After two very strong seasons, Dark Winds – a Native American-focused police drama adapted from a series of acclaimed novels by Tony Hillerman – returns for a third, with a fourth set to premiere in the U. S. in literally a matter of weeks.
If you’re not yet on board, I strongly recommend getting up to speed with the 12 episodes that make up Seasons 1 and 2; as with most modern drama television, the storytelling is heavily serialised and so you’ll be lost trying to follow this season’s storylines without context.
Once you’ve done that, carry on here: Dark Winds Season 3 picks up six months after the status-quo-crumbling events of S2, with Leaphorn and Chee investigating the local disappearance of two boys, Bernadette, miles away in her new job with Border Patrol, looking into a possible trafficking operation, and Leaphorn battling personal, perhaps literal, demons in a subplot that takes parts of the show all the way into the horror territory that has been teased since the very first episode. Meanwhile, with Leaphorn and Chee now solidly allies and friends (and working in the same branch of law enforcement), the new character of “Agent Washington from Washington” (Jenna Elfman) steps into Chee’s old rôle as the FBI agent who steps in and brings with her a whole different culture of law enforcement.
Juggling these different threads and more, the season manages to successfully pull together all these things in an action-packed finale, but in getting to that point there is a feeling of wheel-spinning, as if, despite the season taking its story from two different Hillerman novels, there wasn’t enough material to fill 8 episodes, especially since previous seasons consisted of just six. This results in plenty of montages; obscure, witchy dream sequences; and scenes of characters quietly spilling their guts in bars. None of these are unpleasant to sit through, but cumulatively there is no sense of momentum, something the first two seasons were strong on. Most compelling is Bernadette’s storyline. It’s curious in 2026 (or 2025, when these episodes were made), to see a heroic Border Patrol agent but then, this being Dark Winds there is no simple bad guy/good guy equation, save for the undeniable goodness of Bernadette’s steadfastness and Leaphorn’s humility. Zahn McClarnon has always shone as Leaphorn, but this season gives Jessica Matten (Bernadette) much more time and more emotionally complex scripts with which to shine, though this does come slightly at the expense of Kiowa Gordon as Jim Chee who is more of a prop for Leaphorn to act off, with A Martinez’s Sheriff Gordo coming more to the forefront as a foil for Joe.
Other than that, what shines in this season of slower, more reflective storytelling is the careful details: the ants swarming over a dirty dish, the trail of spilled coffee as a cop sleeps at his desk. And fans of Game of Thrones or of the late, great Robert Redford – he and GoT‘s George R. R. Martin served as executive producers – can enjoy their chess-playing cameo in Episode 1: “George, the whole world is waiting. Make a move!”
Martin’s tardiness with regards to his literary magnum opus notwithstanding, a fourth season of Dark Winds is due to premiere in less than two weeks, and with plenty of source material still remaining to be adapted, long may the show continue. ★★★★☆