Jessica Matten and Zahn McClarnon in 'Dark Winds' season four, episode seven. Michael Moriatis/AMC [This story contains spoilers from Dark Winds through season four, episode seven, “Nániikai (We Came Back)”.]
Since the beginning of this season of Dark Winds, Lt. Joe Leaphorn has had plans in place to retire. He handed in his notice and even named his successor in Bernadette. But by the end of episode seven, it looks like he might never get that chance.
The reason? Irene Vaggan.
In the latest episode that aired on Sunday, Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) and his team were hot on the heels of Vaggan (Franka Potente), but the assassin was always one step ahead. After threatening Emma (Deanna Allison) in the hospital parking garage on last week’s episode, Vaggan now beats the police to finding Billie (Isabel DeRoy-Olson) and abducts her, wounding an FBI agent in the process.
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Joe puts the pieces together to find Billie’s cousin Leroy — only for Vaggan to outwit him again, as she has already murdered the real Leroy and put another young man in witness protection in his place, with the goal of exonerating her employer with his false testimony. Just as he starts to see through the deception, Vaggan attacks Joe from behind, knocking him out — then ties him up and puts him in the trunk of a car. The episode closes with her triumphantly announcing, “You’re mine now, Joe.”
Despite the dire straits that Billie and Joe find themselves in, episode seven also explores the strained relationship between Joe and Emma, and deepens the connection between Bernadette (Jessica Matten) and Chee (Kiowa Gordon) after they struggled as a couple for much of the season. And Chee seems to have finally turned a corner regarding the ghost sickness afflicting him both physically and emotionally.
THR recently sat down with the cast to talk about those emotional moments, as well as the episode’s tribute to actor Udo Kier. Read on below for what Zahn McClarnon, Jessica Matten, Kiowa Gordon, Deanna Allison and Franka Potente had to say ahead of next week’s finale:
Emma’s Quiet Strength
Irene Vaggan (Franka Potente) threatens Emma Leaphorn (Deanna Allison) on Dark Winds season four, episode six. Michael Moriatis/AMC Dark Winds has a propensity for cliffhangers. But last week’s episode took a break from that format: After Vaggan threatened Emma in the parking garage of the hospital, the audience got the cathartic release of seeing Joe find her, unnerved but generally unharmed, and comforted her in his arms.
Emma’s kind, matriarchal presence — which has been a constant in the show since season one — is lacking in the first half of this season, underscoring the impact of her separation from Joe. But since the team arrived in L.A., Emma has been there to provide guidance to Bernadette about her relationship with Chee and uses her knowledge of Navajo traditions to help Chee finally reckon with his ghost sickness.
Allison tells THR she identifies strongly with Emma’s embrace of Navajo cultural traditions. “She really stands firm and incorporates her core values and her morals. As a Navajo woman, that’s something that just naturally resonates in me,” she says, adding that while the cast and crew represent many different cultures and tribes, “It goes beautifully with all the other cultures and actors that have their different backgrounds. We’re in a time where there’s very limited representation in general as Indigenous actors, and I feel like it adds another element to the Indigenous world of storytelling.”
Asked about Emma’s role as a matriarch, she notes, “That’s one of the foundations and principles of the Navajo lens and culture, is the respect for the mother, the woman, the home. That’s what the hogan [traditional Navajo home] represents, is the round of the stomach, the roundness of Mother Earth. But there’s also a deep respect for the male energy, as we depicted [last season with the story of] the Hero Twins, and so there is a respect for both [male and female] to replenish the Earth and to continuously be that balance for one another.
“Whether you’re an auntie or an elder or a mother or a sister, the Navajo women are really held in that accountability where men and women and children and elders go for support and love, and they’ll always have somebody to care for them deeply,” she continues. “That is the powerful role of Navajo women. I’m very fortunate to have women like that in my life, so I’m only emulating what I grew up with, and these strong, powerful matriarchs really helped me be the woman that I am today.”
She adds, “I just love that behind every Navajo man, regardless if you live on or off the rez, whether you’re going off to war or you’re going to have a life of service as a lawyer or a community leader, there’s always a Navajo woman who’s praying for her son, for her husband, for her brother, for her cousins. That is the beauty of the matriarch of the Navajo that we really hold sacred.”
Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn and Deanna Allison as Emma Leaphorn on Dark Winds season four, episode six. Michael Moriatis/AMC Since Emma left, Joe has been trying to be the man she would want him to be, so after her run-in with Vaggan, he says he’ll let others continue working on the case while he stays with his wife to protect her. But to his surprise, Emma insists that she’ll be all right, and Joe needs to go find Billie, the teenage runaway that Vaggan is ultimately pursuing.
“She just believes in her husband,” Allison explains of Emma’s reaction. “She sees the good man, and he’s the leader, he’s that pillar. She married him because he’s the ultimate protector. She sees that, she knows his potential, she knows his fight. So, she’s not ever trying to tell him not to be who he is. She knows exactly the man she married. And then for that attack to hit so close to home, she’s like, ‘Wow, this is getting personal.’”
In addition to the direct threat to their family, Emma is keenly aware of how small the Indigenous community is. “She works with women and children. She was a mother herself. We can’t have missing children who are displaced. For her, if anything, she would be right there with him going to help find [Billie]. She wants Joe to find that young Navajo girl who’s all alone, who needs support,” Allison says. “[Emma’s thinking] ‘Joe, you’re the only one. You can’t stop. You’ve come this far, you’ve got to keep going.’ She’ll be fine, she’s been fine. She’s been gone by herself for months. Navajo women are very resilient. She’s very resilient, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still need those protectors to really help the community.”
