If you're expecting Dark Winds' second season opener to leisurely set the stage, allowing time to reintroduce the series' characters, before gradually easing into its central storyline, well, you'll want to buckle up.
Titled "Na'nikaadii" (Sheep Dog), episode one begins with a literal bang, as a deadly car bomb attack draws Navajo Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) into an all-new murder mystery. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Because before that explosion kicks off the season's body count, a pre-credits scene sees an RV turned to Swiss cheese from behind an assassin's automatic rifle.
Toss in brand new characters, like Jeri Ryan's (Star Trek: Voyager) icy Rosemary Vines, a creepy cult dubbed the "People of Darkness," a nightmare-conjuring sheep, and John Chee's (Kiowa Gordon) newfound affection for leisure suits, and there's a ton to cover in Dark Winds' season two premiere. Let's dive in!
A Powerful Prologue
Before episode 1 begins proper, we're treated to a brief prologue. In the dead of night, Joe Leaphorn and Sergeant Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) track a suspect to a remote spot in the high desert. They call for backup, but help is at least two hours away. They cautiously enter their target's home; an RV hitched to a pick-up truck.
Inside, they find bomb-making materials and other suspicious items, like a collection of wigs and creepy dolls. Outside, a tall, blond man with a bloodied face and a big machine gun riddles the motor home with bullets. Joe and Bernadette dive to the floor of the vehicle as the opening credits roll.
Flashback to More Violence
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Following the pulse-spiking prologue, the episode picks up six days prior. Leaphorn is home enjoying a thermos of coffee and repairing a motorcycle, while his wife Emma (Deanna Allison) is caring for a patient at work. Deanna, who's a nurse, smartly surmises the young man - who claims to have lost a couple of fingers to an "alien"- should be seen at the hospital.
While driving her patient to the medical facility, Emma nearly collides with a hurried man (Nicholas Logan) - who looks a whole lot like the automatic rifle-toting assailant from the pre-credits scene. Once inside, Emma buys a cup of vending machine coffee while waiting for the "alien" victim to return from surgery. Glancing out the window, she notices an older man struggling to walk to his truck. As he approaches his vehicle, it blows up, fueling a blast that knocks Emma unconscious.
Back at the Leaphorn residence, we're briefly reacquainted with Season 1's Sally Growing Thunder (Reservation Dogs' Elva Guera), who's had her baby and is still staying with Joe and Emma. Clutching her newborn, she runs outside to inform Joe of the accident. When Leaphorn arrives at the hospital, he discovers his wife's suffered a minor head injury, but is otherwise okay. While comforting her, he also finds a fragment of blue wire - similar to those seen earlier among the RV's bomb-making materials - caught in her hair.
The clues continue piling up when Joe heads to the scene of the crime outside. The responding officer informs him that the elderly bomb victim, Emerson Charley, was a Navajo man receiving cancer treatments at the hospital. Joe immediately recognizes the name, recalling the victim's deceased brother, Dillon, who oversaw a church called the "People of Darkness." Before he was killed in a car accident a couple years prior, Dillon had predicted the Drumco Oil explosion, the very same incident that took the life of Leaphorn's son Joe Jr.
The annoyed cop is quick to dismiss the explosion as an unfortunate accident, but Joe points out the clues supporting his car bomb theory. He suggests they begin their investigation by seeking out and speaking to Emerson's son Thomas. Leaphorn then drives Emma home, but not before she insists their family plan a ceremony to bring them "back in balance" following all the recent death and violence. She also encourages her husband to respect and follow their Dine beliefs and customs.
Bernadette is Back in Action
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When we catch up with Bernadette, she's chasing a man who's stolen a horse. When she arrives at the police station, on horseback along with the now-captured criminal, Leaphorn is assigning the day's duties. Bern's bad luck sees her tasked with helping Steve - the man with the severed fingers. With his digits re-attached (thanks to Emma) and his obvious indulgence of recreational drugs apparently numbing his pain, Steve escorts the Sergeant to the scene of the attack.
According to Steve, the otherworldly aggressor is a "freaky sheep" with "twisted and weird" horns. But Bern dismisses his far-out story when she finds a crashed U.S. Air Force space capsule at the site. After advising Steve, who she fondly refers to as "hemp head," to lay off the substances, she hits the road. She's soon stopped in her tracks, however, when a mutated sheep matching Steve's exact description walks in front of her vehicle. When we next see officer Manuelito, she's locking the bizarre beast up in a cell at the station, where her coworkers are clearly spooked by the new prisoner.
Jim Chee, Private Eye
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When we finally catch up with Jim Chee, the former FBI agent is waking after a presumably long night - his intro scene opens with an apparent one-night-stand slipping on her heels and exiting his hotel room. We also get a taste of what he's been up to professionally since parting ways with Leaphorn last season. Based on a brief interaction with an old woman who's hired him to catch a petty thief, he's scraping by as a small-time private investigator.
But he's not the only one making a quick buck as a PI. We soon meet another investigator who seems to be working a "missing persons" job for none other than the bomb-making, assault rifle-slinging assassin. The killer, oozing an unsettling Crispin Glover-like vibe, gives the man an envelope of cash, a gesture to stress the importance of finding a woman, Linda Maddox. But it seems the PI's already provided his no-nonsense client more than enough info about her whereabouts, as the assassin follows him into the bathroom, shoots him with a silenced pistol, and retrieves the stack of cash.
