In so many ways, Dark Winds season 3, episode 6 was the most surreal of all the episodes in any season thus far, but the extended dreamscape drove home some of the greatest truths and biggest messages of both this season and the series as a whole. In doing so, it also revealed much about Joe's character and why he is the way he is today.

Dark Winds season 3's story with the introduction of a new villain.

Dark Winds Season 3 Episode 6 Introduces A Different Kind Of Villain

It's The Most Realistic & Horrifying Villain Yet

In its three short seasons, Dark Winds has dealt with an array of villains, from supernatural entities from Navajo folklore to corrupt businessmen. They've all been monsters in their own way, but episode 6 of season 3 introduced the most monstrous of all in the form of a man from Joe's past. The Priest, played by Robert Knepper (whom many will recognize from his time playing another deviant sexual predator, T-Bag, in Prison Break), was a Catholic priest who oversaw the community church on Joe's reservation when he was a child. He was also a pedophile, and he abused Joe's cousin, Will, though it's not clear if The Priest abused Joe himself.

The Dark Winds writers originally wanted the flashback scenes to take place in a boarding school but opted to change it to a community church out of concern they wouldn't be able to do the loaded history of a boarding school storyline justice (via Variety).

We know that sexual abuse and pedophilia by Catholic priests, as well as its cover-up, is all too real and common a story. On a remote Native American reservation in the earlier part of the 20th century, when Joe would have been a child, it arguably would have been even worse for the kids experiencing it. Throughout the episode, the helplessness of adult Joe and child Joe to stop The Priest and save his cousin is palpable, his desperation to slay the monster a throughline of the episode.

Joe's past with The Priest and pedophile also explains why he is who he is today. The dream scene with Emma in which she accuses him of putting his duty as a Navajo cop over his duty as her husband all ties back to Joe's childhood. While he knows he does need to be a better husband and more present for Emma, he simply can't. Joe's experience of watching The Priest abuse his cousin and likely other Navajo children formed his driving need to seek out justice for those who can't find it for themselves for the rest of his life.

Dark Winds Season 3 Reveals How Joe's Decision With BJ VInes Was Similar To What Joe's Dad Did To The Priest

Joe's Story Has Come Full Circle To Henry's Past

Dark Winds season 3, episode 6 also explains why Joe's father, Henry Leaphorn (Joseph Runningfox), first brought up the concept of white justice vs. Indian justice all the way back in the Dark Winds season 2 finale. As a former Navajo cop himself, he knew that his son would one day face a moment where he realized that "white justice" had failed them as Navajo and that the only way to right wrongs would be to deliver "Indian justice."

Henry knew it because that's exactly what he had to do himself after Joe and Will confided in him what The Priest had been doing, but no one he went to - not the white cops, not the U.S. Attorney's Office, not the district judge - would help him. His pleas to do something about the priest abusing children fell on deaf ears: he had no jurisdiction, and the white men would turn a blind eye to the horrors being inflicted by a white priest on Navajo kids.

It's a reveal that's layered with so much meaning, not just for the immediate way it will impact Joe and Henry's dynamic moving forward, but also for the longer, deeper history of the Diné people.

So Henry did what he felt he had to: like his son decades later, he took matters into his own hands. Just a week after Joe and Will confided in Henry, The Priest suddenly disappeared. It's a reveal that's layered with so much meaning, not just for the immediate way it will impact Joe and Henry's dynamic moving forward, but also for the longer, deeper history of the Diné people. It also shows just how alike Joe and Henry are, from their identities as protectors and deliverers of justice to the way they turn a blind eye to their marriages cracking.

Henry and Joe's relationship has been contentious in Dark Winds, but it all stems from Henry's love for his son and his own deep trauma. He never wanted Joe to come back to the rez to become a Navajo cop and be forced to make the same dark decision he once had to make. Instead, because of the injustice woven into the very existence of Native Americans in this country, Joe now has his own trauma to carry with him, both from his past as a child on the reservation and now as a Navajo cop. Like his father before him, it's up to Joe to decide what to do with the weight he bears.