‘Dark Winds’ Meets ‘Yellowstone’ in Jason Momoa’s Crime Thriller Officially on Netflix

Lade Omotade is a News and Features Author at Collider, covering everything from casting announcements and streaming trends to behind-the-scenes stories and the cultural impact of today’s biggest film and TV franchises. Since joining the team in 2024, she has written more than 1,000 news stories, with her work also cited by outlets like AOL and IMDb.

Dark Winds is arguably one of television’s most grounded and authentic neo-Westerns, earning consistent praise over its four seasons, particularly for Zahn McClarnon‘s portrayal of tribal cop Joe Leaphorn. Earlier in February, the crime thriller was renewed for a fifth season, but it won’t premiere until next year. Filming ran from March/April to June, and no premiere date has been announced yet, but in the meantime, a similarly gripping neo-Western thriller has just become easier to watch, eleven years after it was unfairly canceled.

Led by Jason Momoa (Dune: Part Three) and Martin Henderson (Virgin River), The Red Road aired on SundanceTV from February 27, 2014, to May 7, 2015. It was the channel’s second fully owned scripted original series, following the gothic drama Rectify. Like Dark Winds, it centers on an Indigenous community, focusing on the Ramapough Lenape Nation on the New York–New Jersey border. After just two seasons, which ended without a definitive conclusion, the crime thriller was canceled, reportedly because of low viewership, the network’s niche audience, and mixed critical reception.

This November, Netflix subscribers will finally get to stream the forgotten cult favorite when it officially arrives on November 1. Even more exciting, The Red Road joins all four seasons of Dark Winds, which are also streaming on Netflix, with Season 4 joining the service in July. Alongside Momoa and Henderson, The Red Road stars Julianne Nicholson, Allie Gonino, Tamara Tunie, Kiowa Gordon, and Annalise Basso. Fans may recognize Gordon from Dark Winds, and he’s not the only familiar face—McClarnon also had a prominent recurring role in the overlooked gem.

Four icons and four completely different ways of walking into trouble.
This is the one you would have been out there, why it fits, and what it would have cost you.

You have never explained yourself and you have never needed to,
because people work out fairly quickly that you are the most capable person in the room
without you ever having to mention it.

• Eastwood built the character out of everything he refused to do, stripping away the
  backstory, the speeches and every bit of reassurance until only the competence was left.
• You keep your own counsel, and while other people occasionally find that unnerving, you
  have never felt any real need to fix it for them.
• The Dollars films work because he genuinely is in it for himself right up until the
  moment he is not, and he never explains that part either.
• You would be gone before anybody got a chance to thank you.

You are the funniest person in most rooms and the most loyal
person in all of them, and you would be genuinely insulted if somebody suggested those two
things were in any tension.

• Doc has no real reason to be in this fight beyond the fact that his friend is in it,
  which is the only reason he has ever needed for anything.
• You lead with wit, and it does a very effective job of hiding how seriously you take the
  handful of people you actually care about.
• Val Kilmer’s performance is the most quoted in the entire genre because the jokes keep
  getting sharper as the situation gets worse.
• You would spend everything you had on this and still describe it as a good week.

You never wanted this job, and you took it anyway because the
alternative was standing there watching somebody less careful do it badly, which is the most
Western reason there has ever been.

• Earp is the reluctant authority figure, a man who came to town specifically to be left
  alone and somehow ended up answerable for all of it.
• You are protective by instinct, so when something goes wrong your first thought is who
  is exposed rather than who is to blame.
• These films understand that keeping order costs far more than breaking it, and that the
  person holding the line almost never gets thanked.
• You would do the whole thing again, and you would complain about it the entire time.

Nobody has ever successfully talked you out of something you had
already decided was right, and a long line of grown adults has found that out the hard way.

• Mattie is the most relentless character in the Western canon and she manages it through
  argument, paperwork and flat refusal rather than a fast draw.
• You have no patience for being managed, so you negotiate, you check the details and you
  turn up exactly when you said you would.
• True Grit is the rare Western where the moral centre is the youngest person on screen
  and every adult around her has to catch up.
• You would get what you came for, and the film is honest about what that takes out of
  you.

‘The Red Road’ Is the Perfect ‘Dark Winds’ Replacement

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