects—of its crime-solving protagonists. To that end, it’s been a fantastic platform for Gordon, Matten, and especially McClarnon to shine as complicated but never unsympathetic characters. (If nothing else, the renewal gives the Television Academy another chance to correct what is now three seasons straight of neglecting the series and its stars when it comes to nominations—especially for McClarnon, who will branch out into directing an episode in the show’s fourth season.)
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