Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito are back for another season of the hit AMC show Dark Winds. This time, the Navajo Nation law enforcement trio will leave the reservation for the gritty concrete landscape of 1970s Los Angeles.
Dark Winds, described as a “Navajo noir” psychological crime thriller series, is based on Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn & Chee series of novels, with executive producers including George R. R. Martin (Game of Thrones), Robert Redford, Chris Eyre, John Wirth and Graham Roland, who also created the series.
Season 4, which premieres on Feb. 15, 2026, is based mostly on Hillerman’s The Ghostway, and the plot is expected to revolve around a missing Navajo teenager, Billie Tsosie, and the Navajo trio’s run-ins with organized crime.
Need to get caught up on the main characters in the show, and wondering who will be joining the cast? Here’s your complete guide to the Dark Winds cast and characters for Season 4.
You can watch Dark Winds and other great crime and thriller shows right on DIRECTV.
Cast and Characters of ‘Dark Winds’
Here’s the full cast of Dark Winds for Season 4.
Zahn McClarnon as Lt. Joe Leaphorn
Known for: Into the West, Bone Tomahawk
The first member of the show’s lead trio, Zahn McClarnon’s Joe Leaphorn is a grizzled, tortured career police officer on the Navajo Tribal Police force. While many on the reservation (also known as “the Rez”) offer mystical or spiritual explanations for the crimes Leaphorn investigates, he rejects much of that cultural lens, opting to rely on a more cerebral, logic-based approach to solving cases.
Joe’s son, Joe Jr., was apparently killed in a mining explosion, and he spends much of Season 1 hunting for those responsible before he realizes that Joe Jr.’s death was not actually an accident while investigating an armored truck heist. His crusade puts him at odds with a violent activist group and a dangerous assassin.
Eventually, he pinpoints the man responsible for Joe Jr.’s death, B.J. Vines, exacts vigilante justice on him, and leaves him for dead in the desert. This decision shakes the foundations of his moral character, leaving him wracked with guilt and driving a wedge between him and his wife, Emma.
Entering Season 4, Joe is considering retirement until the Billie Tsosie case sets him back into action.
Kiowa Gordon as Jim Chee
Known for: Blood Quantum, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn
Leaphorn’s counterpart, Jim Chee is a younger, more spiritual and impulsive officer who starts out the series as an undercover FBI agent investigating the Buffalo Society — the same activist group that Joe butts heads with. Joe is forced to partner up with Jim, despite his distrust of the federal agency.
Where Joe tries to integrate himself into Western “white law” culture, Jim is the opposite: He’s deeply connected to his Native American roots and struggles to fit in with either the FBI or the reservation. He’s considered “too reservation” for the feds and “too fed” for reservation life. He aspires to become a traditional healer in the Navajo culture.
Eventually, after he realizes the FBI does not have the Rez’s best interests at heart, he quits the bureau and joins the Navajo Tribal Police alongside Joe. The pair become close, and Jim supports Joe during his crisis of identity. He’s also romantically interested in Bernadette.
Jessica Matten as Bernadette Manuelito
Known for: Rez Ball, The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender
While Joe spurns the spiritual side of his culture and Jim struggles to toe the line between the Rez and the feds, Bernadette is the paragon example of a Navajo reservation officer and community member. She’s fiercely protective of the Nation and works hard to defend the community, its traditions and its way of life from violent outsiders and exploitation at the hands of the federal government.
She’s the most empathetic of the trio, and she grounds the other two when their worst traits take control. She is one of the main reasons that Jim decides to leave his federal career and return to his roots on the Rez.
Throughout the series, she navigates the frustration of limited resources and systemic neglect, eventually developing a desire to make a broader impact beyond the reservation’s borders.
Deanna Allison as Emma Leaphorn
Known for: Accused, Edge of America
Emma is Joe’s wife and a traditional healer within the community in addition to her career as a nurse and midwife. Joe’s relentless pursuit of justice, and sometimes revenge, at any cost clashes with Emma’s focus on healing her people and providing care otherwise unattainable to the Navajo people through traditional Western medicine.
By Season 3, Joe and Emma have split due to Joe’s killing of B.J. Vines, which she views as a moral affront and spiritual violation of their son’s memory. She leaves Joe to live alone at home, tending to his garden and wallowing in his grief.
Elva Guerra as Sally Growing Thunder
Known for: Reservation Dogs, Rutherford Falls
Sally starts out as a pregnant teenager who had been abandoned by the Buffalo Society. Because she had seen the faces of the armored truck robbers, she is on the run from the Society in Season 1.
Eventually, she’s essentially adopted by Joe and Emma. For Joe, this provides him with a surrogate child to protect, as something of a stand in for Joe Jr., while Emma begins to integrate her into the Navajo matriarchy and helps her begin to heal her trauma.
In Season 3, Sally, like Emma, decides to leave Joe and the Leaphorn household, seeking a better environment for her son.
A Martinez as Sheriff Gordo Sena
Known for: Longmire, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Sheriff Gordo is the head of law enforcement in the neighboring Scarborough County and a trusted friend of Joe’s. He follows a similar code as Joe does, which sees him end up in some precarious positions, too, including an assassination attempt.
Gordo, like Jim, helps support Joe as he struggles with his guilt and grief. He was promoted to a main cast member in Season 3, where he assisted in finding missing children, and will accompany the team to Los Angeles to investigate the Billie Tsosie case.
Isabel DeRoy-Olson as Billie Tsosie (NEW)
Known for: Fancy Dance, Three Pines
Billie Tsosie is a new character for Dark Winds Season 4. She’s the teenager who disappeared from a boarding school and sits at the heart of the case that sends the team to Los Angeles. She’s on the run from Los Angeles-based organized crime kingpin Dominic McNair with her cousin, who owes money to McNair.
McNair has hired hitwoman Irene Vaggan to hunt Billie down, and her attempts to kill her in a diner near the Rez set off the season’s main story arc.
Franka Potente as Irene Vaggan (NEW)
Known for: The Bourne Identity, Blow
Another new character for Season 4, Irene Vaggan will be one of the season’s main villains. She’s a ruthless killer who was raised in Nazi Germany and is obsessed with Navajo culture from reading American West novels as a kid.
She also has a deep fixation on Joe, holding him up as the paragon example of her perfect man. While she’s willing to coldly kill just about anyone who stands in her way, her obsession with Joe means she won’t take him out. Instead becoming his psychotic stalker studying his life and immersing herself in his grief-stricken past as she makes a deranged attempt to write her own Western story.
Titus Welliver as Dominic McNair (NEW)
Known for: Bosch, The Town, Deadwood
Dominic McNair is the big bad of Season 4, having ordered the hit on Billie that sent Irene to the diner and sparked off the investigation. He’s a trafficker of drugs and luxury goods through the Southwestern United States, using the Rez as a corridor for profit — another Dark Winds villain who seeks to exploit the Navajo Nation in some way.
Chaske Spencer as Sonny
Known for: The English, Wild Indian
Sonny is McNair’s recruiter who preys on vulnerable youth on the Rez, using Navajo cultural identity to convince young Native Americans who have left the reservation for the big city but miss home to work for McNair, offering them a better, more comfortable life and a sense of belonging.
He crosses Joe when he tries to recruit one of his young relatives.
Watch ‘Dark Winds’ on DIRECTV
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is George R.R. Martin involved with Dark Winds?
Yes, George R. R. Martin, the creator of Games of Thrones, is an executive producer for Dark Winds.
Which Native American nation does Dark Winds focus on?
Dark Winds focuses mostly on the Navajo Nation.
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