Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon), The Navajo Reservation Cop in AMC's Terrific Seventies Period Mystery Series Dark Windsis 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 Sightseed A Figure Every Bit As ASDomitable – And, for That Matter, AS Viewlly Striking – AS The Sandstone Buts That Give The Show's Monument Valley Setting Its Name.
That's What it's so shocking, and Effective, for Season Three to Begin In medias reswith Joe in the middle of the desert at night, injured, confused, and terrfied that some kind of Monster is coming for him. What couusly have happy 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 Bj Vines, The Man Held Responsible for the Death of His Son, Into Same Desert At Night and Left Him There to Die of Exposure (OR Worse) – Almedy Have Some Idea. Joe Comes Into the New Season Having Committed The Kind of Crime He's Dedicated His Career to Prevention. And Even If He Couuld Justify it then, or now, it is clearly weighing on him, and making him make more prone to Mistakes Than the Master Investigator We Thought We Knew So Well. It Makes for a More Unpretical Season, and a New Kind of Showcase for McClarnon, Who Continues To Give One of the Best Dramatic Performance You will find Anywhere on Television.
Once Again, Dark Winds IS Combbing 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 and Sinister Pig. Because Manuitito Spends The Season in a New Job, and AT A Local Different, 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 Riliably Sleazy Bruce Greenwood) Smuggling) Something over the border – is a bit less graceful than previus altams. Chee Gets a bit lost in the narrative as he travels back and ford between the two ares as a unifying element.
Jessica Matten As Bernadette Manuolito.
Michael Moriatis/AMC
Still, McClarnon is such an arresting screen presents, and even more in this extra-vulnerable mode, that any stucuttural 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 I is style 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 Allawed 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 Episode, Wirth and Co. Get To Take Breaks from the Plot to More Deeply Explore Both's Psyche and His Navajo Spirituality – In a show that has Always Taken The Latter 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 Ties Into Several of The Problems He's Recently Brough Upon Himself. We're Still Pretty Early in 2025, but it's Defintely in Contender for episode of the Year.
With seques 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-Oriented Context, Like a scene us 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 (Internship, The Searchers) Once Shot in This Same Region.
When we see in Frighend Joe in That Opening Flash-Forward, He Gets on the Radio and Pleads with the Polyice 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'm Seen All Eight Episode.
