Showcasing success with its first two seasons on Netflix and remaining inside the Netflix Top 10 TV list during the entire month of first airing, Dark Winds’ Season 3 returned in March 2025. The first two seasons contain six episodes, and the third one contains eight episodes, each running around 40 to 50 minutes. Set in the 1970s in the Navajo Nation, the show’s first season follows Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) and Officer Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) investigating murders that may also be connected to a helicopter bank heist.
Dark Winds presents stark realities of life on the reservation while showcasing the strength and healing from community, ceremony, and traditional practices. As a psychological thriller and crime drama, it fuses mystery with mysticism while highlighting rich cultural narratives and compelling character development.
Dark Winds’ setting seemingly plays just as compelling a role as that of many characters. Set in and around the Navajo Nation, located in the Southwest region of the United States (including Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah), the series’ backdrop offers breathtaking views of Monument Valley, with its towering rock formations (most famously, the “Mittens”), deep red buttes with bright blue sky stretching behind them and muted green shrubbery in the foreground.
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The opening minutes of Dark Winds’ first episode, “Monster Slayer”, follow the bank heist helicopter across the suburbs of Gallup, New Mexico. The houses and trees in the surrounding area of Gallup fade to the soaring red rocks of Monument Valley, a place of cultural significance for the Navajo (Diné) long before Hollywood arrived.
“Monster Slayer” visually introduces Monument Valley to its viewers while verbally introducing other significant landscapes and landmarks, notably Window Rock and Canyon de Chelly (pronounced SHAY but mispronounced by the white FBI Special Agent Whitover as CHELL-ie). Window Rock, verbally referenced in “Monster Slayer” as the place where Jim Chee’s character was raised, hosts the seat of the Navajo Tribal government. Its name derives from the landscape’s unique window-like rock formation. By referencing Window Rock, the episode loosely alludes to the fact that the Diné people have their own tribal government and sovereignty, which can complicate criminal jurisdiction.
Because the opening episode deals with a murder on the reservation and the FBI’s limited access to the territory, it is important to foreshadow and establish this tension. Canyon de Chelly, where the heisted helicopter supposedly disappeared, is considered sacred to the Diné. An enduring Diné oral story revolves around Grandmother Spider (who taught the Diné to weave) emerging from Canyon de Chelly. Likewise, Dark Winds weaves together compelling narratives of reservation life that may be unfamiliar to many Eurocentric viewers.
From Novels to Netflix: Centering Indigenous Actors and Writers
Dark Winds began streaming on AMC and AMC+ in 2022 and was later added to Netflix in August 2024. A streaming service like Netflix provides viewership to millions — in August of 2024 alone, Dark Winds drew 929 million viewers, moving into a space of mass consumption. Although the show features characters living on the Navajo Nation reservation, a “culture of the ‘periphery’”, it has entered into the “central domain of elite or dominant culture.” (Hall). The backing of pop culture celebrities Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin as executive producers likely further solidified Dark Winds’ reputation.
In contrast, Rutherford Falls (2021) streamed on Peacock (which has only 20 million subscribers compared to Netflix’s 230.75 million) and was canceled after two seasons due to a lack of viewership. Rutherford Falls is a comedic show that explores tensions among the white and Indigenous communities in America and specifically focuses on the friendship between Nathan Rutherford (played by Ed Helms, also one of the show’s creators and producers), ancestor of the town’s founder, and Reagan Wells (Jana Schmieding), member of the (fictional) Minishonka Nation.
Like Dark Winds, Rutherford Falls stars several Indigenous actors. However, despite Rutherford Falls’ strong reviews from critics, its streaming failed to cross over into a commercial giant like Netflix. Although Rutherford Falls addresses political issues such as the impact of colonization and the efforts of the landback movement on Native peoples, its political implications remained limited due to a lack of viewership and inability to be embedded into the streaming cultural landscape.
