‘Dark Winds’ Season 3 Finale Preview: Leaphorn Pushed to His Limits, Difficult Choices & More

As AMC’s riveting, tense — and heartbreaking — third season of the supernaturally-tinged Southwestern crime thriller Dark Winds comes to an end this week, ’70s Navajo Tribal Police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (the Emmy-deserving Zahn McClarnon) continues to be pushed to his limits.

The dedicated lawman has barely survived grave injuries while spending this entire season searching for missing Navajo teen George Bowlegs (Bodhi Okuma Linton). (The boy’s been running for his life after his best friend Ernesto Cata was murdered due to a secret they discovered at the archaeological site  at which they worked .)

Most painful for the long-married cop, however: His beloved longtime wife, Emma (Deanna Allison), has left him. A very spiritual traditional Navajo who can’t abide lies, Emma was shocked and disappointed when her guilt-wracked husband finally admitted to her that he had abandoned B.J. Vines (John Diehl), the tycoon responsible for their son’s demise some years earlier, to perish overnight in the freezing desert. Making it even worse for Emma, Joe begged her to falsely tell suspicious FBI Special Agent Sylvia Washington (Jenna Elfman) that she was with her husband the entire night that Vines died. With great reservation, she lied to the fed, but it may have destroyed their marriage. For a hint of Joe and Emma’s future, make sure to watch the final emotional moments of the season.

The season finale finds Joe trying to cope with Emma’s departure, while still in pain from his near life-ending gunshot wounds. Driven by his grief and guilt, he had begun to feel cursed and haunted by what showrunner John Wirth describes as a “mythical Navajo monster,” until he realized “it was just a man,” who had tried to kill him: the corrupt archaeologist Dr. Reynolds (Christopher Heyerdahl), who is willing to kill anyone who could expose that the major find of supposed ancient indigenous tribal arrowheads were frauds.

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Expect lots of tension and difficult choices when Joe and his deputy Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) stake-out the local train station where they expect George will be waiting to board the train to Reno (the home of his mother), where they know that Reynolds will be hunting him having found the train’s schedule.

George, however, is not the only one being hunted. There’s plenty of trouble down by the Mexican border where former tribal cop turned border agent Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) discovers that she could be in mortal danger from assassin Budge de Baca (Raoul Max Trujillo), who has been hired by the politically powerhouse rancher and oilman Tom Spenser (Bruce Greenwood) to prevent Manuelito from revealing the truth about her colleagues. Most were complicit in Spenser’s massive drug and people trafficking scheme, among them, Chief Ed Henry (Terry Serpico), Spenser’s brother in law; Manuelito’s current boyfriend Agent Ivan Munos (Alex Meraz); and, most shockingly, her roommate Eleanda Garza (Tonantzin Carmelo). The only agent she had still trusted pulled a gun on Manuelito just as De Baca was moving in on his prey. Expect a horrendously fraught life-and-death situation for the heroine. Now that Garza is exposed as a real villain, will Munos, who claims to love Manuelito, join in on the trap, or could he change his spots?

As for Spenser, the evildoer at the top, “his wells are drying up,” Wirth explains. “He doesn’t want to be the last in the long line of Spensers who loses his land, so he concocts the idea to make money illicitly to keep the place going and retain his reputation.” He’s betting that even if his drug running and people smuggling operation falls apart, he will be shielded from exposure. We’ll discover whether that is true or not in the season finale.

Dark Winds, Season 3 Finale, Sunday, April 27, 9/8c, AMC