AMC has finally circled the date — “Dark Winds” is coming back for Season 4 and the first teaser just dropped like a storm over Monument Valley. Zahn McClarnon is back as Leaphorn, but the look in his eyes in those few new seconds says this won’t be a clean slate — it’s an old crime that never really stopped breathing. No names, no answers, just the sense that something everyone tried to bury is pushing up through the dust again. Chee and Bernadette flicker into view for only a heartbeat — enough to confirm they’re back in orbit, not enough to reveal whose side they’ll be on when the ground shifts. And then the teaser cuts — abrupt, deliberate — as if the trailer itself knows more than it’s prepared to tell. The real question now isn’t what the mystery is… it’s why this one refused to stay solved

‘Dark Winds’ Sets Season 4 Release Date, Zahn McClarnon Returns With an Unsolved Mystery in Teaser Trailer

AMC has officially locked in the return of Dark Winds. The network announced that Season 4 of the critically praised drama will premiere later this year, and released the first teaser trailer revealing Zahn McClarnon back on screen as Tribal Police Lt. Joe Leaphorn — this time staring down a case that refuses to die.

A Slow-Burn Teaser Built on Omission

The newly dropped footage avoids plot exposition and instead leans into tone: desert wind against rock, late-night lamp light over evidence tables, and Leaphorn’s face — unreadable, but not calm. The teaser closes on a short exchange hinting that an unresolved case from the past is still bleeding into the present. No names, no bodies, no origin — just the insinuation that something never closed.

Kiowa Gordon, Jessica Matten and Deanna Allison are seen in flash cuts, though AMC has not yet revealed how each character will intersect with the new investigation. The network is likewise keeping the episode count and core case details under wraps.

The Phenomenon of Dark Winds

Adapted from Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn & Chee novels, Dark Winds has been a breakout for AMC: a period crime series told from within Navajo territory and led on-screen and behind the camera by Native talent. Seasons 1–3 earned praise for performances, location work, score restraint, and for rejecting the clichés that typically flatten Indigenous stories on television.

Season 3’s finale ended without narrative closure, a structural risk that seems to be the foundation of the Season 4 launch — not a new puzzle, but an old one that never finished being solved.

Release Plan

AMC confirmed that Dark Winds Season 4 will premiere later in 2025, with episodes streaming on AMC+ following their linear debut. A precise date will be announced closer to launch.

Until then, the teaser leaves viewers with one engineered provocation: the sense that Leaphorn is not entering a fresh investigation — he is walking back into something that should have stayed buried and didn’t.