[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Dark Winds Season 4 Episode 1, “Kǫ’Tsiitáá’ Álnééh (Baptism by Fire).”]
Dark Winds is officially back, and it’s welcoming a new face to the world as Season 4’s premiere unveiled a surprise cameo from… Linda Hamilton!
The actress, known for her role in The Terminator franchise, and fresh off the heels of her performance in Stranger Things‘ final season, Hamilton popped up in a scene with A Martinez‘s Gordo Sena, as his wife, who has been referred to in the past but never seen onscreen. This latest cameo is akin to Season 3’s opener, which featured Dark Winds executive producers Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin, but the question remains: Will fans see Hamilton again?
As the episode began to unravel Season 4’s mystery, Joe Leaphorn’s (Zahn McClarnon) scene with Gordo was more about helping a friend in a moment of need as he helped fix his car, which was stopped at the side of the road. Meanwhile, his wife sat in a lawn chair nearby, and it was apparent from her exchange with Joe that she was having memory problems, making Gordo’s recent retirement all the more devastating as his wife declines.
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Gordo laments the predicament, admitting he thought he’d have all the time in the world to enjoy life post-work. Could that have something to do with Leaphorn’s decision to explore retirement sooner rather than later? It certainly seems like a contributing factor.
Meanwhile, when it came to casting Hamilton, showrunner John Wirth admits the inspiration came from Season 3’s cameos. “When Bob and George decided — finally, after a lot of cajoling — to do a cameo on the show in Season 3, and we held that as a very tight secret all the way through until after the thing aired… I thought, well, OK, maybe there’s an opportunity to do these sorts of secret cameos.”
“So it just kind of came up,” Wirth adds, regarding Hamilton’s casting. Part of the inspiration for the poignant scene also came from a personal place, as Wirth shares, “Some things happened to me personally last year that were heavy, and I wanted to write a scene about loss, and so it came together in that story of Sena’s wife.”
“Steve Judd and I wrote that scene together, and I was really able to express what I was feeling at the time through that drama,” Wirth notes.
Whether or not we’ll see her pop up again before the season is through, Wirth won’t reveal, but attaching Hamilton’s role to Martinez’s Sena certainly bodes well, as he’s been a consistent guest star since Season 2. Let us know what you thought of that shocking cameo in the comments section below, and stay tuned for more as Dark Winds Season 4 unfolds.
Dark Winds, Sundays, 9/8c, AMC and AMC+
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