Reservation Dogs’ Third and Final Season Is a Loving Last Glance at Okern

The Rez Dogs have learned the truth the hard way: the magical, faraway land of California will not solve all their problems and make all their dreams come true. A stolen car, a visit with White Jesus, and one very cathartic swim in the ocean later, the teens are broke and stranded in California when the third and final season of FX’s Reservation Dogs begins. 

Throughout the first two seasons, Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Elora (Devery Jacobs), Cheese (Lane Factor), and Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) are pushing their boundaries and trying to walk away from all the things keeping them in Oklahoma. But their family ties are like bungee cords, stretching and stretching until they inevitably snap back into place. The history of their hometown overwhelms each of the teens, and by the time they leave for California, the only thing they can imagine is running away from it all. The series navigates universal coming-of-age themes, like Elora’s contemplation over whether college is right for her, and still represents this specific Native American town with remarkable granularity. 

The gang might be starting to heal from the loss of Daniel, but there’s still a deep current of pain running through them and their families. Despite the series being billed as a comedy, it’s impossible to explore the richness of this—or any—Native American community without addressing the underlying pain and violence that white Americans have inflicted. Reservation Dogs has always balanced humor and heartbreak with stunning clarity. In Season 3’s third episode, “Deer Lady,” we witness mere moments in the long and bleak history of boarding schools in this country: kidnapped children forced to watch their own graves being dug, nuns screaming in indecipherable languages, physical and emotional cruelty designed to crush any sense of pride or personal identity. Shown through color-faded memories, we’re spared some of the worst violences, left imagining the further horrors inflicted on so many young children in our country. This kind of unflinching representation is the key to Reservation Dogs’ singular appeal. 

Whether spoken aloud or felt in the silence from lost loved ones, shared grief unites everyone living in Okern, and the teens feel the history weighing on their families in each story their grandmothers, uncles, or mothers tell them. Reservation Dogs doesn’t pose their desire to leave the reservation as an abandonment, but as a way of compartmentalizing the overwhelming heartache. There’s simply too much to remember here, too many faces that never came home, too many ghosts hiding behind every dark corner. But they’re growing up now, and as they arrive back in their hometown, they’re starting to realize the only way to dampen that pain is by staring right into it.