Dark Winds, however, has succeeded in entering the mainstream cultural landscape. Its cast heavily features Indigenous actors such as Zahn McClarnon, Kiowa Gordon, and Jessica Mattel, as well as an all-Indigenous writing staff with writers like Billy Luther. Luther is best known for writing the screenplay for Frybread Face and Me (2023). This film follows a city kid named Benny who befriends his bold cousin Dawn when, during the summer, they stay with their grandmother in the Navajo Nation (executive producer Taika Waititi). Luther, who is Navajo, Hopi, and Laguna Pueblo, brings greater authenticity to the locale and Diné traditions within Dark Winds’ scripting.
The original material for the show derives inspiration from Tony Hillerman’s popular 1970s and ’80s Leaphorn and Chee novel series, centered on the Navajo tribal police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. The most notable inspirations for Dark Winds include Listening Woman (1978). This novel follows Leaphorn and Chee as they investigate a series of mysterious deaths in the Navajo Nation potentially tied to Indigenous beliefs situated within a web of secrets.
Season 1 is influenced by People of Darkness (1980), which follows Chee as he must escape a killer while investigating the theft of a mysterious artifact and a wealthy businessman’s link to the Diné). Season 2 brings in elements of Dance Hall of the Dead (1973), as the story follows Leaphorn as he investigates the disappearance of a young Diné boy and the murder of a Zuni man, and as Sinister Pig (2003), which tells the story of Leaphorn and Chee as they work to solve the murder of a corrupt businessman and uncover a drug-smuggling operation. However, Season 3 of Dark Winds only loosely follows the characters and plots of the books.
In a 2022 interview with Variety, Billy Luther said, “The books were based in the ’70s and ’80s and written by Tony Hillerman, who was not Native. But there also wasn’t much out there at the time except for what you saw in the past, stereotypical Indians.” (Tancay). Luther seemingly indicates that Indigenous people may have been more willing to accept Hillerman’s writings, storylines, and characters because they offered perspectives of Indigenous people that were not being shared or represented in other forms of media.
Although Hillerman was not Indigenous, he focused on the Diné’s “world of nature and magic, of medicine ceremonies and the centuries-old weight of tradition has long been under assault by the dominant Anglo culture.” (Holley). Did Hillerman culturally appropriate this world of the Diné or demonstrate a cultural appreciation for it? Regardless of his intent, his original content has been reimagined in the Dark Winds series.
Hollywood Brought a Monster to Monument Valley through Uranium Mining
Hollywood originally arrived at Monument Valley thanks to Harry Goulding’s partnership with John Ford. Goulding was a white sheepherder who purchased land and set up a trading post at the edge of the Navajo Nation. Ford was a famous Hollywood director who “saw Harry’s photos of Monument Valley, [and] knew it was the perfect location for his next movie” (Goulding’s history), the 1939 film Stagecoach (Ford), starring John Wayne. This celebrated legacy of Goulding and his influence on Monument Valley’s tourism hides the more insidious impact of Goulding’s legacy upon the region and its people.
In the 1920s, Goulding and his wife bought “640 acres, a square mile, from the State of Utah for just $320” at the northern edge of Monument Valley and looked for ways to bring in business once the Great Depression struck (Gulliford). Initially, this entailed building a relationship with Ford in Hollywood, but by 1950, this meant encouraging “local Navajo to look for bodies of uranium ore”. (ibid). From “1944 to 1986, 30 million tons of uranium ore were excavated on the Navajo Nation,” leaving behind 500 abandoned mines, four inactive uranium mill sites, and contaminated groundwater” (ibid). Still today, this region bears the scars and after-effects that resulted from mining uranium.
A key conflict in Dark Winds Season 1 touches upon these scars and the lasting impact of uranium mining on the reservation’s people, particularly upon Joe Leaphorn’s family. Today, the Diné “are 67 times as likely to lack running water as the average American, and spend 71 times as much for what they do get,” and to gain access to water means they often “risk contamination from livestock and uranium” (Ross). Season 1 helps bring attention to this concerning issue.
