Diksha Sundriyal
AMC’s ‘Dark Winds’ returns for a fourth season with a new mystery that leads Joe Leaphorn and his team down another treacherous path full of dangerous people. This season focuses on the case of a girl named Billie who ran away from her boarding school. She seems to have gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd, and now she is being chased by people who are after her blood. Leaphorn, joined by Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito, has to race against time to find and save Billie, but that is not the only thing he needs to save. His marriage hit a tough spot last season when Emma decided to leave him. As the fourth season picks up pace, Emma is nowhere to be seen, which makes one wonder if she has left for good. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Emma Walks Out on Joe Because of His Sins
While the murder mysteries may be the draw of ‘Dark Winds,’ its heart lies in its characters and their relationships. Joe and Emma Leaphorn’s marriage has been at the core of the show, serving as its beating heart, which gives it the humanity and warmth that it needs, especially considering the dark cases that it focuses on. While Joe and Emma seem to be the perfect couple, deeply in love with one another, it turns out that they have survived a heartbreaking tragedy that has changed them in different ways. Losing Joe Jr. led Leaphorn to become more focused on his job, and when the time came, he decided to exact his own form of justice on BJ Vines, the man responsible for Joe Jr.’s death, in addition to the deaths of other members of Leaphorn’s community.
As an officer of the law, Leaphorn tries to get Vines punished through proper channels, but it’s not easy to hold a rich, white man accountable. So, at the end of Season 2, Leaphorn exacts his own form of “Indian justice” by leaving Vines to die in the cold desert. He doesn’t share this information with his wife, knowing she would disapprove, and he turns out to be right. When Emma eventually pieces things together and confronts him about it, she is horrified at his actions for several reasons. To begin with, his job was to bring Vines to justice in a legal manner, so he could answer for his sins, which he committed against the entire community. By killing Vines in such a way, Leaphorn has not only robbed other families of justice, but he has also invited bad karma on himself and his family, which, at this point, is basically Emma.
He thought he could be rid of Vines with his death, but having grown up in a culture where death and spirituality are an integral part of their beliefs, he should have known better. He might justify it by saying that he didn’t kill Vines with his own hands, but he might as well have. For Emma, this is the confirmation that the Joe she loved and married is no longer there. The grief of losing their son has changed him drastically, and in his blinding desire for revenge, he forgot that his wife was also grieving their son. Even worse, he has made her complicit in his crimes because she had to lie to Agent Washington to save him. All this makes her despise him even more, and she decides to leave him. It remains to be seen whether this is for good.
Emma Remains an Integral Part of Dark Winds
Because Emma leaves Leaphorn at the end of Season 3, she is nowhere to be seen at the beginning of the fourth season. This, however, does not mean that she won’t be around anymore. It turns out, she has moved to Los Angeles, where she has already started building a new life outside of Joe. The fact that she is in LA is confirmed in the first episode when Leaphorn reveals his plan to retire and leave for good, prompting Bernadette to ask whether he plans to move to LA. Further, we know that the search for Billie will lead Leaphorn to LA, and since Emma is there, the meeting between them is inevitable. Additionally, Emma is seen in the season’s trailer for only a brief moment, which confirms that she is still very much a part of the story.
It is possible that her desire to keep a distance from her husband may give her considerably less screentime this season, especially since Leaphorn and his team are expected to take at least a couple more episodes before they arrive in Los Angeles. Clearly, Leaphorn still has a lot of work to do in repenting and becoming the man that Emma wishes him to be. That journey in itself would take an entire season, so it is possible that things might not be mended between them until the end of the season or beyond it. With a focus on the investigation and Leaphorn’s spiritual journey, Emma’s arc might take a backseat, but she remains a strong influence on Leaphorn and the season’s storyline.
Read More: Dark Winds Season 3: Does Bernadette Leave Border Patrol?
