While Dark Winds season 3 cleverly misdirected audiences all season, eventually revealing that the two cases were unrelated, after all.

With so many twists and turns, making sense of Dark Winds season 3's larger narrative required paying close attention. Even so, a few earlier stories got sidelined in favor of others that came to the forefront later in the season. Despite being the catalyst for Bernadette's entire storyline in season 3, and subsequently framed as though they would be of much greater importance to the story moving forward, the migrant daughter and mother ended up not being all that relevant to the main plot.

Dark Winds Season 3 Never Explained How The Migrant Mother & Daughter Fit Into The Story

They Were A Catalyst, But Not Much Else

Though it was good overall at tying up loose ends, Dark Winds season 3's ending never actually explained what the migrants were doing with Tom Spenser's operation and why they had been kidnapped. Cynically, their involvement could simply be read as a plot device to kick off Bernadette's story, but they nonetheless provided a human element that added poignancy to the season, overall. Still, why they had been important enough to kidnap and keep wasn't ever made clear – or maybe I missed something.

Their involvement made sense earlier in Dark Winds season 3 when it seemed that Tom Spenser was trafficking humans. However, the revelation that Spenser was actually working with the cartel to operate a drug smuggling ring blew that theory up, and I no longer understood why Spenser or Dark Winds itself needed the migrant Mixtec mother and her daughter. I wasn't sure what role they had to play in the overarching story, to the point that it felt like perhaps I had missed a crucial scene – but maybe it was right there, and I just missed it.

Dark Winds is a show that operates purely on the principle of "show, don't tell," which is great, as it forces you to pay attention in our phone-distracted age so as not to miss important details.

Dark Winds is a show that operates purely on the principle of "show, don't tell," which is great, as it forces you to pay attention in our phone-distracted age so as not to miss important details. Sometimes, the storytelling can be a little too subtle, though, especially when it's so clear in the writers' minds, and I suspect that may be what happened here. That said, there were a few clues that may have hinted at how the migrant mother and child factor into the whole thing.

Why Tom Spenser's Cartel Might Have Kidnapped The Migrant Family

They May Have Been Collateral To Keep The Father In Line

When Bernadette initially caught them, they, strangely enough, weren't running away from Border Patrol while trying to get into the United States, but away from it and back to Mexico. It was a curious thing. Again, it made sense when the human trafficking explanation was still in play, but that clearly wasn't a major part of Spenser's operation, and it's unlikely his and Budge's thugs would have made a point to only traffic two people. That's far smaller a scale than the drug operation that was eventually revealed in its entirety. Instead, it seems that the mother and daughter weren't caught by Spenser's thugs and kept at the oil fields and ranch to eventually sell, but as collateral.

Dark Winds excels at implication rather than stating things outright, and often, minor and inconsequential moments or background characters are later revealed to be important to the overall story. That may have been the case with the migrants in season 3. When Bernadette first came across the mother and daughter, they were on their own. In the Dark Winds season 3 finale, Ivan and Bernadette opened one of Spenser's vans to again find the terrified mother and daughter huddled together. This time, there was also a man with them, and it was implied, then later confirmed, that they were a family.

It was a weird moment, especially as the man had never factored into the kidnapped migrants' story in any way. However, the father had actually been shown before as one of Spenser's many Mexican workers on the ranch, working as a welder. It makes sense that Spenser would employ a skilled metalworker to retrofit his oil tankers with false tops to smuggle the drugs. That doesn't mean the man was willingly working for Spenser, however. If that's the case, then his wife and daughter may have been kidnapped and held hostage in Dark Winds season 3 to ensure that he did his job and kept his mouth shut. Otherwise, he might have tried to escape and cross back into Mexico.