I Predicted Dark Winds’ Ye’iitsoh Big Monster Reveal, But It Doesn’t Take Away From Season 3’s Most Powerful Message

Though Dark Winds has been heavily telegraphing that the “monster” plaguing Joe all season long is actually a man, that confirmation doesn’t diminish the more important message of Dark Winds season 3’s story. Thanks to his crime of condemning B.J. Vines to die in the desert, Joe has been haunted by the Ye’iitsoh in Dark Winds season 3. Earlier in the season, Emma also indicated that the entity haunting Joe may very well be B.J. Vines himself, his ch’į́įdii or malevolent spirit bent on revenge for what Joe did to him.

While Dark Winds has certainly incorporated Navajo folklore and supernatural elements in the past, Dark Winds season 3 has leaned into horror in a way the past two seasons haven’t. The Ye’iitsoh following Joe is a ghoulish entity, appearing as a rotting corpse dressed in rags. As is fitting of the mysterious tone of the show, season 3 has kept it ambiguous whether the specter Joe keeps seeing is an actual supernatural monster, a human dressed up as one, or his own guilty conscience hallucinating it all. The most recent episode answered that question while filling in crucially important blanks about Joe’s past.

Dark Winds Season 3 Episode 6 Confirms That The Ye’iitsoh Is A Man, Not A Monster

It’s Been Dancing Around The Confirmation All Season

Though the truth has been strongly hinted at all season, Dark Winds season 3, episode 6 finally confirmed that the Ye’iitsoh that Joe keeps seeing isn’t a supernatural entity haunting him, but a mortal man. At the end of the most recent episode, as Joe saves George Bowlegs and chases the specter through the desert, he clips the entity with a bullet and follows the trail of blood through the nighttime desert. When he sees a very real, very human bloody handprint on a boulder, he realizes that it’s not a monster he chases, but a human who bleeds and can be hurt.

The realization seems to both relieve and break Joe in a way, and while it may be a bit of a letdown to learn it’s simply a man after being framed as such a terrifying monster, the reveal doesn’t in any way take away from Joe’s struggles all season. Joe made a brutally hard decision at the end of Dark Winds season 2 when he left B.J. Vines to die in the desert, and, monster or man, it doesn’t change the fact that the Navajo tribal lieutenant has been psychologically breaking under the weight of his guilt.

Joe is also still wrestling with his grief over the loss of his son, J.J. Even though he seemed to find peace at the end of last season, it’s clear he hasn’t. Joe isn’t exactly forthcoming with his emotions, not in the way his wife, Emma, is, and Joe hadn’t even properly dealt with J.J.’s death a few years ago before the wound was freshly ripped back open by the revelation that it was B.J. Vines behind his death. That’s a lot of grief and guilt to process, and Joe hasn’t come close to doing so. With the added weight of this guilt over passively murdering Vines, and the fact his marriage to Emma is falling apart, it’s no wonder his mental state is unraveling.

Why Joe Saw The Ye’iitsoh As A Supernatural Entity

He Needed To Mythologize The Things He Chases & That Chase Him

Dark Winds season 3, episode 6 helped shed some light on why Joe’s fractured mind insisted upon seeing the specter chasing him as a supernatural entity instead of recognizing it for the human he is. His own enormous guilt meant that he subconsciously felt he had to be punished by something supernatural, mythical, a monster big enough to befit the monstrosity of his crime.

It’s not just that he committed a man to die, but also that he violated foundational Navajo spiritual law when he did so.

Emma’s reaction to learning about B.J. Vines in Dark Winds season 3 explained why Joe’s decision was fraught with so many consequences. It’s not just that he committed a man to die, but also that he violated foundational Navajo spiritual law when he did so. Joe knows it, so his subconscious is manifesting the supernatural retribution he feels he’s owed. But Joe’s subconscious manifesting the Ye’iitsoh may run even deeper than that, as the episode revealed.

The things he saw happen and what his cousin, Will, and possibly Joe himself, endured as a child at the hands of the pedophilic Catholic priest were horrific. As children who felt like they had nowhere to turn, the priest must have taken on an almost mythical quality in their minds and in Joe’s memories of the past, something more than a man. Deep down, Joe knows that his father did to the priest what he did to B.J. Vines, even if he’s buried the memory under a false one. In order to justify his father’s actions all those years ago, and his own with Vines, Joe has had to mythologize the thing chasing him to keep his sanity.

What Dark Winds’ Ye’iitsoh Says About Monsters & Men

It’s A Truth Joe Has Needed To Accept For Far Too Long

Joe’s line of work has brought him into contact with some of the darkest parts of human nature, and it’s understandable that he might need to project the evil acts of men onto supernatural means. It’s hard to cope with the fact that there is true evil in the world, but not from a devil or a monster or a demon. Instead, that evil lies in humans, and the most heinous, atrocious acts are committed by men. Men just like Joe – who has himself committed his own atrocious act, even if it was done in the service of atoning for past atrocities and heading off future ones.

The conversation Joe has with dream Henry also finally explains something that’s been a lingering question: why he resents Joe for returning to the Navajo reservation to become a cop. He knew that eventually, Joe would be forced to make the same decision he did years ago when he enacted his own “Indian justice” on the pedophile priest, and he never wanted that for his son.

It’s especially understandable considering that Joe’s entire life has been spent trying to seek justice against evil men, like the priest, long before he was a cop. But the dream version of Henry finally tells Joe the truth he needs to finally acknowledge: there are no monsters, only men. “Someone must have been able to see that he was a monster,” says a frustrated Joe of the priest so long ago. “That’s the thing, son,” says Henry. “He wasn’t a monster. He was just a man. There’s no such thing as monsters. There’s just people who do bad things and other people who do bad things to stop them.“

“He wasn’t a monster. He was just a man. There’s no such thing as monsters. There’s just people who do bad things and other people who do bad things to stop them.”

The dream conversation forces Joe to accept the reality he’s long wanted to avoid: the priest wasn’t a monster. The Ye’iitsoh he keeps seeing isn’t a monster. And B.J. Vines wasn’t a monster. They were just men who did bad things, just like Joe. It puts him on the same level as the criminals he puts away, except he does his bad deeds in the name of justice rather than criminality. In the end, as his father implies, it might not matter why they do it, only that they do.

It could be seen as a rather nihilistic view of how Joe must approach his job, but in another way, it can be seen as forced pragmatism in a world that will always favor white man’s justice. In the darkest season of Dark Winds yet, it’s fitting that the series finally erases the demarcation line between monsters and men and confirms that there is no need for supernatural monsters when men walk the earth. They’re evil enough.