The following contains spoilers for Dark Winds Season 4, Episode 4, “Ni’ Ániidí (The New World)," which premiered Sunday, March 8 on AMC.
As the fourth season of Dark Winds hits its mid-season mark, the stakes only get higher. Joe Leaphorn (portrayed by Zahn McClarnon), Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) and Bernadette "Bern" Manuelito (Jessica Matten) head to Los Angeles to find a runaway teen chasing after the only family she has left. But the Navajo Tribal Police officers only find nightmares and stalkers in the new city.
Season 4 is shaping up to be a Jim Chee-centric season, as showrunner John Wirth intended. Out of the three main characters of Dark Winds, Chee is the least spiritual and more reluctant to embrace the superstitions and practices of the Navajo nation. But that might all change after Chee entered the Death Hogan in the second episode, triggering a syndrome known as "Ghost Sickness." In an interview with CBR, Wirth talked extensively about adapting The Ghostway into a season of television that focused on Chee's trauma. Additionally, he teased plans for Season 5 and reflected on the legacy producer Robert Redford left behind on the AMC series.
CBR: I want to talk about the adaptation process of this season. What went into the decision to choose The Ghostway as the next adaptation of the series?
Image via AMCJohn Wirth: That's a really good question. Thanks for asking that because it was not random. So every season I look for a novel or a story that, in some ways, not redefines or reshapes, but recalibrates the series itself. This series could just be cops running around the Navajo nation trying to solve a crime. But our show is multilayered in terms of the crime story itself, the personal relationships of our characters, the fact that they’re Navajo people, and they live in the Navajo culture. The fact that it's a period piece, what was happening in 1972 might come to bear on the story itself.
Our audience seems to be a pretty locked-in group of people. I get the sense that they watch every episode of every season. They’re following the story. I'm looking forward to each season and kind of changing it up, like a change-up pitch in baseball. You don't see it coming, and it's off speed and kind of takes your eye to a different place.
We have 18 novels that [Tony] Hillerman wrote. They're all available to us. Rather than do them in order — I've read all these books several times now — I go by how I'm feeling at the end of the season and what I feel would be good to address in the season that's coming.
I felt like we had underserviced the Jim Chee character in Season 3. It was very much about Leaphorn’s inner demons and Bernadette's issues of having left home to go out into the world. Chee is always central to everything that's going on in the show, but he did not have a primary story in Season 3, so I really wanted to focus on his character. The Ghostway seemed like a really good way to do that. I was really intrigued by taking the story off the Navajo reservation and taking it to Los Angeles, which turned out to be a much bigger job than I thought, in terms of trying to visually create what LA looked like in 1972, while also shooting it in Albuquerque.
It was a pretty insane thing to attempt to do, but I was quite happy with the way it turned out. It looks great. I think it's very evocative of that time period. So it was really just about telling a Jim Chee story and getting our people into a world where they could not be themselves in a way.
Particularly with this Ghost Sickness that Chee has, it made him not himself anyway. I thought that would be an interesting thing. And then curiously, when we got done with the season, I was really anxious to get back to the reservation. Now we have Season 5 coming up, and it's been a real kind of breath of fresh air again to have our people back in the landscape of the southwest, the Navajo Nation.
CBR: Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here, but do you know which book you're going to adapt next for Season 5 now that we're back on the reservation?
Wirth: I do, but I don’t know if it’s a spoiler for you.
AMC Representative: I think we might want to keep that under wraps for now.
Copy. All I needed to know is that you know, so that’s good enough for me.
I do. Yes, I very much know it.
Los Angeles is such a huge jump for the series, and I really loved it because it wasn't so much like a glamorized version of Los Angeles. It felt like how everyday people live in Los Angeles. How did you feel about incorporating the city into the show's story, given that it has been really focused on the reservation and this small town vibe this entire time?
Image via AMCIt was a great opportunity to take people who are very sure of themselves in their own environment and put them in an environment where they're almost completely discombobulated. At one point, Bernadette says, “I don't even know where to look. This place is huge.”
That gives you a lot of opportunities to tell interesting stories about your characters and their relationships with each other and trust issues. There’s a very meaningful story going on between the three of those people that are in Los Angeles together — putting a pin on Emma for a minute — just in terms of succession and who's viewed in what way amongst the three of them.
Thank you for mentioning the real world aspect of the city. We didn't want it to be glamorous. We tried to stay in the east Hollywood kind of area and keep it close to the ground in a sense. Also, there's an aspect to the story which kind of flies under the radar a little bit, but we tell the story of forced Indian relocation.
When they get to the Indian Center in Hollywood, you see all those people, and they've all been relocated. We find out that Chee had been brought to California by his mother during the early years of the relocation, which I think started in the mid-50s.
That was a very real thing — moving Indigenous people off the reservations to cities under the guise of getting job training and turning them into white people so they can live like the rest of us. It didn't work out too well. For some people it worked out, but for a lot of people it just disconnected them from their culture, their land, and their understanding of who they are. It’s a sad story. This isn't a National Geographic TV show, so we didn't have a chance to really get into it on that level. But we talked about it and I think it was an important aspect of the story, although not the flashiest part of the story.
CBR: Back in October, I read your piece with Variety about Robert Redford's last performance, and it was beautifully written. I imagine his memory will live on in everything that he's made and the legacy he's left behind. In your mind, how does Season 4 keep his memory alive?
He cast a long shadow, and everybody involved with this show was deeply influenced by him and aware of his incredible ethics as a human being and as a powerful white man who could take a leadership role in terms of his environmental efforts and recognizing protecting Indigenous peoples. He wanted to promote people who don't have mainstream access to life, in general, and in particular, his world, which was motion pictures and television. There aren't really any scandals around him or his life or his reputation.
In my view, he was pretty much who he seemed to be. I think everybody on our show is enormously grateful that they had a chance to work with him and see and hear him talk to us. He would come down to the set, and the crew would assemble. He would say some words, and he'd always say, “What am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to talk about?” Then he'd just be incredibly eloquent about whatever we were talking about. I think everybody carries that with them. I certainly do.
I think about him every day. I'm not a stalker or anything, he really made a big impression upon me when I was a teenager. I started thinking about what I wanted to do with my life, and maybe I wanted to be in the film business somehow. And I probably really thought, “I just want to be like Robert Redford.” But then you realize at a certain point there's only one Robert Redford, and it's him.
But he lives on in the show. We do a lot of things in the spirit of Bob. We're having this premiere this week, and I'm going to introduce the episode, and I'm sure I will say something about Bob because it's hard not to think about him.
New episodes of Dark Winds premiere every Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on AMC and AMC+.
- Creator(s)
- Graham Roland
