[ad_1]
“Dark Winds” returns for its second season Sunday with significant changes for Kiowa Gordon’s Jim Chee.
Executive produced by Robert Redford and adapted from Tony Hillerman’s bestselling series about two Navajo policemen in the early 1970s, “Dark Winds” follows tribal policeman Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) and Chee. In Season 1 Chee was Leaphorn’s deputy — and secretly an undercover FBI agent.
This season is an adaptation of Hillerman’s novel “People of Darkness” – and “dark’ it is, in its subject matter and violence.
“This is just a whole lot more, taking that deep dive into the world Tony Hillerman created,” Gordon, 33, said in a Zoom interview conducted before the current actors’ strike.
Chee’s changed dramatically; he’s now an independent private investigator with issues. “He’s become completely disillusioned; so he goes back to the rez. Coming back home and trying to find himself — find the center, find his balance.
“Along the way, he is picking up some meaningful people in his life with Leaphorn and Bernadette,” a tribal police officer who works with Leaphorn and is played by Jessica Matten.
Gordon concedes Chee has wrecked his relationship with Bernadette. “By struggling under false pretenses, being an undercover FBI, he was totally ruining these relationships he was trying to foster in the first season.
“Everything hit the fan once Bernadette found out he was an FBI agent. So it’s very clear he has some soul searching to do.
“Coming into this season as a private investigator is just a whole new perspective for him. He’s finding who he is as a detective, as somebody who wants to reconnect to his community, and to maybe get back into good graces with Bernadette and Joe Leaphorn. It’s really nice that he could sit himself up for this season and hopefully for seasons to come.”
The darkness in this “Dark Winds” comes from a powerful, moneyed malignant force. A bravura entire episode finds Chee, already shot in the shoulder and recuperating in the hospital, attacked by a hired assassin who quickly becomes a killing machine.
“I’ve seen enough movies and doctor shows with people getting shot, so I had an idea that I always need to have a pestering feeling of adult pain lingering in my shoulder,” Gordon said.
“It’s been what — two days now? I’m still pretty raw. It really hurts to even move — and I have to remember that all the time which is really hard.
“So is the physical part, like when I had to lift myself up into the little crawl space in the ceiling [to hide]. That took so much effort.”
“Dark Winds” streams Sunday on AMC+
[ad_2]
