SHOCK Discovery in Dark Winds: Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito Uncover a Death Hogan 🔥

Kiowa Gordon as Jim Chee, Jessica Matten as Bernadette Manuelito, and Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn on ‘Dark Winds’.

Before anything, I have a confession: In my recap of Dark Winds‘ season 4 premiere, I mentioned that we briefly met Sheriff Sena’s wife, and observed she was living with some kind of dementia. What I failed to realize is that she was played by Linda Hamilton! I was so in the moment with the drama that I had a moment of face blindness. Clearly, I am no Leaphorn, Chee, or Manuelito when it comes to detective work! Let’s see if she makes a return appearance.

Episode 2, “Bikéé’ Doo Éédahoozįįdę́ę́góó (Toward Their Unknown Paths),” starts with that diner jukebox once again playing Connie Francis’ “Who’s Sorry Now,” but this time, it’s playing at a normal speed. This is a few minutes before the big shootout that both began and ended the last episode. Billie (Isabel DeRoy-Olson), the young Diné girl who ran away from the Catholic school, is with her older cousin Albert (Avery Hale) and they are having a serious conversation.

“I have to find him,” he says.

We finally learn that the “him” is a guy named Leroy. He will solve whatever problem these two have gotten themselves into.

Then Franka Potente, the assassin that’s been trailing our young couple, shows up at the diner.

“Hello, Albert,” she says (her first line of dialogue!), while Billie hides behind the counter.

“Sonny send you? McNair?” asks Albert.

“Please come with me — now,” Potente’s character says.

“I don’t think so,” says Albert. “I ain’t going anywhere with you. Look, Leroy’s not going to say anything. Neither am I.”

From this angle, we see the Flo-like waitress is first to grab a gun. Potente fires back, killing her (and then the cook) while Billie and Albert (who has been hit!) escape in their car. The credits start — which reveal that this episode was directed by star and executive producer Zahn McClarnon (Lt. Joe Leaphorn) — and then, you guessed it, we’re back in the damn diner, watching our Navajo Tribal Police trio look for clues.

Leaphorn, feeling guilty that he’s been pressuring Manuelito to take over his position amid all this death, explains to her that he knew the diner owner — a non-Indigenous man who, when a customer once died of natural causes in the rest room, was worried he’d get something called ghost sickness, that the dead man’s chʼį́įdii would be trapped in the restaurant. As Leaphorn tells the story, we realize that the “r” in the giant illuminated diner sign has gone out, and it reads just DINE. These are the grace notes that make Dark Winds such a special show.

Leaphorn then notices a radiator leak, and says that whoever sped off couldn’t have gone far.

He and Chee hit the GMC, and Chee (unaware that Leaphorn is itching for retirement) senses his senior partner’s unease. They pull over at a gas station, where the attendant says a “tall, blonde woman who talked kinda funny” came on foot and bought some coolant. Sounds like German Bourne Identity costar Franka Potente to me!

They exit and as Leaphorn looks for more clues, we cut to Potente hiding in some brush and staring down our two heroes through the site of her rifle. The music gets real intense when Leaphorn remembers that they saw a blonde woman at the trading post earlier in the day. Potente doesn’t shoot, but she knows — she somehow knows — that these guys are going to be an obstacle in her quest to find Billie and Arnold. (Why she’s looking for them, we still don’t know.)

Next, Leaphorn pops by the clinic looking for a gunshot victim. Then, after a beat, asks the woman at the desk (Helen, a familiar face) how Emma is doing. If you recall, Leaphorn’s wife was a physician there.

“Why don’t you call her?” Helen fires back.

She adds that Emma has signed a lease in Los Angeles, so the chances of her coming back any time soon just got even more remote. Leaphorn is sad.

Our next scene is Franka P. at her safe house, where she is listening to scary German-sounding opera (Wagner’s Tannhäuser) and monkeying around with paints and metals to cover the gunshots on her van. Let’s keep in mind that Dark Winds is set in 1972. Franka Potente is 51. It’s not inconceivable that this mysterious woman is some kind of Hitler Youth that ended up on the rez somehow. Weirder things have happened!

So where is Albert, if not at a medical facility? He is groaning and wiggling and bleeding all over the place in a motel room. Billie is doing his best to calm him down, but it isn’t going well. He’s got a big fat bullet wound in his shoulder.

Chee and Manuelito show up at the motel office, asking the sleazeball running the place if he’s seen a car with California plates. He tries to evade the question until Manuelito barks, “She’s 16!” That puts the fear of God into him.

Soon they are at the couple’s room, but Billie spotted the police car out the window. They’ve split, but left a lot of blood in the bathroom (and no tip for the maid!).

Back in the car, Albert moans and groans while Billie shrieks in panic.

“She’s gonna find us,” he says before he passes out.

The next morning, Billie pulls up to the clinic, with Albert still a mess in the back seat. (Where did they go during the commercial break? Can’t say.) She slips in and starts grabbing some materials, but Helen spots her.

At the station, Manuelito urges Leaphorn to tell Chee about his decision to leave. He doesn’t want the word to spread, but she is concerned that Chee will be hurt when he learns that she’s been chosen as successor. (Personally, I think Chee is an adult, and will get over it. Keep in mind, when he first came on the scene, he kept her in the dark about working for the FBI!)

Helen gives the gang a call, saying Billie is at the clinic. The trio race over, finding only the car with blood all over the back seat. No Albert.

When Billie locks eyes with Leaphorn at the door to the clinic, she freaks out. Soon everyone is racing around the infirmary. Turns out Albert is still in the parking lot (no one saw a grunting, bleeding man?) and he breaks into another car. Before he can hotwire it, Franka Potente’s murder van shows up.

Meanwhile, everyone is still running around like the Keystone Kops chasing Billie, passing an old lady in a bed eating Jell-O who mumbles something in Diné. (No English subtitles on press screeners, unfortunately. I’ll have to wait to watch this on AMC to find out what the joke is.)

Billie jumps from the second floor, injuring her foot, but Chee grabs her. Albert, seeing this, drives off. Leaphorn and Manuelito both race to their vehicles and discover that… womp womp… Franka Potente has disabled them!

While everyone tends to their wounds (Billie, literally), Chee decides this is the moment to suggest that he and Manuelito move in together. She gets out of the conversation by going to speak with Billie, who slowly starts to become more comfortable around Manuelito and tells her where she thinks Albert has run off to.

The gang pulls up to a desolate area, finding Albert’s most recent car there. It’s empty, of course, but there is some kind of structure nearby. This is a hogan, a traditional Diné wooden dwelling that has a hole in the side. They can see something, possibly a body, inside.

As Chee bends over to enter it, Manuelito, who you may remember hews a bit more to Diné traditions than Chee does, warns, “Wait! It’s a death hogan!”

Chee shrugs. “It’s the job.”

He enters, sees Albert’s body, begins having troubling visions while his nose starts to bleed, and we hear echoey Diné chants (and over-modulated rock drums) on the soundtrack.

Cut to black, episode over, very ominous.

Tracks:

• I need more intel on why Billie and Albert were running to California.
• I also hope we’re finally going to find out what Franka Potente’s deal is, and learn more about this mysterious Leroy fella.
• As I suggested above, I think Manuelito is not giving Chee enough credit. He’s a pretty mature and righteous dude, he’s not going to freak out about having to report to her at the office. Or maybe I’m wrong? Maybe her worries are less about him, but more about herself. Heavy.

Dark Winds airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and AMC+.