By engaging with the show’s issues and characters, viewers may gain greater awareness about the lives of Indigenous people. The lenses of critical media literacy and intersectional analysis assist in reframing, resisting, and redefining representations of Indigenous people presented through history and texts (including film and television). Although there are 574 federally recognized tribes in the United States, the “Reclaiming Native Truth Project in April 2020 reported 90% of schools do not teach about Indigenous peoples beyond the early 1900s” (Pierce & Santos), making Indigenous people seem as if they are relics of the past who do not continue to exist today.
Further, false narratives about Indigenous people promoted through sports teams’ mascots and tropes such as the “noble savage” or “Indian princess” create reductive narratives around Indigenous people. How, then, can the series Dark Winds act as a popular culture site for reframing, resisting, and redefining such presentations of Indigenous peoples, specifically focusing on the Diné living near Monument Valley?
Dark Winds and the Diné: Place, People, and Portrayals
In their chapter “Reading Television Sitcoms Intersectionally” (from Intersectional Analysis as a Method to Analyze Popular Culture: Clarity in the Matrix), Edwards and Esposito suggest methods for a qualitative analysis of a television series. While Dark Winds would be categorized as a crime drama or psychological thriller, not a situational comedy, Edwards’ and Esposito’s suggested approach remains useful. Their process included analysis of Cristela, Black-ish, and Fresh Off the Boat’s pilot episodes, as they argue that a pilot episode’s “success or failure in achieving syndication communicates its relatability, popularity, and overall effect.”
Unlike these shows, Dark Winds Season 1 opened not with a pilot episode but with the aforementioned premiere episode (actually broadcasted to audiences) “Monster Slayer”. This opening episode’s ability to garner enough general interest ultimately influenced its Netflix syndication, which connects back to Edwards’ and Esposito’s rationale for focusing on a first episode. While watching and analyzing the show, a viewer might apply visual analysis and image-based qualitative methodology (Prosser) to consider the following:
- How is this show “unique to [the] locality” of Monument Valley and a “distinct marker of identity” for the Diné people (Parker)?
- How does the show present and represent the Diné people?
- Is the portrayal decolonized or filtered through the white gaze?
Battacharya’s critical, de/colonial approaches to qualitative inquiry, which “culturally situat[e] practices of relationality” also proves useful. The theory of relationality believes that we learn not through academia and academic journals but instead through stories, ancestral knowledge, and the land itself. Australian researcher Lauren Tynan writes that the land “sits at the heart of coming to know and understand relationality as it is the web that connects humans to a system of Lore/Law and knowledge that can never be human-centric.”
While watching Dark Winds, a viewer might note the stories shared among characters, the positioning of elders, and the scenes and shot compositions that capture the setting and landscape, particularly Monument Valley. Keeping the theory of relationality in mind, rather than centering human experiences, one might consider what the land shows and teaches.
A lens of re-memory (Morrison, Dillard) helps viewers consider how histories of the Diné are presented and conceptualized in Dark Winds. How might the show shift the stories and memories of Indigenous peoples transmitted from generation to generation? What stories do Indigenous peoples tell of themselves, and how do these mis/align with stories projected in the national narrative?
For generations, Indigenous characters have been depicted (if at all) in limited roles. However, Indigenous voices gained some notoriety in the 1970s, the same era in which Dark Winds takes place. The show looks back 50 years to when Indigenous voices were represented through the United Native Americans, the Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan, and the American Indian Movement (AIM), which worked to establish greater civil rights for Indigenous people. Most notably, around the time of Dark Winds, AIM occupied various locations, including Alcatraz Island, the Mayflower replica in Boston Harbor, and Mt. Rushmore (History.com).
