‘Reservation Dogs’ Series Finale: A Great Show Walks Off Into the Sunset
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This post contains spoilers for the Reservation Dogs series finale, which is now streaming on Hulu.
Two weeks ago, Reservation Dogs dropped an episode that could have easily functioned as a series finale. It featured callbacks galore, a full-circle moment where Bear invites Jackie’s crew to join the Rez Dogs, and a speech by Kenny Boy about Indigenous communities that seemed to function as a closing statement for the show itself.
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But Sterlin Harjo had more to say, as he discussed with Rolling Stone in an interview about the finale that you can find here later this morning. First, we had to get Elora’s reconciliation with her dad, in the Before Sunrise-esque duet between Devery Jacobs and Ethan Hawke(*). And now we have the actual summation of three seasons of this incredible, incredible series, which already feels like one of the greatest television shows ever made.
(*) Perhaps intentional, perhaps not, but a week after Hawke’s appearance, the finale features a joke about Alive, the 1993 movie where Hawke played a member of a Uruguayan rugby team on a flight that crashes in the Andes, forcing the survivors to resort to cannibalism when they run out of food.
“Dig” works as a companion piece to last season’s instant classic “Mabel,” where the reservation came together to be with Elora and her grandmother during Mabel’s final hours on this earth. “Dig” shows what happens next, going into detail on the funeral rituals for Old Man Fixico, and about how his death is part of a never-ending cycle of elders making way for the next generation.
Under other circumstances, Fixico’s successor as the local medicine person would be Willie Jack’s Aunt Hokti. But Hokti’s behind bars, still not over the loss of Daniel, so the only person she can offer healing and wisdom to is the niece who visits her from time to time. Hokti’s new lesson to Willie Jack is even more of a knockout than last time, when Willie Jack was overwhelmed by finally being able to feel the presence of her ancestors all around her. There are still a few spirits around to pester Hokti, but that’s played for comic relief. Instead, the emotional waterworks come from Hokti using the bag of Flaming Flamers to illustrate the ways in which Fixico isn’t truly gone. Every person fortunate enough to know him has been changed in some way by that relationship, and they in turn will change the lives of others they meet, all of them carrying Fixico with them — even the ones who never got to meet the man. Like Kenny Boy a few weeks ago, Hokti is talking about the way communities work, Native ones included, and about the importance of maintaining those communities in the face of a white culture that worked so hard for so long to eradicate their people’s sense of being part of a larger whole.
It’s a gorgeous speech, delivered with quiet, heartbreaking force by Lily Gladstone. Gladstone seems on the verge of becoming a very big deal, given the early raves for her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon. In a just world, she would be far from the only Reservation Dogs actor, writer, director, etc. to find much more work in the wake of this series than was available to them prior to it. And that’s the not-so-subtle, but still powerful, secondary point to Hokti’s lesson. In talking about the importance of sending Fixico off in the right way, she tells Willie Jack, “And some day, you’ll do it for me when I go. And then someone’ll do it for you when you go. And we’ll all carry it on. All of us. We keep going.” This is a story of perseverance, but it is also hopefully the story of Reservation Dogs itself. The show is gone, but the people who made it need to keep going. Devery Jacobs needs a project where she gets to write, direct, and star. Paulina Alexis needs to do more comedy, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai needs many more leading man roles, etc. This show is too great, and the talent on it so overflowing and obvious to anyone who watches(*), for it to all go away. They all need to go on to bigger and better things. Well, at least bigger ones; the “better” bar has been set almost impossibly high.
(*) How typical would it be if the show’s only significant Emmy nomination for this season was a guest actor nom for Ethan Hawke? Obviously, he deserves one, but it would feel very TV Academy to ignore all the brilliant Indigenous actors in favor of the famous white guy. At minimum, if they nominate Hawke, they should be required to also nominate Graham Greene.