A “Man-Chee” Moment
Jessica Matten as Bernadette Manuelito and Kiowa Gordon as Jim Chee behind the scenes on Dark Winds season four, episode six. Michael Moriatis/AMC After Vaggan abducts Billie, Bernadette goes to the hospital to tell Chee, and he finally opens up about the emotions he’s been struggling with, telling her the story of his mother’s illness and his failure to bring her back to the reservation before she died. Matten and Gordon tell THR that, for them, this scene was among the most challenging — and rewarding — aspects of the season.
Back at the beginning of season four, Bernadette was in a vulnerable place following her return from the Border Patrol, and Chee was trying to be there for her, Matten recalls. But as he faces his own demons, exacerbated by ghost sickness, she notes that “the roles actually reverse, where you begin to see what Chee goes through and how he’s put in this crazy whirlwind of PTSD of his own and how Bernadette’s there for him,” she says, “which is, I think, reflective of relationship dynamics in the real world, and passing the baton to each other.”
Gordon says of the dynamic, “It’s just about being able to be intimate with each other and be a safe space for each other, and holding each other with love and patience.”
Matten recalls that the episode’s director, Chris Eyre, helped them explore the core emotional truth of the scene. “When we need help hitting an emotional note, and we don’t know what it is but we’re trying to figure out, ‘What is the note that we’re missing?’, that’s when we really rely on the director to help us out,” she says.
“We are of that generation, and our parents are, where it wasn’t cool to be Native, so it was about feeling the shame of being Native,” she continues. “Chee’s character was going through that and Chris said, ‘Remember what that felt like?’ And I delved into my own life, remembering how growing up I was always trying to hide that side of me. I would lie about what I was and the shame I felt behind that, and I remembered the shame my grandfather felt as well. He wouldn’t be able to show up to a hospital because they would just be like, ‘Oh, he’s a drunk Indian, there’s nothing wrong with him.’ So, these things are really real.
“It changed my entire perspective of the scene, so when Kiowa was delivering his lines about Chee holding that shame, it was like, boom. I saw my grandpa, I saw my mother, I saw myself as that little kid. Then with Kiowa and I, we’re so fortunate that we just naturally bounce off of each other. Everyone was quiet and crying after that.”
Director and executive producer Chris Eyre behind the scenes on Dark Winds season four. Michael Moriatis/AMC Gordon adds, “It was a special moment. I don’t think you can just write or capture that, it just has to be very a very vulnerable and authentic moment. You have a connection emotionally to everybody in a 20-foot radius.”
Matten recalls with a laugh that after they finished the scene, McClarnon broke the tension by telling them, “That was so sappy, you guys.” Says Gordon, “Yeah, he brought us back down to earth.”
Matten says the emotions are universal, even though the scene is filtered through a specifically Native experience, “because we all have moments of doubt of our sense of self-worth. I think that’s why the entire room, we were all crying. It’s not just as actors, but anyone who works behind or in front of the camera, we live for these moments that are a true reflection of human experience. We got to experience that on set.”
Soon after their heart-to-heart, the characters return to the reservation, where they start to plan a much-needed traditional healing ceremony to rid Chee of his ghost sickness.
“It is a sickness that grabs a hold of your open insecurities and your wounds and it feeds off of that and can eat you alive if you let it,” says Gordon, “but luckily you have the team of Man-Chee and Leaphorn. They have this old wisdom and knowledge where they have a ceremony and medicine for this.” He adds with a laugh, “It takes like the whole season for Chee to figure that out, but gladly he finally comes around.”
In Memory of Udo Kier
As noted in the closing credits, episode seven is dedicated to Udo Kier. The German actor, who also appeared in Oscar-nominated The Secret Agent before his death in November at age 81, played the grandfather of Potente’s villain Irene Vaggan in this season. His character, an aging Nazi who’s suffering from dementia, got his sendoff from the show this week, as Irene ran him over with her car in a bout of frustration after he wandered away from the nursing home to which she had admitted him.
Potente and McClarnon spoke about the joys of working with the actor, who is known for Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, as well as collaborations with filmmakers Lars von Trier and Wim Wenders.
“He was an amazing man,” says McClarnon. “He was fun to be around, that’s for sure. Franka was a little bit closer to him than I was, but [I enjoyed] being around him and his energy and he’s just very, very eccentric.”
Adds Potente, “He was just so free. He would just suddenly in a scene start reciting Hamlet. Or he would just sing, you know? And [McClarnon and I] just kept saying to each other, if only we could just be half this liberated and free. He’s just exploring in the moment. You could feel when he got bored of the scene, he was just like (sings). What that is, is a reset, it’s an invitation to everyone to join in.”
As far as Kier’s role in the story, the elder Vaggan’s fate seems like a confirmation that even when Irene is on the cusp of victory — she runs him down after she’s captured Billie and shortly before she gets the upper hand over Leaphorn — she is not necessarily making the most logical decisions, introducing factors of both danger and chaos to the plot.
And she will surely continue doing so in next week’s finale.
Dark Winds airs on AMC and streams on AMC+, with new episodes airing weekly on Sundays. In case you missed it, you can find more coverage from episode one here, episode three here and episode five here. Check back for more insights from the show’s team as the season progresses.
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