\n<\/p>\n
\u201cAll this, this is how the community works,\u201d Hokti (Lily Gladstone) tells her grieving niece, Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis), in the series finale of FX\u2019s \u201cReservation Dogs.\u201d Sitting inside a prison visiting room and pointing to a circle made of candy bars, Cheez-Its and Flaming Flamers \u2014 ad hoc symbols of their loved ones, courtesy of a vending machine \u2014 Hokti continues: \u201cIt is sprawling. It spreads. What do you think they came for when they tried to get rid of us? Our community. You break that, and you break the individual.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the thing about community,\u201d she adds. \u201cYou have to take care of it. You have to play your part.\u201d<\/p>\n
This scene, appearing early in the episode, which bowed on Wednesday, was a full-circle moment of another sort. When \u201cReservation Dogs\u201d premiered on Hulu in 2021, it appeared to be about four teenagers \u2014 Bear (D\u2019Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Elora (Devery Jacobs), Cheese (Lane Factor) and Willie Jack \u2014 trying to leave Okern, a fictional town in rural Oklahoma, for California, after their best friend, Daniel (Dalton Cramer), dies by suicide.<\/p>\n
But over the course of three seasons, it quickly became obvious that the creators, Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, had far greater and bolder ambitions than making just another adolescent comedy. (Harjo is also the series\u2019s showrunner.) Not only was \u201cReservation Dogs\u201d the first and only TV series in which every writer, director and series regular was Indigenous, but each episode was also constantly experimenting with form, style and history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
As a result, critics consistently named \u201cReservation Dogs\u201d one of the best TV shows of the year while it ran; it easily topped my own 2022 list of entertainment<\/a>, a much-needed escape from last year\u2019s political tumult. As important, the show introduced a new generation of Native actors, like Woon-A-Tai<\/a>, Jacobs<\/a>, Factor<\/a> and Alexis<\/a>, while also showcasing the remarkable comedic range of the great Zahn McClarnon, who was described in a New York Times profile last year<\/a> as otherwise \u201cplaying some pretty tough characters.\u201d<\/p>\n But its ensemble was both an achievement and a symbol. \u201cReservation Dogs\u201d was always an intergenerational narrative about loss, land and healing. And it accomplished that by striking a balance between irreverence and recognizing the past. This season, for example, dived headfirst into the racial horror of Native American boarding schools while also reveling in the lightheartedness of a fake heist.<\/p>\n For Harjo, who grew up in Holdenville, Okla. (the town on which Okern is based), it was also an opportunity \u201cto show the beauty that I see in rural America\u201d and his love of \u201cNative people and everything that I came from.\u201d At a restaurant outdoors last week in Brooklyn, Harjo discussed why he chose to end the show after only three seasons, the power of an all-Indigenous writers\u2019 room, that Emmy snub and what he hopes the show\u2019s legacy will be. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.<\/p>\n Why did you end now, after three seasons?<\/strong><\/p>\n It was my decision. I didn\u2019t know it would be three seasons, but I knew this was the arc it would take. I couldn\u2019t imagine dragging it out. It would feel cheap. So I feel good about it, to be honest. It\u2019s a coming-of-age story, and you can\u2019t keep coming of age. This is a transitional moment in these characters\u2019 lives, and if they keep going through this transition, it doesn\u2019t feel genuine. It\u2019s like, \u201cAt some point, I\u2019ve got to figure something out.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Do you feel like you said everything you wanted to say?<\/strong><\/p>\n I remember Jim Jarmusch, who I\u2019m a big fan of, said something like this: \u201cMost movies and filmmakers are concerned with characters getting to the bus, and then taking the bus from A to B. But I\u2019m more concerned with what happens at the bus stop while they\u2019re waiting on the bus.\u201d And I think \u201cReservation Dogs\u201d chose moments like that. Not that I couldn\u2019t follow people to college, but how the story\u2019s told and what we chose to tell is very magical. And some of that magic is lost once you follow characters to college and deal with real-world [expletive]. Even love stories \u2014 I don\u2019t deal with love stories in the show. It\u2019s bigger than that. This is about life and death. Love is happening, and it\u2019s happening in between episodes, which you see by the end. But it\u2019s not something that I want to sit around and talk about.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Speaking of magic, \u201cReservation Dogs\u201d is a spiritual show. How did you approach this aspect of this show?<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s one thing Taika and I discussed right at the beginning. We were like, \u201cWe want this, all mythological beings, to be a matter of fact.\u201d Because that\u2019s the way these stories are told in our community. I think a lot of Native spiritualism in Hollywood movies seems so hokey. It\u2019s like, \u201cOh, now it\u2019s time to sit around the fire and play a flute, and now I\u2019m going to tell you this spiritual story.\u201d And that\u2019s for white people. And it gives this false identity to our spiritualism and who we are. There are medicine men, but they\u2019re in jeans, sports hats and T-shirts. They\u2019re not floating down from the mountains. And I wanted to lift the veil and show that there are people who can touch and see things we can\u2019t see, but they look like Willie Jack. Or they look like Bear.<\/p>\n