Dark Winds’ Season 4 Premiere Elevates This Masterful TV Western To New Heights

AMC’s flagship Western series Dark Winds continues to knock it out of the park four seasons in. The premiere of the show’s latest season is among its best episodes yet. With a new unsettling mystery on the horizon, and a shock revelation from its main protagonist, Joe Leaphorn, Dark Winds has started season 4 as it means to go on.

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This noir-inflected TV Western is like Justified and Longmire at their very best, only with the added element of Navajo tribal culture thrown into the mix. Each season of the series is based on a novel by Tony Hillerman, and season 4 is no different.

However, a significant change in the novel this season is based on has posed a major challenge for the team behind the show. They couldn’t follow Hillerman’s 1984 book The Ghostway to the letter, and the first episode of Dark Winds season 4 diverges quite a bit from its source material, which arguably makes it an even more impressive achievement.

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Dark Winds Just Got Even Better With Its Season 4 Premiere

Michael Moriatis / ©AMC / Courtesy Everett Collection

2026 has brought more streaming success to Dark Winds already, thanks to the superb premiere episode of its fourth season. In this episode, we’re introduced to young tearaway Albert Gorman and his cousin Billie, who are on the run from a mysterious woman named Irene.

Joe Leaphorn and his Navajo Tribal Police squadron have to deal with the collateral damage of Irene’s hunting spree in their vicinity. What’s more, Leaphorn has a surprise for his returning police sergeant, Bernadette Manuelito.

The episode simultaneously manages to open up another slow-burn mystery with masterly suspense, at the same time as introducing the fresh personal trials its main characters will face in the new season. It even brings the future of the entire show into the picture, building on previous seasons with highly significant development that’s introduced in just the right way.

Season 4 Is Maintaining Dark Winds’ Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Score

Unsurprisingly, this brilliant start to season 4 means that Dark Winds has retained its 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Not a single critic has been able to find fault with the series, across four years and 21 episodes so far. It’s incredibly rare for a serial drama of this kind to maintain a perfect hundred for this long.

The Dark Winds team ran into some difficulties adapting season 4, primarily because Joe Leaphorn doesn’t feature in the book it’s based on. They also had to recreate a period backdrop of 1970s Los Angeles, where much of the season takes place. Nevertheless, they appear to have pulled through with flying colors, maintaining the show’s perfect record of critical acclaim.

Current Western TV Shows Don’t Get Any Better Than Dark Winds

For any TV Western fan who hasn’t seen Dark Winds yet, the series is an absolute must-watch. This neo-Western far surpasses Yellowstone and other Taylor Sheridan fare in terms of characterization, plotting, and the modernization of classic genre tropes.

Joe Leaphorn is among the best Western TV characters ever created, and both Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito aren’t far behind him. Moreover, the depiction of the Navajo people in Dark Winds demonstrates an understanding of First Nations tribal culture that every other Western television series should aspire to.

Release Date

June 12, 2022

Showrunner

John Wirth, Vince Calandra