Dark Winds’ Zahn McClarnon: After That Chilling Season 2 Premiere Twist, Joe ‘Struggles With What Revenge Means’
The following contains spoilers from the Season 2 premiere of AMC/AMC+’s Dark Winds.
A new case jabbed at a tender wound for Lt. Joe Leaphorn, as Dark Winds‘ Season 2 premiere came to a close.
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Season 2 opened with an in media res sequence in which Leaphorn and Sgt. Manuelito (played by Zahn McClarnon and Jessica Matten) were scoping out an RV parked in the desert at night, when its owner eluded them and proceeded to perforate the camper with gunfire, as they hid behind it.
Six days prior…. the explosion of a car outside a hospital where Joe’s wife Emma was waiting on a patient leads to an investigation, and the introduction of A Martinez’s Sheriff Gordo Sena. Leaphorn gleans that the explosion was in fact a bomb, and says that the victim was the brother of the guy who years ago had warned there’d be an explosion at the oil-drilling site where Joe Jr. worked (and in turn “accidentally” died).
As Joe seeks out the deceased’s son, Tomas Charley, we catch up with Jim Chee, P.I., who after helping out a little old lady finds himself meeting with a new client, the beautiful Rosemary Vines. She says that her and her husband BJ’s home was recently burgled, and she simply wants back the box that was taken from the safe. She claims that Tomas Charley was seen fleeing the scene, box in hand, and she suspects that the robbery was some sort of “payback” for her husband cutting off (financial) ties with a rez group called People of Darkness.
Leaphorn and Chee’s paths cross right after the latter procured from Tomas a map leading to the Malpais where the box was taken, to be used in some sort of curse-breaking ritual. But when Leaphorn and Chea get to the site, what does Joe find beneath some singed papers but a charred Navajo Rodeo buckle — with Joe Jr’s name engraved on the back.
“This belonged to my son,” a shaken Leaphorn informed Chee. “Wore it on the day he died.”
The moment is then interrupted by a rifle shot that wings Chee, fired by the same tall blonde man from the cold open. Chee and Leaphorn attempt to return fire if not get an ID on their assailant, but a lit rag stuffed into the gas tank of Joe’s truck triggers an explosion that blows up their plan — as well as strands them, miles from anywhere.
Already on the hunt for a ruthless killer, how might even the suggestion that Joe Jr.’s presumed-accidental death somehow ties into this new mystery eat at Leaphorn in the five episodes to come?
“Joe’s moral code gets challenged quite a bit throughout the season,” Dark Winds star Zahn McClarnon told TVLine in a late-June Zoom. “When he finds evidence about what really happened to his son, he struggles with what justice means, with what revenge means.”
Leaphorn’s deap-seated struggle, much as he tries to shield wife Emma from it, nonetheless “affects his relationships around him,” McClarnon previewed. Which in turn ties into one of Season 2’s overarching themes of “restoring balance,” said the actor.
“Does he cross the line? You have to stay tuned…,” McClarmon said. “Joe lives with a lot of guilt about his boy, because back in the ‘70s, being a man was a little bit different than being a man today. He couldn’t protect his family, and he carries around that guilt. So imagine finding the killer of your own child. What does that person deserve? And does Joe get that opportunity to have justice? It’s a complex situation to be in, and the audience is going to have stay tuned.”
Note: This interview took place before SAG-AFTRA officially announced a strike on July 13.
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