Review of Dark Winds Season 1

If you’re new here and stumbled upon this website and blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! My name is Ashley and I started this blog to remember everything I was consuming. I love movies, books, and television—aka culture—from the bottom of my heart, and I watch and read a lot.

I don’t remember everything because of it, but this blog has been an excellent way to archive my thoughts and everything I’ve come across throughout the years. It’s so fun to go to a blog post from four years ago and see what I thought about a movie then versus now.

For three years, I worked professionally as a film and television critic at an online outlet. I decided in early 2024 to transition out of formally doing it, especially as I thought I was moving abroad for a year, and I began focusing more on this blog during that time. I really wanted to focus on BIPOC and international film and television, and so working at an outlet didn’t make sense for me anymore.

But recently I found myself unexpectedly unemployed, having lost an opportunity I was assured consistently I had. I took a hard look at my finances and realized I had a enough to take some time off, so I did. I caught up on everything I wanted to watch, wrote some blog posts here and there, and scheduled some travel to visit family members.

So if you like what you read on this page, feel free to click around a bit. I make a few pennies here and there off of the ads that hover in the corner of the site, so I appreciate any support during this time.

The first season of Dark Winds I watched during this time, and I was hooked. I’ll be getting out the reviews for the other seasons in the near future, but right now I have an incredible amount of backlog to get through. I have blog posts literally scheduled months in advance.

Alright, I don’t want to keep rambling. I know that you’re not here for random context, so let’s get into the review!

In Navajo country, during the 1970s, police officers try to uncover the reason for recent crime.

Set during the 1970s, this show begins with a crime. In New Mexico men kill the guards around an armored truck, and use a helicopter to fly over the Navajo reservation in the region. One elder watches the helicopter fly past, but when the weeks pass by, he is found dead with a young woman inside of a hotel room.

Something is clearly up on the reservation now because of it, and Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police is assigned to the case, despite having a personal connection to the young woman who was also found inside of the room.

His deputy, Bernadette Manuelito, is also on the case. She’s the one who goes and visits the family of the female victim, and this is where Navajo spirituality and beliefs in the supernatural come into play. I thought these scenes, where Bernadette weaves in Navajo superstitions, were so fascinating in how the culture is so deeply ingrained in how she’s approaching the situation.

Another figure ends up joining the case as well, much to the chagrin of Leaphorn: Jim Chee, who is an undercover FBI agent. The FBI has a special interest in this case, as they believe those who committed the crimes from the beginning of the first episode are a part of a radical Navajo group.

When the helicopter is found with a body, though, that’s the entryway into something deeper. Season one is only six episodes long, but I thought they flew by with how well done the pacing is done. We get to know these characters and their motivations a decent amount, and the ending of the season is somewhat decent. It definitely needed a second season.

Some side plot is that Bernadette and Jim definitely have something going on, although this isn’t really explored until about the halfway point of the season. This is kind of just getting started, but could cross some professional boundaries, so I’m excited to see where it goes in the future.

Overall Thoughts

There are some ways that this show operates as a standard crime procedural, but I loved that fact it’s a native crime procedural. I feel like we’re going through a Renaissance when it comes to more representation of indigenous people and their art, and so many movies and television shows from native creators are getting attention and funding.

And they’re all so good!

I can’t vouch for how authentic or realistic the show is. I am not a Navajo expert, nor do I pretend to be. I only took seminars in graduate school on American settler colonialism and native reactions to it, but I took these courses with a Lakota history specialist. I truly want to learn more about the Navajo people and their culture in the near future, but at the point of time in watching this show, I’m interested in how it plays a role in the characters’ lives and reasoning.

That said, I defer to actual Navajo people to determine whether it was a good portrayal. I am nowhere near qualified to say anything about that, nor make that call. But how it was implemented into the show itself was fascinating to me, and I want to learn more and here what native perspectives have to say about.

All of this is to end with saying I liked this show. Go watch it if you have free time over the weekend—you can easily binge watch it if you’re thinking of having a cozy night indoors for two days straight.

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