This post contains spoilers from Dark Winds season 3 episode 6.
The sixth installment of this season of Dark Winds continues with the story of the twin monster slayers. As the minutes unfold AMC tells one of the most well-known Navajo stories and how it connects to Joe Leaphorn’s past present and future. It’s been an amazing season that is teaching us all about the Diné culture as it ties into Leaphorn’s reality.
The Battle of Monsters
The story goes that one morning, the twin's mother asked if they could go hunting. The mother told them if they go out, they will bring monsters to the hogan. The next instance, George is running like the wind and Joe tackles him down. He begs him to be quiet until he’s shot with an arrow and passes out. And now we have reached the point in the story where we are no longer watching the events that led up to the first moments of episode 1.
The next events reveal Joe Leaphorn being in a dream state and arising in the desert with fresh blood on the ground. In Joe’s alternate reality, he sees a bleeding priest on the ground as the two young boys appear to him, asking him to throw the ball back while nothing but desert surrounds them. Leaphorn follows two boys through a lone door in the desert that goes straight into his father’s house.
The two young boys are revealed to be a young Joe Leaphorn and his cousin. As they wash up for dinner, Joe is standing there holding the ball in a confused state. When he is washing up for dinner, blood is pouring off his hands. The blood of BJ Vines. He pulls a twig out of the sink drain, which signifies Joe’s monster. At dinner, his mother serves his favorite meal on a cracked plate, similar to the plate that cracked when Emma and Joe were having dinner episodes earlier. A young Joe did not want to attend church. Henry believes that Joey thinks he’s too good for it. But there’s a much deeper meaning that comes into play.
When Joe wakes up in a desert of darkness, he quickly drifts back asleep until he finds himself at the police station being guided by an elder. There he sees the priest again, the same priest he saw dead in the desert earlier. It appears like a makeshift church inside the NTP, and if he wants to get out of there, he must solve the murder of the priest.
Back in the desert of reality, Joe is once again jolted awake by young George. He’s in such a fragile state that he can’t fight and instructs George to take his gun and shoot at the monster.
Meanwhile, Joe wakes up back in a fantasy in a holding cell bound to a pipe when Emma comes in with a box. When he asks her to get a key from the desk, she remarks that he never built the fence he promised her. The cases were never completed and rabbits were eating the vegetables. Joe assures her he will build her that fence if he can get out of the cuffs. But the fence is not the problem.
The Leaphorn house is a rattled mess, their marriage is a mess, and all he accomplishes in life is his work caseload. She gets the key out of the rotted vegetables from the box she carried and swallows it whole. Emma leaves him to deal with his predicament on his own, much like in his real life.
Joe must solve the murder of the priest
Joe falls into a bed in a cell while Will, the young boy, is sweeping. Insert the priest, who is a pedophile. Joe pleads for Will to stay away from him. It’s now evident what this priest is. Will goes off with the priest and the ingrate locks the door and closes the blinds.
Back in actual Joe Leaphorn’s actual world, he rips out the arrow and tries to move his body to crawl. The horrifying twig monster attacks him, and in a weakened state, Joe fights back. Though he gets his leg pretty sliced up in battle, he manages to bash the monster with a rock. This is the part of Dark Winds I adore: horror meets truth.
When Joe sees a house from afar back in his hallucination, he follows a blood trail, tackles the priest to the ground, and shackles him. In a flash, he’s back at the police station in a cell. “But this is not how it goes,” the priest continues to tell him. He has not solved his murder. And if this is a crime, as a cop, it’s his job to remedy the situation.
The sequence of events may have been a little confusing for viewers as he’s going in and out of consciousness in his stupor. However, I love the story that unfolds about the twin boys as he’s fighting his monster. Dark Winds has pieced this episode together so beautifully by telling three stories within the story. We don’t often see cinema like this in television today.
Even in fantasy Sylvia Washington is there to ruin it
On a dance floor, Sylvia Washington tells Joe he’s been at this too long and he should know what he’s doing by now. Priests are good guys. Businessmen are good guys. Solving murders is what he should be trying to do. People don’t want men of God meeting untimely ends. It makes the common folks anxious.
It is Joe’s job to make people feel safe, and he hasn’t been doing that. With Vines, he saw a monster and took power into his own hands. If he makes that mistake with the priest, he may never get back.
Washington isn’t saying what he did was wrong, but it’s not justice to all just because it’s justice to him. A crime is a crime no matter if you do it for the right reasons. A hero in some eyes may be a villain in another person's story.
On a side night, Jenna Elfman kills it in a red dress giving off Bette Davis vibes. The trance Leaphorn is going in and out of goes full speed, but is one of the more intriguing episodes I’ve watched in all three seasons. If any episode solidifies Zahn McClarnon as an Emmy contender it’s this one.
There is a moment in Leaphorn’s golden-poppy state when he sees his younger self with a gun ready to take matters into his own hands. He tries to tell his infant version that taking a life is something you have to live with forever. In this daze, he realizes he might have killed the priest. Mystery solved? Joe Leaphorn fights the priest who succumbs to the lieutenant because his willful vengeance is much too overpowering.
Originally, Joe thought it was him who at 12 years old murdered the priest that hurt Will. But it wasn’t, it was his father. Because back at the desert, Joe arrives to see his dad burying a body. “I see it’s all coming back to you now,” Henry says. His father tells him it was nine days after Joe told him about Will. “I know you think I didn’t believe you. I didn’t want to anyway. But it was all there. Everybody could see it if they were looking. I spent the whole week on the phone with the US Attorney’s office. I practically lived at the courthouse. I went out to Judge Tomlin’s house. All the way out to Flagstaff. I begged him begged on my knees.” Henry explained.
An Indian cop could never get away with arresting a priest. Not just a priest, but a white man. So Henry took justice into his own hands. Indian justice.
There is no monster. There are just people who do bad things and other people who do bad things to stop them. Like Henry and Joe did. Henry did the right thing to save those boys. Joe did the right thing by killing BJ Vines to save others, even if he couldn’t save his son. But taking a life takes a toll on your soul. Neither Henry nor Joe believe they are good men for it, but they’re not evil either. It is the one reason why Henry never wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. But choices were made and now Joe is paying the price.
In the modern era of this episode, Joe is doing his best work to protect George and urges him to go back to the truck while he chases down the monster. He limps with his flashlight and gun and rings off a shot. Somehow he gets him with one shot on his backside. Blood is pouring out and he’s able to track it. When he sees a handprint of blood on a rock, he falls to his knees, and radios out for Chee.
So all this time Joe’s out-of-balance monster has been a man. Could it be Budge? Or could it be someone even worse?
For Joe Leaphorn, what he had done to BJ Vines had changed him. And it’s changed his relationship with Emma to the point she no longer recognizes him. It’s going to be interesting to see if our favorite lieutenant can somehow make amends. But first, he has to get through the wall that is Sylvia Washington. It’s not a big mystery that Joe killed Vines, but it’s frightening to know what this FBI agent will do with that information.
Dark Winds releases new episodes Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on AMC and AMC Plus.