‘Dark Winds’ Creators Break Down the Tense Season Finale and Why You Can’t Make a Western Without Natives

variety.com:

Wilson Chapman editorSpoiler Alert: Do not read if you haven’t watched “HózhóoNaasháa,” the Season 1 finale of “Dark Winds,” streaming now on AMC+.After a slow boil first season, “Dark Winds” ends with a bang — quite literally.

The finale wraps up the case of the armored truck robbery that underlaid the six episode first season of AMC’s neo-noir series, which took its plot from Tony Hillerman’s 1978 novel “Listening Woman.” The episode ends with Navajo police officers Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) and Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) in a tense stand-off in a cave where the two robbers were hiding their money and their hostages.

And after plenty of twists and turns — including the revelation that Joe’s FBI ally Witover (Noah Emmerich) was actually allied with the robbers the entire time — the stand-off concludes with Jim and Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) setting off explosives to bury the money and the bodies in the cave.

But while the show’s robbery plot wraps on a fiery note, the real key to the ending is the emotional arcs of Joe, Jim and Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten), which are on full display in the episode.