As the show looks back to the 1970s, how might it seek to reframe Indigenity’s impact and influence on that period and still today? How history is told (or not told) matters in the construction of our national narratives. Cynthia Dillard (2011) writes that “(re)membering [is] an act of decolonization”. How can Dark Winds help to rewrite some of the ways we have remembered history and tell a new story? Furthermore, how does Hollywood act “as an ethnographer” (Wong & Esposito) in its culturally immersive approach to showcasing Indigenous characters (the actors came from various tribes but were meant to represent the Diné), the Diné language, and landscapes of the reservation and its surrounding area?
What “Monster-Slayer”‘s Opening Minutes Reveal About Identity, History, and Representation of Elders
“Monster Slayer” introduces striking landscapes in and around Monument Valley, various markers of Diné identity connected to language, tradition, and art, and numerous characters, most of whom seem to have depth, nuance, and complexity. The main characters include Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police; his wife Emma, who is a nurse at the hospital; Deputy Jim Chee, who joins the Navajo Tribal Police and is also secretly an FBI special agent; Sally Growing Thunder (Elva Guerra), a young pregnant woman who lives in a precarious environment; and Sergeant Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten), whose traditional practices help her to feel protected and safe on the job. Only one character seems one-dimensional: the white FBI agent known as “High Pockets” (Special Agent Whitover, played by Noah Emmerich).
Whitover only cares about recovering the money stolen using the helicopter that disappeared somewhere near Canyon de Chelly, and he is dismissive of Indigenous lives, voices, and experiences. This is most notable when, about 26 minutes into the episode, Lieutenant Leaphorn tells Whitover: “I will pretend that your bank robbers are Navajo if you pretend my two murder victims are white. Let’s see which one of us does our job quicker, huh?” This further suggests that Indigenous lives are not seen as valuable and that the FBI agent cares more about recovering money than obtaining justice.
“Monster Slayer” creates suspense, tension, and drama and invites viewers to take another look. In doing so, the following categories emerge: stories shared, positioning of elders, presentations of landscapes, elements unique to the locality of Monument Valley, decolonized v. white gaze, and representation of the Diné people. One need not critically analyze the entire episode: the opening six minutes alone, which include three scenes that occur before the show’s opening montage, help to establish the tone and mood of the overall episode and also provide important representations of a range of characters, localities, histories, and identities.
In its first 15 seconds, viewers learn from words flashed on the screen that the opening is set in Gallup, New Mexico, in 1971. Masked men, who appear to be Indigenous, along with a white-presenting officer, shoot two bank security guards protecting an armored vehicle, steal bags of money, and flee in a small red and white helicopter. As the chopper takes off from the crime scene, viewers see an aerial view of Gallup and a mountain range in the background, most likely the Zuni Mountains.
The chopper passes a movie theater called El Cielo with its marquee reading “NOW SHOWING LITTLE BIG MAN $1.25.” This allusion asks viewers to remember a film from over 50 years ago, Little Big Man (1970), starring Dustin Hoffman, who plays a white man in the 1800s raised by members of the Cheyenne Nation; he then tries to integrate into white society after being captured by the U.S. Calvary. The film presented Indigenous people in a more positive light than many previous Westerns and showed the Cavalry and Custer as villainous. By showing the image of this 1971 marquee, Dark Winds connects itself to this film’s history and suggests that it, too, will present Indigenous people in a positive light.
One of the first ways we see a distinct presentation of a Diné character occurs just over two minutes into the episode, as the helicopter soars past Monument Valley; the shot composition then cuts to a desert landscape and an Indigenous man with wrinkled skin who still looks strong and capable. He wears a dark grey cowboy hat with a button-down striped blue shirt, leather belt, and blue jeans, and carries a metal bucket, which he uses to feed his goats. He keeps the goats behind a hand-hewn fence made from branches, indicating a sense of self-reliance and living off the land.