Meanwhile, Chee's luck is about to turn. During his sit-down with the old lady, he gets a phone call and is summoned to a swanky house. Sporting a new polyester leisure suit, he arrives at the posh estate to meet his soon-to-be new client, Rosemary Vines (Jeri Ryan.) Hooked up to a portable oxygen tank, while smoking a cigarette and drinking scotch, Vines asks Jim to retrieve a stolen box that belongs to her husband.
She wants the mysterious item recovered before her spouse returns from a hunting trip. She also doesn't want to involve the police, calling the case an "Indian problem." Jim is naturally suspicious and skeptical, and pushes for more info. Vines concedes, some, saying that Thomas Charley - previously referenced by Leaphorn as the son of the car bomb victim - stole the box.
But it gets better. She says Thomas' father, Emerson/car-bomb-victim introduced her husband to a "mystical sect" of healers called the "People of Darkness." Vines claims her hubby supported the church/cult financially, but became disenchanted with it and stopped the donations. She insists Thomas stole the box as revenge.
Leaphorn and Chee Reunited
Still suspicious and unaware of the coveted box's contents, Chee heads to a market where Charley's selling rugs. He quickly finds and questions him, but Thomas has a different tale to tell. He claims Mr. Vines is a People of Darkness witch, practicing "white people medicine." He says Vines cursed his father with cancer, and the spell can only be broken by taking the box to a sacred Navajo site. Charley, who isn't yet aware of his father's tragic death in the hospital parking lot, draws Chee a map to said site. Outside, the assassin watches them through a window.
When Jim exits with the map, he encounters Joe, who's also on his way to speak to Charley. The former partners exchange some fun jabs, discuss their respective cases, and determine they may be connected. The pair return to the market to talk to Charley, but the rug vendor is nowhere to be found. They pivot to the map, and hit the road to the box's supposed location.
En route, they catch up, exchange more playful barbs - mostly Joe ribbing Jim about his "synthetic polymer" suit - and talk about Bernadette. Chee asks how she is and how he might get back into her good graces after their falling out last season. Joe says Bern's still "pissed off." Ouch.
When they arrive at the site, they spot a pick-up truck - the same one that was attached to the bullet-riddled RV. The map ultimately leads them to a sort of ritual site, where stacks of rocks and a still-warm campfire suggest a ceremony of some kind has recently taken place. A number of random items are discovered in the fire, including a worker's patch with the name "Martin" stitched on it, plenty of burned documents and paperwork, and a belt buckle. The latter is a prize from the Navajo Rodeo. Its front side reads, "Bareback Champion,' while the winner's name is inscribed on its underside - it reads "Joe Leaphorn Jr."
As Joe stares at the buckle in disbelief - "This belonged to my son. He wore it the day he died." - a gunshot rings out from the distance, and Chee's hit in the shoulder. Joe and Jim scramble to take cover and tend to the wound while the assassin continues unloading on them from afar. Leaphorn runs to his truck to retrieve his rifle, but the vehicle's gas tank's been stuffed with a flaming rag. He's able to secure his weapon before the truck explodes. He also manages to fire a few shots at the attacker, but the increasingly formidable baddie escapes in his pick-up.
Joe returns to Chee, who's still nursing his wound. As Leaphorn again studies the belt buckle, the episode closes with a wide shot that hints at both the literal and figurative long road the two protagonists now face.
Questions and Predictions
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- Prediction: The bike will be back. Maybe it belonged to Joe Jr. or maybe it's symbolic for another reason. Or maybe Leaphorn will fix it just in time to ride it in an epic chase scene. Regardless, we're betting we haven't seen the last of that motorcycle.
- Will Bernadette be more than comic relief? Bernadette is one of the series' standout characters, but her scenes so far - with Steve the stoner and the horse thief - were played more for laughs. Here's hoping the space capsule mystery and that creepy sheep lead to some meatier, and more serious, storylines for Bern.
- Prediction: Season 2 will be darker. Sure, Dark Winds' first season featured a bank heist and a double murder, but that all's starting to look like child's play next to this season's Terminator-like assassin, "alien" sheep, and curse-casting cult. And that's not even considering what Jeri Ryan's juicy femme fatale is capable of.
- Remember "Season 1" B.J. Vines? This episode frequently references, but never shows us, B.J. Vines (John Diehl). But fans of Dark Winds' debut season will remember that he was the uranium-hungry millionaire who bought Drumco Oil, the facility where Joe Jr. was killed. Season 1 concluded without revealing all his cards, including whether or not he was involved with the deadly drilling site accident.
- Who was Joe visiting/looking for? The episode contains a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene of Joe visiting a home with a black-and-gold muscle car parked outside. He's greeted by a boy walking a bike, who Leaphorn is clearly friendly with. He asks the kid if his dad is home. When the boy nods "no," Joe leaves a message to let him know he stopped by.
Dark Winds is currently airing new episodes every Sunday on AMC.
