Dark Winds – Season 2 Episode 3 “Antigonish” Recap & Review

Antigonish

Episode 3 of Dark Winds season 2 starts with a black-and-white introduction showing Colton in his RV. Some things like the food he makes and the needle on his metronome retain their color. The brief clip is from “Earlier in the day” when there was relative calm on the Rez. Colton is seen hiring another PI, Deloyd, to track down Linda Maddox, who is revealed to be Colton’s mother. Buddy Shaw, her current boyfriend, is the key to tracking her down. Deloyd has located Shaw in Vegas. He is optimistic the current boyfriend would lead them to Linda. 

Chee regales the young security guard in the hospital, Mike, with his FBI stories. But the colour is drained off his face when he spots Colton in the back in a doctor’s uniform. He is wearing a wig but is still unmistakable for Chee. He immediately phones Bern and makes a run for it after informing her. Colton pulls on the fire alarm and begins his search for Chee. Joe is called into action by Bern, and he is now convinced that Colton killed Joe Jr and will leave no stone unturned to effect justice. 

After some running and chasing, Chee finds himself cornered in a room. He cleverly hides in the ceiling but when Colton sees wall plaster fall on the desk right under the vent, he starts shooting Chee through the ceiling. Mike sees Colton from the lobby and is shot by him. Chee attacks Colton but loses the upper-hand due to his injuries. Mike helps him out by handing him his pepper spray, which is enough to put a stop to Colton. When he hears Bern arrive at the scene, Colton jumps through the window in the room to escape.

Mike does not make it. Colton shoots another police officer down before escaping in a vehicle. Bern and Joe shoot at him together and one of the bullets hits Colton. The duo follow his car to a field, where he has abandoned it. There is blood in it and since the car is found in the desert, the chances of his survival are low. That is what Sherriff Gordo tells all the officers the next day at the station. They are determined to catch him and their efforts are intensified after he isn’t found in the morning. Joe asks Bern to further investigate the papers they found at the Malpais. 

Chee spots Tomas’ son sitting in the station and volunteers to drop him off at the spot where his mother will pick him up. Mary Landon has not given up her pursuit of interviewing Native women. She reveals to an angry caretaker that many Native women are facing forced sterilization as a result of the legislation (mentioned in the previous episode) being passed. Bern finds the original copy in the records of the half-burnt paper that Colton was trying to burn. 

Chee spends some valuable time with Tomas’ son. He understands his pain as Chee’s own mother died very young. Colton is taken in by an old Dine woman and the two do not understand each other’s language but still have a sense of what they mean. It is a very confusing montage which does not have much to reveal about the plot. However, it does point toward an intense relationship between Colton and his mother, Linda. It is unclear how their interaction ends as we only see Colton pick up a horse from the farm and come back to his trailer.

Emma home-delivers a child for one of her patients and breaks down in her car in the memory of her son. She has still not gotten over him and has repeatedly mentioned how hard she is trying to do so. Joe gets the idea to visit Gerald Nez’s farm. He had complained a while back of someone illegally dumping RV waste on his land. There, Bern and Joe find tracks to a vehicle and a trailer, confirming their suspicion. They follow the trail to Colton’s trailer, setting us up for an exciting showdown. 

It turns out to be a geological survey of the very land where the explosion happened and took Joe Jr’s life. It was Dillon Charley who delivered the papers to the Geological Bureau. He was working as a courier for Drumco back then. The survey clearly stated that the earth there did not have any uranium or rare materials. That is why BJ Vines was able to get the land for so cheap. But if there is nothing underneath, what is he mining for?

The Episode Review

It turns out that the previous episode was indeed a one-off. That did not feel like the Dark Winds brand at all but episode 3 made a firm comeback to the norm. This episode had everything and is arguably the best episode in the whole of the show. Not only did we see a lot of action and well-edited choreography, but the writers also afforded a different layer to the central characters. 

We went deeper into their psyche and the nature of their struggles. The brooding melancholy was perfectly captured in moments between the Dine woman and Colton. Joe and Sena’s passing discussion about raging crime and the lack of justice is also in-tune with the overall scheme of the show. These little things made a huge impact in the episode.

They helped better rationalize and ground the central conceit of this season, increasing the show’s rising prestige. Everything about this one makes us manifold more excitement about what is to come next. Dark Winds has suddenly sprung to life!