Dark Winds Season 4 Takes Critics by Storm With a Sky-High Rotten Tomatoes Score

If you’ve been chasing that gritty neo-Western fix, here’s your weekend winner: Dark Winds just rolled back with Season 4, and it’s already lighting up the scoreboard. The premiere hit AMC and AMC+ over the weekend, jumped straight to the top spot on the streamer, and opened with a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Not bad for a show that quietly does the work and refuses to coast.

Season 4 shows up swinging

The opener, titled "Kǫ'Tsiitáá' Álnééh (Baptism by Fire)," wastes no time. The series temporarily lifts Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and Bernadette Manuelito out of the reservation’s wide-open desert and drops them into Los Angeles for a city-bound case that presses on every nerve. Early reactions are calling this the most intense season yet — personal and professional stakes stay high, and the ripple effects threaten to hit home on the reservation in a way that actually matters.

What’s striking is how the show keeps its balance while upping the pace. It still blends Navajo culture with a shadowy, almost supernatural edge, and it still has something sharp to say about the friction — and the day-to-day reality — between white and Navajo America. The character work remains locked in, but Season 4 adds enough new heat to feel fresh instead of formula. The confidence is showing; this thing looks built to last.

What Dark Winds is doing, in plain terms

Set in 1971 near Monument Valley, the series follows Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police as a cluster of crimes pulls old wounds to the surface. He’s joined by Jim Chee, a younger deputy whose own unfinished business keeps catching up with him, and by Bernadette Manuelito, who’s constantly calculating how much of herself to put on the line. Together they chase down evil, clash with each other, and push through the kind of personal hauntings you can’t outdrive.

Cast and who’s playing whom

• Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn
• Kiowa Gordon as Jim Chee
• Jessica Matten as Bernadette Manuelito
• Deanna Allison
• Rainn Wilson
• Elva Guerra
• Jeremiah Bitsui
• Eugene Brave Rock
• Noah Emmerich

The series comes from creator Graham Roland and draws from Tony Hillerman’s long-running Leaphorn & Chee novels — a smart foundation the show keeps playing to its strengths.

Where to watch

Season 4 is rolling out on AMC and AMC+. If you need to catch up, the first three seasons are streaming on Netflix. Consider that your fast track to why this season’s perfect-score start isn’t a fluke.