The second season of the AMC series Dark Winds ends this weekend, closing another chapter of the Tony Hillerman (Listening Woman, People of Darkness) adaptation. TVLine reports executive producer and director Chris Eyre (Skins, Edge of America) believes they are just getting started with telling these stories regarding a season three renewal.
“I don’t feel like we’ve hit our stride with this series,” Eyre said in an interview via TVLine. “There are 18 [Leaphorn & Chee] books by Tony Hillerman and there are five by Anne Hillerman, so there’s enough detective/Navajo police drama.” The series received a season two renewal during the freshman season’s run in June of last year.
The series follows a trio of Navajo tribal officers combating crime and their own demons in the 1970s Southwest. The show stars Zahn McClarnon (Longmire, The Son) as Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, Jessica Matten (Tribal, Frontier) as Bernadette Manulieto, and Kiwoa Gordan (Blood Quantum, The Red Road) as Jim Chee. The first season followed Joe and Bernadette joining forces with FBI agent, Chee, to solve a family’s kidnapping. The crime soon revealed a larger conspiracy linked to an accidental explosion near a workers’ mine that claimed the lives of six Indigenous workers, including Leaphorn’s son.
The second season continues the mystery behind these deaths as an assassin known as the Blonde Man is picking off targets within the surrounding reservation. As Joe investigates these killings, he has reason to believe the death of his son was no accident.
Eyre, who directed the first two episodes and the finale, has a prior history with Hillerman’s stories. According to TVLine, he directed Skinwalkers: The Navajo Mysteries for PBS. They were a series of movies based on the Leaphorn and Chee crime novels.
“I think that their evolution could be a long time coming — and a great journey,” Eyre told TVLine. “Somebody at my gym mentioned this to me, that ‘I just want to see what happens to the characters now.'”
The season two finale of Dark Winds airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET on AMC. Both seasons of Dark Winds are available to stream on AMC+ and season one is available on Max through October 31.