For those uninitiated into Dark Winds, this unassuming crime drama/thriller is among the top AMC+ shows ever. There is plenty of life left in this series, which currently has only 12 episodes across two seasons, but sadly, fans of Dark Winds have a bit of a wait before the third season shows up.
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
Where We Left On Season 2 of Dark Winds
In a somewhat serialized fashion, the two seasons of Dark Winds each followed separate but entangled cases for the partnership of police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and the young, ambitious Jim Chee. In the first season of Dark Winds, based on Tony Hillerman’s novel Listening Woman, we saw the duo pursuing the righteous terrorist Benjamin Tso. Additionally, peripheral details hinted at what would show up in the second season. Those plot points that feed into Season 2 came from the book People of Darkness, delving into the added fact that Leaphorn’s son died in an oil drilling site explosion related to the events of the 2023 episodes.
Possible Reasons For Delay
From the ending point of the most recent episodes of Dark Winds, the show could feasibly go in any direction. The showrunners put great care into including the details of threads of what the series could later explore in Season 2; however, no identifiable elements from other specific Hillerman novels showed us where Season 3 might go. The only concrete factor we know is that Leaphorn and Chee are officially teamed up after the latter occupied a tumultuous moral and career pathway to get to the second season’s finale. Taking time to develop another multi-season plan is a solid idea that we do not wish for them to rush, considering the changed details that unite the stories of the original Leaphorn/Chee novels.
A Martinez and Zahn McClarnon in ‘Dark Winds’
The Plot of Dark Winds Season 3?
The big question everyone has for creator Graham Roland and his big-name producers Robert Redford and George R. R. Martin is what novel the team will adapt next. The first two seasons adapted the third and fourth books of the series (both of which only featured one of either Leaphorn or Chee), so the Dark Winds crew might continue the show with the fifth book, The Dark Wind, or more like the seventh, entitled Skinwalkers. This last one is the first book to show Leaphorn and Chee working together, and while that detail changed for the TV adaptation, it is also a fan favorite given its status in Hillerman’s saga. Skinwalkers features an intriguing murder mystery and a surprising villain, but a film version already came out in 2002. Since there are eighteen books to choose from in the series, the future of the series is still creatively up in the air.
Dark Winds is streaming now on Prime Video and Max.