AMC Renews Its Best Series But Fans Will Have To Wait Years To See It
Deadline reports that Dark Winds has been renewed for a third season, but it’s not expected to premiere until early 2025. The AMC series boasts significant viewership numbers, and its renewal was announced just weeks after season 2 finished its critically acclaimed run on the network.
Though fans of Dark Winds may notice that the series won’t see a summer premiere, the important fact is that there will be new episodes, but we’ll have to wait a couple years for them to be produced and released.
AMC’s hit series, Dark Winds, is renewed for a third season, but it won’t premier until 2025.
Though it seems like a long time to wait until 2025 for Dark Winds to pick up where it left off, this development makes sense when you consider the ongoing writers and actors strikes, which have put the entire entertainment industry in jeopardy as striking unions fight for better compensation and working conditions. While many series remain at a standstill, Dark Winds clearly has staying power based on both season’s 100 percent critical scores on Rotten Tomatoes.
Critical ratings are one thing, but Dark Wind’s viewership is nothing to scoff at either. Upon season 2’s release on AMC+, its first two episodes saw a 146 percent increase in viewership compared to its season 1 numbers. This just goes to show you that as audiences continue to gravitate toward streaming, they’re going to zero in on the shows they love, and boost the ratings higher than we could have ever imagined through linear viewing alone.
Dark Winds is based on the Leaphorn & Chee novel series written by Tony Hillerman. The first season leans heavily into 1978’s Listening Woman, and 1980’s People of Darkness as its source material, and season 2 is a more developed adaptation of the latter novel.
Set in the 1970s Southwest, Dark Winds follows two Navajo police officers, Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClaron) and Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon). Tasked with solving a series of seemingly unrelated crimes, Leaphorn and Chee are forced to challenge their own spiritual beliefs as they search for clues. Haunted by the death of his son, Leaphorn spends time working alongside Jim Chee, who worked for the FBI in season 1.
Dark Winds Season 2
Season 2 of Dark Winds picks up with an explosion that Leaphorn believes to have been set off by the same person who killed his son, and he tirelessly searches for the assailant alongside younger detective, Bern (Jessica Matten), while Chee shifts gears and becomes a private investigator after leaving the FBI.
While Chee is working a separate case to locate stolen property from a client’s home, we learn that both investigations overlap, and there’s something more sinister going on in the community at the behest of a uranium tycoon and a religious cult known as the People of Darkness.
Boasting a primarily indigenous writing and production staff, Dark Winds is faithful to its source material, and pays proper tribute to Hillerman’s novels by presenting to us a gripping and visually stunning psychological thriller.
Though it’s unfortunate that we have to wait until early 2025 to experience season 3 in all of its glory, it will most certainly be worth the wait if it lives up to the legacy that the first two seasons established.
