AMC's Dark Winds is returning in February for a fourth season

If you haven’t watched AMC series Dark Winds, there is no better time to get caught up than right now. With the fourth season set to debut in February, you have plenty of time to watch the 20 episodes that have already aired. The first two seasons contain six episodes each, and season three gave us eight episodes, as will the upcoming fourth season.

Dark Winds is produced by Robert Redford (who passed away in September of this year) and Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin. The series is based on the Leaphorn & Chee novels by Tony Hillerman, with each season based on a different book. Season one is based on Listening Woman, season two on People of Darkness, season three on Dance Hall of the Dead and The Sinister Pig, and the upcoming fourth season is based on The Ghostway.

Dark Winds is a noir thriller-type series that feels very authentic, thanks to the large number of Native Americans on the cast and crew. Zahn McClarnon plays Joe Leaphorn, a tribal police lieutenant in Kayenta, which is located in Navajo County, Arizona.

Kiowa Gordon portrays Jim Chee, who is Leaphorn’s new deputy in the first season. Unbeknownst to Leaphorn, Chee is an undercover FBI agent. Most of the focus is on these two characters, alongside Jessica Matten’s Bernadette, initially Leaphorn’s deputy, but she joins the U. S. border patrol later. Deanna Allison plays Emma, who is a nurse married to Leaphorn.

The cast is uniformly great, and the storyline in each season is dark and compelling. It’s not straight-up horror, but there are plenty of supernatural elements, including Native American superstitions, murder and witchcraft.

Season one opened with a helicopter-aided robbery of an armored truck, the violent and mysterious death of the of Hosteen Tso, the only witness to the robbery. In flashback sequences, we meet Leaphorn’s son Joe, Jr., who was killed during an explosion at a drilling site. Tso, Anna Atcitty, and Anna’s medicine woman grandmother are in a hotel room when Tso is killed. Anna is also found dead, apparently having been scared to death, and the only survivor is the grandmother, who is now catatonic.

The characters in Dark Winds are very well drawn and interesting, and it is fascinating to learn about the Native American superstitions that drive them. While many of the decisions made by Leaphorn and the other characters are a little frustrating, we never lose sight of their humanity.

According to the press release, season four will focus mainly on Leaphorn, Chee, and Bernadette’s search for a missing Navajo girl. The search takes them “from the safety of Navajo Nation to the gritty terrain of 1970s Los Angeles in a race against the clock to save her from an obsessive killer with ties to organized crime.”

Season four of Dark Winds will premiere on Sunday, February 15 at 9:00 pm ET.

Interestingly, the second episode (which will air on Sunday, February 22) will be the directorial debut of McClarnon. It should be interesting to see what the incredibly talented actor can do as a director!