Diksha Sundriyal
AMC’s ‘Dark Winds’ returns with a third season where Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee solve another crime while also dealing with some personal stuff that weighs heavily on them. In the last season, the duo, along with Bernadette Manuelito, chased after a man named Colton Wolf, who was hired by BJ Vines to do his dirty work. Apart from the most recent string of killings, Wolf also turns out to have been involved in blowing up the drill site that claimed Leaphorn’s son’s life. All of that happened because of Vine’s greed.
At the end of Season 2, Leaphorn, dejected by the law’s inability to bring Vines to justice, decides to take things into his own hands. He leaves the villain stranded in the middle of nowhere, and he is last seen dying of hypothermia. The third season brings new mysteries for the trio, but there are still loose ends from the last season that start catching up to them, especially Leaphorn. Then there’s the mysterious entity, Ye’iitsoh, who is established as one of the prime suspects in a missing person investigation. However, there is a good chance that there is more to it than that. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Case of the Missing Child
The season opens with Leaphorn unconscious and injured in the middle of nowhere. When he wakes up, he calls for help, but the danger is imminent, and it seems unlikely that he will get help before whatever’s chasing him will find him. Sure enough, a demonic figure shows up, but before we can find out what happens next, the scene cuts away to seven days ago. We find Leaphorn safe, sound, and content in his life with his wife, Emma. At breakfast, he gets a call from the station and reaches the crime scene with Chee by his side. They are given the gist of things of Gordo Sena.
Two boys, Ernesto Cata and George Bowlegs, were hanging out with each other last night, but this morning, only one of them is accounted for. Ernesto Cata has gone missing, and the blood and machete marks on his bicycle hint towards sinister happenings. This is also when Chee talks about the legend of the La Llorona, which is called Ye’iitosh in Navajo. It is a supernatural being that does not leave its victims alive, but of course, police officers are not going to list it as the primary suspect in their investigation. A red pickup truck is reported to have been seen around the place, and that’s a clue that they can work with.
Chee and Leaphorn visit George’s school to talk to him, but he flees. When they go to his house, they meet his father, Shorty, a war vet whom Leaphorn describes as a “head case.” The conversation takes seconds to turn hostile, following which Chee reveals that he has a bone to pick with Shorty, who was his bully when they were in school. It turns out that when Chee’s mother decides to talk to Shorty’s father, their discussion turns into a romance and not a good one. Shorty’s father was physically abusive, and things got so bad that one time, he almost killed Chee, who would have died if it weren’t for his mother.
The cops have better luck with George’s brother, Cecil, who is the second person to mention Ye’iitosh, claiming that it was the monster who took Ernesto. Another thing he points them towards is an archeological dig site where Ernesto and George used to hang out. Leaphorn and Chee are told by an archeologist on site that the boy used to come there to help her and her boss (who is out of town for the day), but when they fought and ruined the site, they were told to leave and never come back. She also tells them that the site is looking into the connection between the Folsom people and the Navajo. This becomes important later when Leaphorn and Gordo continue their investigation and trace Ernesto’s body in the middle of the desert with a lance tip in his mouth.
Bernadette Manuelito Settles Into the Job of a Border Patrol Officer
At the end of Season 2, Bernadette Manuelito realizes that there is no future for her at the rez, so she moves on to a new job that will hopefully open new opportunities for her. She applies for a position as a Border Patrol Officer, and in Season 3, we find her settling down into it, though she struggles to be taken much more seriously. While out on patrol, she notices a white van abandoned in what seems like the middle of nowhere. It has Mexico license plates, and she sees a woman and a girl running in the opposite direction. The woman has a gun, and she will not hesitate to use it. Manuelito calms her down by leaving her own gun on the ground, and after a bit of run and tackle, she finally gets the woman and her daughter to cooperate. At the same time, she notices that her own gun is gone, and the white van is being driven away by an unknown person.
The circumstances suggest that the woman and her daughter were being trafficked. While Manuelito wants to look into it, she is discouraged from doing it by her new chief, who wants to end things by deporting the woman and her daughter. Later that night, she sneaks into the cell and talks to the duo, though there is a huge communication problem because they speak Mixtec, which she does not understand. In the end, the girl draws a picture for Manuelito, and the next day, the duo is taken away to be deported. The picture doesn’t make much sense to the officer yet. But she does hold on to it. On the personal front, it seems that a fellow officer may be romantically interested in her.
A New Arrival Becomes a Cause for Concern for Leaphorn
At the end of Season 2, Joe Leaphorn avenged his son by leaving BJ Vines to die in the cold desert. Not many people are aware of what he has done, except Gordo, who assures him that he will keep his mouth shit about it. It would have remained a thing of the past, but when FBI Special Agent Sylvia Washington shows up at the station, Leaphorn gets a little nervous. While he didn’t kill Vines with his own hands, he did do away with his duties as a police officer. The FBI agent reveals that she has come to town to wrap up a few cases, one of which is the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Vines. He had friends in high places who were concerned about what really happened to him. She, too, finds it weird that he seems to have simply disappeared off the face of the earth.
Leaphorn tries to play it cool, saying that Vines’ case was not in his jurisdiction. But it seems that Washington may have read into him and is not entirely convinced that he didn’t have anything to with the case. For now, she doesn’t have anything, but he knows that soon, she might connect him to the case, especially after she finds out about his son. Her arrival also flares up his guilt, as he has nightmares about Vines frozen to death. He also sees weird things, like a coyote by the road and a Ye’iitsoh-like figure staring at him from a distance in the middle of the night.
Another notable thing about the episode, though entirely unrelated to the case, is the cameo of George RR Martin and Robert Redford, the executive producers of the show. They are seen at the station inside the prison, playing chess to pass the time. Redford quips that George is taking too long to make his move. His words echo the feelings of all the people who have been praying for the author to just finish A Song of Ice and Fire series. He finally moves a piece on the chess board. Whether or not this move translates for his book remains to be seen. However, the moment does add some levity to an episode, which shows the audience that things are going to get really dark for the protagonists from here.
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