A PROFESSIONAL ASSASSIN’S manhunt for a murder witness on tribal land leads to a killing spree. But the witness is hiding out somewhere on the rez, and his brother is desperate to find him before the tall, blonde hit woman (Franka Potente) does.

As the violence escalates in season 4 of AMC’s hit series Dark Winds, which premiered February 15, Navajo Tribal Police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon), Officer Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon), and returning Officer Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) must find a missing teenage girl who has also become a target.

Based on the novels of Tony Hillerman and filmed at Camel Rock Studios, the show’s new eight-episode season moves from Navajo Nation to Hollywood in search of the young Navajo girl. (A fifth season has already been renewed and is slated for a 2027 premiere.)

But the teen isn’t the blonde assassin’s only quarry. Leaphorn, who embodies her ideal of a wise and knowing Native man, triggers an infatuation in her.

Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) rides into a new storm in Season 4 of “Dark Winds.” Photograph courtesy of Michael Moriatis/AMC.

“When she crosses paths with Leaphorn, everything from her past has been an overture to this moment,” says Potente (The Bourne Supremacy; Run, Lola, Run), who joins the cast as assassin Irene Vaggan. “She has all these ideas that, someday, her pure man will come.”

Vaggan lives a life “void of tenderness and magic,” Potente says. She’s caring for an aging grandfather, a former Nazi military officer with dementia played by Udo Kier (Breaking the Waves, Shadow of the Vampire), in his final television role before he died in November. Her encounters with Leaphorn seem driven by a desire to recover the intimacy missing from her life.

“When she sees him, he seems to be the answer to all of these questions,” Potente says. “Her outcome of the story is always: I’ve found my man. I’ve found the center of my universe. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

But Leaphorn is in the middle of his own personal crisis. He’s forlorn over the separation from his wife, Emma (Deanna Allison), who left him at the end of season 3, and on the edge of retirement after naming Manuelito as his successor. Hoping to better himself and get back into Emma’s good graces, Leaphorn seeks to reconnect with his own cultural heritage. But his career and personal life may prove too intertwined for him to leave policing behind.

Franka Potente joins Season 4 as the enigmatic assassin Irene Vaggan. Photograph courtesy of Michael Moriatis/AMC.

“Joe is constantly walking that tightrope, that fence between his culture and his job being a protector of his people,” McClarnon says. “He’s gone through a lot of trauma, a lot of loss in his life. But he loves his people and loves protecting them.”

Chee, meanwhile, breaks a forbidden religious custom in pursuit of evidence and is overcome by a spiritual sickness that brings his ongoing struggle—between his heritage and his view of himself as an outsider—to a head.

“He didn’t grow up fighting to believe in those traditions,” says Gordon. “Coming back and having Manuelito by his side really helps the transition a lot. It pushes him to reveal his childhood wounds that he had pushed out and suppressed.”

Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) and Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) navigate mounting tensions in Season 4 of AMC's “Dark Winds.” Photograph courtesy of Michael Moriatis/AMC.

Manuelito’s interest in the case grows personal too. She sees in the teenage girl a version of her younger self. Like her, she ran away from the same Catholic-run Indian school. But she’s also dealing with tensions with Chee after revelations of her intention to lead the department surface, as well as disturbing memories from her stint in the Border Patrol from season 3.

“She sees this as an opportunity to save herself and also save that child,” Matten says. “It’s her way of also coping through protecting others and moving on from her traumas.”

As the assassin’s obsession with Leaphorn deepens, it’s unclear exactly who is the cat and who is the mouse. Vaggan seems always one step ahead of Leaphorn and always close by, watching him from a distance even when Leaphorn is in hot pursuit. But the exact nature of this obsession, how it started, and what it portends for Leaphorn are the season’s biggest mysteries.

Read more: America’s first fully owned and operated Native film studio tests its mettle with a major TV series.

Dark Winds Season 4

Airs weekly on Sundays and streaming on AMC+.