The last season also introduced a major new character in Maximus (Graham Greene), Fixico’s cousin who has spent time in and out of mental institutions. He and Fixico, and their complicated relationship full of long held resentments, represent Harjo’s theory that “part of community is that some of the more seemingly marginal characters are really important to the whole.”
The discursive, sometimes standalone, storytelling of Reservation Dogs became more and more thematically relevant as it went on. What began as a story of a new generation of Native Americans wrestling tragedy, ultimately became about the shared pain and the shared joy that so many in their world feel.
By the time we leave Bear, Elora, Willie Jack, and Cheese they have a greater understanding of the people around them. That context allows them to mature themselves: Willie Jack wants to pass along Fixico’s teachings and Elora decides to leave, this time to go to college nearby. In some ways, Bear’s maturation is the most subtle and the most meaningful. He decides to stay in Okern, but supports Elora’s decision to go, instead of reacting with anger the way he has in the past when he thinks she has abandoned him.
In the opening of the finale, Willie Jack goes to visit Hokti (Killers of the Flower Moon‘s Lily Gladstone), Daniel’s mother, in prison. Willie Jack is bereft over Fixico’s death in part because she feels like she didn’t get enough time with him. Hokti responds with a metaphor illustrated by junk food she puts out on the table in front of her. Everyone Fixico knows carries a piece of him with them, and then they pass that along to everyone they know. That’s “how community works,” Hokti says. “It’s sprawling. It spreads. What do you think they came for when they tried to get rid of us? Our community. You break that, you break the individual.”
Her words also work in the context of Reservation Dogs itself. Harjo explains he realized midway through writing the third season that it was time to say goodbye, and that he needed to “embrace” that feeling, because “embracing it was going to make it better.” But he knows the show will linger for those who watched it and will be passed down in the same fashion Hokti describes.
“For me, it’s like, the end of the show, a lot of people are very sad about it, but it’s also like, you will carry this show,” Harjo says. “The show also works in that way. You’ve been a part of it and it continues.” We have, and it’s been a gift.
Esther Zuckerman
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