Fair warning: There are spoilers for the Dark Winds Season 4 finale ahead!

As viewers will recall, Leaphorn was kidnapped by Irene Vaggan (Franka Potente), who had gone fully off script in terms of what her boss, McNair (Titus Welliver), wanted, as she chose to play out her fantasy life with Leaphorn and Billie Tsosie (Isabel Deroy-Olson) filling in as the husband and daughter she envisions in her domestic ideal.

“I remember when I was a kid, you know, like we would play adults, right?” Potente points out to TV Insider. “I think that’s very similar to how Irene partially works… She never experienced love or the idea of family… And so, you know, with Leaphorn being this glorious new fixed star of her universe comes this… opportunity to actually make that happen in her own little narrative in her little play that she puts on in her space.”

Michael Moriatis / AMC

Ultimately, Joe devised a way out of the situation, as he broke himself and Billie free of the bunker with an explosive plan that left Vaggan seriously injured. “The struggle I had was actually having my character Joe figure out what she was doing and how to play that realistically, so the audience gets it,” McClarnon shares. “I struggled with that quite a bit, trying to make it look plausible that I understood what she was doing, what she was going through, and then trying to trick her in a way.”

While the situation with Vaggan was put to rest by the episode’s end, she still managed to survive, leaving a loose thread for a potential return, which McClarnon and Potente address in the full video interview above. But it was the finale’s closing moments that delivered the biggest shock factor.

As Leaphorn prepared to retire, he consulted his pal Gordo Sena (A Martinez), and Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) weighed the option of joining the FBI in LA, as Bernadette Mauelito (Jessica Matten) looked ahead to her future with the Navajo police. But it seems as though major changes for the trio have been put on hold after it was revealed that Gordo had been murdered!

The cliffhanger conclusion sets up Season 5’s future mystery with a suspect yet to be revealed. Could it be Gordo’s wife (played by Linda Hamilton)? She was introduced at the start of the season and was known to have memory issues, but could confusion have had some deadly results? McClarnon, Matten, and Gordon tease their hopes for what’s to come in Season 5 as they confirm Hamilton’s return, and more in the full video above.

Let us know your thoughts surrounding Gordo’s shocking death in the comments section, and stay tuned for more Dark Winds as we await Season 5.

Dark Winds, Season 5 Premiere, TBA, AMC & AMC+