Diksha Sundriyal
The second season of AMC+’s ‘Dark Winds’ focuses on the mystery of a series of a murder, which may or may not involve a cult. Joe Leaphorn discovers a personal connection to the murderer and becomes adamant about arresting him to get the truth out. The penultimate episode sets up the finale by revealing some key information that gives us an insight into an otherwise convoluted case. Leaphorn struggles with the idea of getting revenge but is bound by his morality, especially as an officer of the law. The ending of the episode puts him in another tough spot. Here’s what the events of this episode mean for him. SPOILERS AHEAD
Dark Winds Season 2 Episode 5 Recap
Opening with another black-and-white scene, this episode, titled ‘Black Hole Sun’ leads us into a flashback. We see a young Colton Wolf riding his bicycle down the street. When he reaches his house, he has a horror in store for him. He finds his father shot dead, and the same has happened to his sister. He finds his mother in her room, holding a gun. She is disheveled and seems unstable.
In the present, an eclipse is about to happen, and Joe sends the entire staff back home. Officer Reno reveals that the slew of charges on Colton, who remains the nameless blond man to them, are so many and so serious that he will either spend the rest of his life in prison or get a death sentence. The FBI is also interested in him. Joe knows that once Colton is out of his hands, he will never discover why the man blew up the drill site that claimed his son’s life. Joe asks for some time to interrogate him and gets six hours.
At home, Joe tells Emma that he got the guy responsible for their son’s death, and he will get to the bottom of the truth so they can put this whole thing behind them. However, she points out that there is no putting behind grief. The only way is through, and they will have to deal with it in their own way. Still, Joe knows he’ll not be able to rest until he figures out the truth. Meanwhile, Bern discovers that her application to the Border Patrol has been accepted. Chee finds out about it and asks her to stay, but she says that she wants to do something more in her life.
Dark Winds Season 2 Episode 5 Ending
As expected, Colton is uncooperative and unresponsive to Joe’s interrogation. Instead, he plays mind games, riling up Joe by talking about his son’s death and how it was just as meaningless as any other person he killed. The only lead Joe gets is when Bern discovers that before Colton went to the hospital to kill Chee, he met with a private investigator named Deloyd Webster. He is called in the hopes of getting some answers about Colton, perhaps beginning with his real name.
Webster reveals that he was tasked with finding Colton’s mother, but it was a weird case because any lead Colton gave him to follow was either a dead end or false information. Webster would have talked it out, but Colton was giving him good money, so he didn’t say anything and did as he was told. It also turns out that Colton gives a fake name to Webster, which shows how careful he is with giving out information. Leaphorn gets Webster to talk to Colton.
The PI tells him that he may have found his mother and suggests that Colton give some information to Leaphorn to ease the process of meeting her. While he thinks he is manipulating Colton, he doesn’t realize that he never found the mother because there never was one. Colton killed his mother when he found his father and sister dead. Why he has been sending private investigators on meaningless errands remains a mystery. But this does give him some power over his captors, especially regarding manipulation.
Colton tells Webster that he was hired by a man named Carl Lebeck. Webster passes this on to Leaphorn, who realizes he has heard this name before. It was the name of the surveyor who did a report on the drill site. When Leaphorn tries to reach out to him, he discovers that the man has been dead for a few years. But then Guy Atcitty points at Colton and calls him Carl Lebeck. Leaphorn deduces that Colton must have killed Lebeck and used his identity. But before he can confirm or push Colton to talk about it, Reno arrives to take Colton to the feds.
While Joe is busy with Colton, Chee finds out if Mrs. Vines has been seeing someone on the side. He follows her and ends up in a remote part of the desert, but they are not alone. It turns out to be a congregation of the People of Darkness. B.J. Vines is also present there, and as Tomas told Chee in the first episode, he is the cult leader. His wife shows up on the stage asking to be healed while the woman she’d been with tries to run away. Two guards find her and Chee, and in the skirmish, the woman runs away while Rosemary is nowhere to be seen. It seems she has abandoned the oxygen supply she used to carry around at all times.
With Colton out of his hair, Leaphorn returns home. He is unhappy about how things turned out, and he knows that no higher authority, even if it’s the Feds, will look further into the case. They will be happy to pin as many crimes as they can upon Colton and get him to prison as soon as possible, without ever bothering to look further and find out who hired Colton to blow up the drill site and why. Soon after, Leaphorn gets a call and discovers that Reno’s car has crashed. When he reaches the crash site, Reno is injured, and Colton has run away. This time, he has a gun.
Read More: Dark Winds: Is Colton Wolf Based on a Real Person?
