One of the many wonderful things about AMC’s Dark Winds is how it defies the traditional habit of procedurals that work harder to satisfy their audience than they do to stay true to their characters. So many productions would have made this season about reuniting Joe and Emma Leaphorn. Not only does Dark Winds leave them hundreds of miles apart at the end of this moving episode, but they also conclude on a series of emotional and practical cliff-hangers. Joe vacillates about retiring, especially with Emma making it clear that she doesn’t really want him to, and Jim considers taking a job in Los Angeles as Agent Cheeseburger. Both decisions are put on hold with a tragic phone call that will carry us into a fifth season that can’t come soon enough.
Another distinguishing characteristic of Dark Winds is how respectfully it portrays Navajo culture. One of the season’s best moments comes when so many of the characters we love show up for Jim Chee, who thinks no one will be there for his ceremony. When the cars come over the horizon, there’s a smile on Bern’s face and a catch in Jim’s throat that are just two of the nuanced details that elevate this show. The people who have come to support Jim prepare for what will come after the ceremony as he goes into the structure in which it will take place, and, importantly, we don’t follow. We stay outside, which is such a beautiful choice. We have seen what matters: what this means to Jim and the people who support him, even an old teacher who saw something in him at a young age and the G-man who gave him that fast-food nickname.
Of course, all of this comes after the true climax of the season, during the first half-hour of this long episode. It’s here where Zahn McClarnon gets to do some of the best work of his career, the kind of performance that would net him an Emmy nod in a just world. He’s forced to play a range of emotions from anger to courage to vulnerability to, ultimately, triumph. And the show’s themes surface through this section and McClarnon’s work, including how we can’t force family and we can’t appropriate culture. It’s a battle between two people who would do anything to have a traditional family again, but it’s a contrast between a villain who tries to force into reality a life that she hasn’t earned and a hero who desperately wants to regain something he’s lost.
The showdown reveals the increasing depth of Irene Vaggan’s mental illness. She has kidnapped Joe and Billie with the demented belief that she can force them to be a family. Using her longtime obsession with Indigenous culture, she forces Joe and Billie to behave like her husband and daughter. She gases them to move them from sleep to a family dinner she imagines will somehow be a happy one.
Of course, Joe makes multiple escape attempts, including by using a charcoal filter to alleviate the effect of the gas, but that backfires, leading to a brutal offscreen beating of Billie. We don’t see it, but we hear it and catch the aftermath at the next “family dinner.” As Joe becomes more convinced that Irene is going to kill them both, McClarnon is allowed to push into his own rich emotional back story for this character. He had so many mornings with Emma and their son around a similar table, but “I blinked, and the table was empty.” He wants something that he once had back. She wants something that never was.
Convincing Irene that he’s willing to make an offering, Joe pops outside and gets a lighter in his hands. It’s another great scene for McClarnon, allowed to show both vulnerability and Joe’s strategic acumen. In Navajo, he tells Billie to run, and he lights the bunker on fire, horribly scarring half of Irene’s face. A battle ensues, and Joe gets the upper hand, but he doesn’t give Irene what she wants: to be killed by Joe. “You’re under arrest for murder,” Joe says. And the action of the season is over.
An epilogue to that action comes with a badass scene between McClarnon and Titus Welliver as the man who orchestrated all of this. He brags about busting his plan and sending Irene to prison for life. McClarnon has been delicately emotional this season, but there’s also just great joy to be found in seeing him go into full tough-guy mode. He’s not afraid of this defeated kingpin. “You know my name,” he says. “You know where to find me. Come knock at my door.”
From here, the season finale rolls to the aforementioned ceremony and the big question of whether or not Joe will retire. After Jim’s event, Emma goes to Joe and insists that any retirement has to be only for him, not to bring them back together. He needs to go sweat and pray on it. “You will always be my family,” she says. It’s a scene filled with loss and sadness, but it’s also creatively impressive.
Next, Joe gets a great scene with Gordo, who loves his life but admits he wishes he hadn’t retired. And then he gets another excellent one with Jim, reminding him how he’ll be undervalued in Los Angeles. They go into the sweat together to figure out their next steps.
And then life gets in the way. As “These Are Difficult Times” by Willie Nelson plays, Bern goes to the police station while Joe considers one of the biggest decisions of his life. “Don’t waste a moment unhappy,” advises Willie. “Don’t spend too much time on the bad times, their staggering number will be heavy as lead on your mind.” We hear that line twice, and it’s presumably a reference to the past. But it could be a nod to the future as Joe gets a call that will weigh like a ton of bricks for the rest of his days. With a shattered look on his face he says to Bern, “Gordo Sena was murdered last night.” Oh no.
Stray observations
- • Remember last week when I recommended Fancy Dance with Isabel DeRoy-Olson (Billie) and Lily Gladstone? This episode was helmed by that film’s director, Erica Tremblay.
- • It’s kind of funny to think that this season was about a girl who ran away and came home with a mother she thought was dead. It’s a season about family reflected through a teenager who had to leave home to find hers.
- • It ultimately means little, but it does broaden a show’s reach, so I’ll say that Dark Winds has landed too few award nominations. It notched a cool one for McClarnon from the Gotham Awards for the first season and a Scripter nod last season. This should be the season that changes that at the Emmys and not just because the competition thinned notably with a lesser outing for Slow Horses and the mediocrity that was the final outing(s) of Stranger Things. They truly should find space for at least Zahn McClarnon for Best Actor, and I would strongly consider Drama Series and noms for Kiowa Gordon and Jessica Matten.
- • This still feels like a show that works better at six or seven episodes per season rather than eight. (They could have tightened up some of the Los Angeles material here.) I’m also not 100-percent convinced by some of Franka Potente’s choices, although I think that’s the writing of a truly sporadic character more than an inconsistent performance. It’s a tough part to go from icy villain to the almost heartfelt mania that she has to play in this finale.
- • Thanks for reading this season’s recaps. See you next year! (I’m already sad about Gordo.)
Brian Tallerico is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
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