Kiowa Gordon as Jim Chee in Dark Winds season 3
In Dark Winds, Navajo Tribal Police officer Jim Chee has always tried to balance modern law enforcement with the spiritual traditions of the Navajo Nation. But in Season 4, that balance is shaken when Chee begins experiencing what appears to be ghost sickness, after entering a death hogan during an investigation.
In Navajo belief, disturbing a place connected to death can expose someone to lingering spiritual energy, and Chee soon finds himself dealing with unsettling symptoms that blur the line between the physical and the supernatural. As his condition worsens, the experience forces Chee to confront both the cultural beliefs he's long questioned and the deeper trauma tied to the case. In an interview with ScreenRant's Tatiana Hullender ahead of episode 8, Gordon shared the deeper meaning behind that ghost sickness, and how it impacts Chee as the season progresses. Kiowa Gordon: It's a lot of inner turmoil. He's fighting demons that he suppressed, and it's all coming up. It's all bubbling up because of the sickness. Everything is just a whirlwind of what's going on between Bernadette and Joe, his own issues with his mother, his community at large, and his identity. It's like,"Oh my God," how do we sift through this to find the man behind it all? Chee's battle with ghost sickness doesn't just bring terrifying physical symptoms, it also cracks open emotional wounds he's long kept buried. After learning that Joe Leaphorn offered Bernadette Manuelito the leadership role before telling him, Chee's anger boils over, but Gordon says the moment is about a lot more than just simple jealousy. Kiowa Gordon: I think the ghost sickness is what opens it all up for him, because it's there, but it is exacerbated by the ghost sickness. And then, in turn, I think it's like a symbiotic relationship at that point, the yin and the yang of like,"Oh, it's actually feeding off each other now. My darkness from that darkness of that ghostness that has trapped you." It's bringing out all your unhealed traumas, and all the things you try to suppress that you don't visit. You have to look at these things, otherwise, they will consume you, and that's what we're trying to get through. It's mental health care, and also going back, and looking at where you came from, and all the stuff we were subjected to — through no choice of our own — and trying to get rid of that. And then, trying to be something you're not. So you have to wrestle with that, and you have to confront it right then and there. Kiowa Gordon: And I think that is exactly the moment for Chee. He's the type of guy that doesn't back down from a fight. So he's going to fight this. You die or you don't. And the thing is, he's not doing it alone. Luckily, he has Bernadette. And Joe Leaphorn, and he has Margaret Cigaret. And then we find out at the end, he has a community that he didn't think he had. And I think that was the most powerful moment of realization for Jim. Everything Else Gordon Said About Chee And His Ghost Sickness ScreenRant: Episode four is our first one that's properly in Los Angeles, and that's also given Chee some flashbacks, we're seeing some of his past, his childhood, his mother. Can you tease how that's going to evolve and grow over the course of the season, and affect you in this storyline? Kiowa Gordon: It's that unresolved trauma of leaving your home after your mother has been abused, and you basically are cast out of where you're supposed to be safe and protected, and have a community to be around and to grow with — because it takes a village. So when you take somebody away from that, and put them in a system that isn't built for us, I think that was just really difficult. I moved around a lot growing up, and there's never stability, and you could never make lifelong friends really, because you'd meet 'em, and you're gone the next day. It just felt like you're just so isolated and alone. And I think that's what Jim felt. Then losing that matriarch in his family and that protector — she was supposed to protect him. And in the end, it feels like he was the one that was supposed to protect her, but he didn't do that either. So we both failed each other, and he takes that on himself. And it really is just hurting him, so to be back in a place like that, where the wound can fester, mentally and physically, and then the way he's acting around Bernadette and Joe about it — it doesn't help things, it just creates a lot of tension. I think that works great for the show, but then he's having these visions of the first body he discovered when he was 15 or 16, and when it's the death of someone that is very important to you, your whole world comes crashing down. I think that's when he switched, and was like,"This part of me is dead." ScreenRant: Season five is coming. We love to see it, and hopefully many more down the line. Is there any book in the series that you're most excited to see adapted eventually? And is there any aspect of Chee's life that you really hope to delve more into in future seasons? Kiowa Gordon: Ghostway was my favorite, and we did it. So when John told me, I was like,"Oh, cool." But that's a Jim Chee novel. I'm like,"You're not going to sideline Joe and Bern, and just make this all about me."So I was in, but then it's like,"Oh, the whole team's coming." I was like,"Okay, good. I don't have to put this all on my shoulders, so this is cool," and they get to come with me, and we get to still have that trio. So it's good to have that there, but we're also still fighting. So we're together, but we're fighting. I think maybe in season five, it's like, what if everything's aligned, and it's like we're really cohesive all of a sudden? So that'd be good to see, but it's nice to adapt this. At some point, I would like to adapt the actual Dark Wind novel: just DEA stuff, Chee's getting blamed for drug stuff. That would be really fun to see, because it's like,"Oh, maybe that's the backslide for Chee." Here's the point where he's getting out of this, and he's going to become spiritual and more traditional, and get closer to his roots, and to Bernadette that way. But then also, there could be something where maybe he becomes an addict, because he can't flush out those demons. The ceremony wasn't enough, and he's using more of the secular things that he tried to tie himself up with, rather than when he was trying to get rid of the Navajo man inside of him. So I think he can wrestle with that. Kiowa Gordon: I want to see him also go the other way. If we don’t want it to have any bumps and we just want it to keep going up, then yeah — for him to actually take that on. The more he's going to sweat with Joe, and being there with Bernadette, maybe he actually goes to Margaret Cigaret or something and learns all these healing songs, and actually becomes a singer and a healer. He goes to that side of his heritage, basically, and his family. His family were healers, and that was his kind of birthright — to learn all that and to be a healer. But obviously, things diverted when we moved to LA and he was cast out of Shiprock. So it'd be fun to explore those things.Dark Winds airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and AMC+. 203 9.4/10 Dark Winds 10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Like Follow Followed TV-MA Crime Drama Mystery Thriller Release Date June 12, 2022 Network AMC Showrunner John Wirth, Vince Calandra Directors Michael Nankin Writers John Wirth, Steven Judd, Max Hurwitz, Rhiana Yazzie, Thomas Brady, DezBaa' 7 Images Close Cast See All
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