Dark Winds Season 3 (2025) Review
Lauded as a ‘must watch’ (Screen Anarchy) and an ‘instant classic’ (AV Club), the smash hit noir thriller is based on Tony Hillerman’s best-selling Leaphorn & Chee mystery novels and is exec-produced by Games of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin and the late great Hollywood legend Robert Redford, who makes his final on screen appearance in the series.
The third series picks up six months on from the explosive season two finale, in the stunning sandy dunes of the Navajo desert where we are reunited with a fractured Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (McClarnon) who is still consumed by the sins of his past.
On the reservation, Leaphorn and Jim Chee (Gordon) investigate the disappearance of two 14-year-old boys, with only a broken bicycle and a bloody patch of dirt as clues. The partners encounter various local groups who know more than they let on, sparking an unravelling, for not only Leaphorn, but for the whole community already teetering on the brink. Complicating matters is the arrival of cunning FBI agent Sylvia Washington (Jenna Elfman – Fear the Walking Dead, Dharma & Greg) who begins digging into Leaphorn’s complicated past.
Meanwhile, after putting put five hundred miles between herself, the reservation and a budding romance with Chee, Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten – Frontier, Tribal) forges her own career with the US Border Patrol. Her unbridled curiosity, tenacity and morality soon lead her into danger when she uncovers a conspiracy involving human trafficking and drug smuggling.
As Bernadette’s (Matten) case intertwines with Leaphorn and Chee’s investigation, they all grapple with their own personal and professional demons, while facing new horrors fighting to protect their community. With a fourth season on its way, now is the perfect time to embrace Dark Winds for an explosive and atmospheric series full of breathtaking scenery, powerful stories and career defining performances that honour Navajo culture.
Dark Winds Season Three has a more measured paced than the relentless paced and action-packed Season Two, however Season Three’s central mystery of what happened to two missing fourteen-year-old boys ensures that Dark Winds remains as compulsively watchable as ever. Season Three kicks off with Lt. Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) lying in the dirt incapacitated and possibly drugged, being targeted and pursued by a masked individual lurking in the shadows intent on doing him harm.
Before we can find out more the plot zigzags and brings us up to speed with Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) now working with the Border Patrol and introduces us to FBI agent Sylvia Washington (Jenna Elfman) who arrives in town keen to question Leaphorn in respect of the disappearance of her FBI colleague B.J. Vines (John Diehl). As is the case with two other current and ongoing TV shows Slow Horses and Interview with a Vampire, Dark Winds has a small but loyal audience but has still yet to achieve the giddy heights of popularity that it deserves. Unfortunately, audiences prefer to gorge themselves upon more easily digestible TV fodder that is as quickly forgotten about as soon it has been watched. If you’re a fan of Dark Winds already then you will require no prompting to add Season Three to your home collection, however if you have yet to experience any of the three seasons to date then do yourself a favour and buy the box-set instead and catch up with one of the three best TV series doing the rounds right now.