The rest of the episode depicts Fixico’s funeral, including a mid-credits scene set in its immediate aftermath. At first, it seems as if this will be one last comic vignette about Bev and Big being extremely gross with one another. Instead, they walk past the surviving members of the Seventies crew, who are toasting, “To the next one.” More on that idea in a bit, but it feels perfect that the episode is bookended on one side by a scene with an Indigenous actress on the verge of an Oscar nomination and perhaps future stardom, and on the other by a gathering of Graham Greene, Gary Farmer, and Wes Studi, the three grand old men of Indigenous cinema who helped pave the way for a show like this(*). The story “Dig” tells is about the passing of the torch from one cohort to the next, but the episode also presents a non-fictional passing of the torch from Greene and friends to Gladstone, and perhaps to Jacobs and the others as well.
(*) I think this is the first time all three have acted on camera together in a movie or show. Farmer and Studi share screentime in the seminal 1989 film Powwow Highway, but Greene doesn’t appear with either. And while Farmer and Greene both have supporting roles in a couple of the early 2000s TV-movies where Studi plays Joe Leaphorn (aka Zahn McClarnon’s character on Dark Winds), Studi deals with them separately each time. And then there have been other projects like Dances with Wolves that co-starred only two out of the three. Unless I’ve missed something, it’s amazing that it’s taken so long for this to happen.
The finale opens with aerial shots of Okern as everyone prepares for the funeral. It is by far the broadest and most detailed glimpse we’ve gotten of the area over three seasons, as if Harjo (who directed the finale, and co-wrote it with Chad Charlie) wanted to give us a fuller view of the world before we said goodbye to it. (This happens sometimes in series enders; the final shot of ER is a CGI-enhanced glimpse of the entire hospital, rather than the one entrance viewers had seen for 15 seasons.) As a version of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” finishes, we get Willie Jack’s visit to her aunt. What follows is a ramshackle, acutely detailed glimpse of everyone on the reservation assembling to give Fixico the send-off he deserves.
Much of this is silly, like Big leaving a cherished book (Man Moon, an invention of the series) in Fixico’s coffin, followed by Willie Jack’s dad stealing it to read. (This is followed by the rapper twins, naturally, giving Fixico an autographed copy of their CD and asking him not to sell it.) There’s also, of course, more about Big and Bev’s sex life, including a whole lot of talk about zucchini, plus Big assuming that Teenie will be upset that he no longer wants to sleep with her whenever she’s in town.
But just as many parts are deeply heartfelt. Elora, for instance, has been waiting to tell Bear about her plan to go away to college, then gets second thoughts when she learns that Rita has taken the promotion and will be moving to Oklahoma City. Suddenly, her great news is burdened with guilt: Elora is leaving her best friend(*) at the same time his mother is. But Bear’s response is exactly what you would hope for from him: he’s excited for her, and unconcerned that their separation will take any real toll on their bond. As he puts it — in yet another mission statement kind of line — “Nothing can break up the Rez Dogs anyway, right?”
(*) On almost any other show about teenagers, there would have been a storyline at some point about Elora and Bear flirting, or one of them feeling jealous when the other dates someone else. Here, they are platonic friends, and the only romance among any of the kids takes place entirely off-screen, as we see late in the finale that Bear and Jackie have become a couple. Harjo said the writers talked a lot about dating stories, but it never felt quite right.
And then there are moments that mix the comedic and the poignant at once, like Bear’s final conversation with William Knifeman. For most of these three seasons, William has functioned as a parody of the noble Indian warrior that was the only kind of Indigenous character to appear on screen for decades. But he also offered moments of genuine wisdom to his protege, and it’s clear in this final conversation that the lessons have sunk in. Bear is much more mature than when we first met him — more aware of other people’s needs, but also more aware of their strengths. He was arguably not the leader of the Rez Dogs when the show began — Elora was smarter and more decisive, and the one responsible for most of what they did — but he thought he was, and/or that he had to be. Now he finally gets what William has been trying to teach him: it’s OK to be a warrior rather than a chief, because the tribe ultimately needs more of the former than the latter. Their encounter is, of course, laced with absurdity (William uses burner accounts to follow Bear on social media), even as it ultimately acknowledges that William wasn’t just a joke the whole time, and that he and Bear had a mutually beneficial relationship.