With captions on the screen, we see that he speaks Diné, saying, “Listen up, listen up,” cueing viewers to note the concepts of listening, storytelling, and oral tradition. When he hears the helicopter overhead, the camera zooms out to show it flying across the valley. The man seems startled by such a symbol of modernity, as he is cast in a more traditional light as someone following the “old ways”.
Does this depiction play into the trope of Indigenous people existing only as relics of the past, connected to the land but devoid of technology? Or does it honor and celebrate the survival and resilience of Indigenous people, existing without unnecessary technological luxuries in lands that many colonizers found uninhabitable?
We later learn that this man is Hosteen Tso (Jeremiah Bitsu) and that he has become very sickened after witnessing the “white man’s mechanical bird” that had “no wings and no beauty” (the helicopter). He visits a traditional healer and seer (“the Listening Woman”) at a motel room but is gruesomely murdered, with his throat slit and his eyes gouged out, a symbolic blinding that may indicate that his exposure to the “white man’s” world has destroyed him. Showing the damaging impact of infringing white technologies on the local Diné community echoes the catastrophic impact of colonization on Indigenous communities.
In contrast to this destruction, we have a scene of reclamation following the opening helicopter heist. The episode flashes “Three Weeks Later” onto the screen and introduces Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police, depicted in a white cowboy hat, a recalling of the “good cowboy” character in 1940s and ’50s Western films and television shows. Rather than a “cowboys vs. Indians” depiction, with the Indigenous character cast as an antagonist, here we see one of the series’ protagonists portrayed.
Indigenous actor Zahn McClarnon plays Leaphorn, and in addition to the white cowboy hat, he wears a long jacket, blue jeans, and a gun holstered at his side. The medium shot that first reveals Leaphorn to viewers shows him bathed in bright light, his head tilted down, suggesting an angelic look and a posture of humility. His hair is tied back in a traditional Navajo bun called a tsiiyéél; in Diné culture, hair is symbolically connected to memory, so this image shows that Leaphorn uses traditional practices and ways of remembering his heritage and history.
Viewers later see Leaphorn practicing traditional ways when he prepares to investigate the murder of Hosteen Tso and Anna Atcitty (Shawnee Pourier) at the Big Rock Motel. As Leaphorn approaches the scene, the camera zooms in on his hands, holding a medicine pouch. He takes a pinch of a black substance from it, which he wipes next to the corners of his eyes, seemingly as a form of protection for what he is about to witness.
How might this scene work on multiple levels, both within the microcosm of Dark Winds but also in the macrocosm of society, with Indigenous people needing the protection of the “old ways” in the face of modernity’s capitalistic violence? How might Indigenous stories and histories differ without colonizers’ attempted eradication of Indigenous ways?
As someone who upholds heritage and history, Leaphorn is also characterized as potentially a savior for his people, defending cultural erasure and robbery. We see this in his first scene as he holds a scruffy-bearded white man in custody in the desert and commands that the man open up a cloth bundle. Inside, we see pottery fragments, an arrowhead, and other remnants of Indigenous artifacts. Leaphorn looks up to the camera for the first time with a look of past pain and severity in his eyes and tells the man, “Put ‘em back,” indicating that he will make this white man bury the stolen artifacts, returning them to the land and Indigenous people.
As the white man buries the artifacts, Leaphorn threatens him: “If I catch you stealing artifacts again, the hole you’ll be digging will be a lot bigger.” Thus, he is established as a character who will protect Indigenous culture, artifacts, and land, unafraid to use his position as the law (tribal police) to assist him in this pursuit. This empowered depiction of an Indigenous man holding a white man accountable for cultural theft highlights Dark Winds’ interest in questioning the hegemonic exploitation of European colonizers and their descendants.
After these two opening scenes, another scene sets the background for “The Listening Woman”, Margaret Cigaret (Betty Ann Tsosie), a crucial character in Tony Hillerman’s Listening Woman. She is depicted as an archetypal blind prophet or seer, and we first see her sitting in the corner of a motel room in a cushioned seat, dressed in traditional Navajo regalia and wearing large dark sunglasses that cover most of her face. Her hair is covered with a shawl, and she speaks only in Diné.