Right before that scene, there’s a montage (set to The Band’s “The Weight”) of the various men and boys of the reservation literally digging Fixico’s grave. There’s some slapstick here, like Cheese accidentally whacking White Steve in the face with a shovel. But most of it is sincere. Kenny Boy rolls up, his hair now cut into a mohawk, with shovels when no one else has them, and he’s greeted as a hero rather than a shady clown. At one point, Cheese says, “I can’t wait to be an elder,” and Steve and Ansel enthusiastically agree. This could be played as a joke, but it’s not. We’ve seen over the course of three seasons how much these kids genuinely respect and care about their elders — even when those elders may be farting at them — and it feels absolutely believable that they would want to achieve that status as soon as possible.
Cheese is still far from adulthood, though, let alone elder status. Bear and Elora both make big decisions that help them leave childhood behind, but they’re also not ready to offer wisdom to all around them. Willie Jack, though, is. With Hokti unavailable, it falls to her to take charge of the funeral, and to offer words of comfort, healing, and tradition. Fixico’s own brother is there, but it’s this teenager running things, and running them well. Earlier, she told Hokti that she was worried she hadn’t learned nearly enough in her time with Fixico. Hokti points out that Willie Jack learned the most import of the job: to be there for members of the community when they’re sick, when they’re not, when they’re dying, and when they’re gone. And she does all of this, and more. She has never been much of a talker, which makes those moments when she does speak have so much more power (or humor), and here she is placed in a position where she has to deliver a whole speech. But she nails it, at one point saying of the dearly departed, “Our community, that’s what he cared about. And I hope to be that for people, too. He helped me figure out my purpose. I know we all have our own lives and our own problems, but I think it’s beautiful that we come together like this, for Uncle.”
As the speech continues, we see glimpses of what’s to come for the Rez Dogs — Bear seeing his mother off, Elora selling Mabel’s house and leaving for college — before returning to the funeral. Our final glimpse of the title characters is the four of them arm in arm, walking away from us, the image gradually blurring. They have long and bright futures ahead of them, but we will have to imagine it all, because this is the end of the story the series has been telling.
Well, almost. Again, there is that mid-credits scene, which shows Maximus, Brownie, Bucky, and Irene sitting together, looking back over the last day and night. Everything they say seems, like Hokti’s speech, laced with double meaning — one about Fixico, one about Reservation Dogs. “Well… we did good,” Bucky declares, which is an understatement for the show, but at least in the proper spirit. And then Maximus leads everyone in a toast of, “To the next one.” For them, this is acknowledgement of the fact that they’re at an age where their peers will begin to die, and then they themselves will, and eventually Willie Jack and Cheese and the others will be the new elders. But it’s also about the idea of Reservation Dogs not being the end of something, but just a link in the chain to the next one, and the next one, and the next one. Hollywood has had such a poor track record for so long when it comes to how Indigenous stories are told — really, with telling them at all. (Were the subject to come up with the Rez Dogs, Willie Jack would likely declare every studio exec to be a shitass.) So it would be easy to take this moment — when McClarnon was splitting his time between two shows where he played two wildly different Native lawmen, when Reservation Dogs was sharing cast and crew members with Rutherford Falls, when there were those three shows made by and starring Indigenous people on at the same time — as a fluke of timing and good fortune. But when I spoke with Harjo, he said he knew what projects everyone has in development, and that he believes this is only the start of something much bigger for everyone who got to be a part of this special show.
Here is to Reservation Dogs. It did good — way more than good. Here’s to the next one — hopefully way more than one.
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