“Monster Slayer” establishes Cigaret as an elder with wisdom whom others seek out for healing and advice. Tso comes to visit her for a “sing”, or ritualistic form of healing. Cigaret’s granddaughter, Anna Atcitty, welcomes Tso into the motel, and without seeing him, Cigaret can recognize that he has “been ill for quite a while.” When Cigaret removes her sunglasses, viewers see that her eyes are milky, opaque blue; she is blind visually, but spiritually, she sees clearly.
Cigaret is connected to the supernatural world, referencing witches that “play in the wind” and embodying a liminal space between the living and the dead. Cigaret is the only witness to Tso and Atcitty’s murders and is left alive but in a muted state. Her loss of language after witnessing such violence hints at the history of cultural genocide that sought to erase Indigenous languages, most infamously at the Carlisle Indian Industrial Boarding School, which emphasized Indigenous inferiority and white superiority (Au et al.) as it forced Indigenous youth to speak English and not their heritage languages. Despite these attempts at erasure, many Indigenous elders kept their heritage languages alive, as seen with Hosteen Tso and Margaret Cigaret’s characters.
Dark Winds’ presentation of Tso, Leaphorn, and Cigaret as elders worthy of reverence and respect depicts the knowledge and wisdom we can garner from ancestors and elders. However, considering a critical lens, in what ways might their portrayals present them as fixed in the past or as exoticized, with Tso’s remote living, Leaphorn’s stoicism, and Cigaret’s mysticism? How might our perceptions of these characters shift if, for example, Tso both lived off the land in an isolated area and had previously witnessed a helicopter or plane flying above him? Or if Cigaret were both a blind soothsayer who spoke Diné and could speak about what she witnessed after the murders?
How much are these characters’ identities restricted by how white author Tony Hillerman wrote them on the page? How much freedom did the Indigenous writers for Dark Winds have to shift these identities? In other words, do these three elders embody the personal and communal qualities revered by the Diné, or do they reflect an expectation of elders held by Eurocentric viewers?
Dark Winds’ Impact Beyond the Screen
“Monster Slayer” develops its Indigenous characters beyond one-dimensional portrayals or colonized representations. The characters are presented in complex and multifaceted ways, with a depth of emotion, internal conflicts, and identities that extend beyond Diné tribal affiliation (college-educated, farmer, miner, daughter, father, officer, nurse, etc.). “Monster Slayer” also adeptly addresses sociopolitical issues such as land theft, cultural genocide, dismissal of Indigenous deaths, erasure of Indigenous languages, sexualization and sterilization of Indigenous women, and more. At times, though, it still must appeal to its Eurocentric viewership, such as by providing subtitles when characters speak Diné or explaining what a “sing” is, and these choices help to acknowledge Dark Winds’ crossover appeal and place within mass media consumption.
A show’s impact can prove far-reaching, and viewers may wonder how Dark Winds’ commercial success will influence Monument Valley, at the heart of much of the show’s setting, which sits on Diné lands and showcases its iconic rock formations. These formations once created breathtaking backdrops for John Wayne westerns from the end of the 1930s through the ’50s (Guziak). Monument Valley continues to appear in Hollywood films and shows today.
Despite the setting’s location on tribal lands, the majority of film productions made here center not on Indigenous characters but on white characters or Indigenous characters played by white actors, which makes Dark Winds unique. The show’s economic success speaks to the success that can derive from hiring Indigenous actors and writers and depicting Indigenous experiences on the screen that extend beyond fighting cowboys and dying.
How might Dark Winds prove a harbinger for future storytelling centered around Indigenous characters? How might such storytelling impact Indigenous activist movements such as the ones that address uranium mining and the building of pipelines on reservation lands and calls for land to be returned? Perhaps as Season 3 unfolds, viewers will help decide.
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