The Ending Of Reservation Dogs Season 3 Explained

Contains spoilers for "Reservation Dogs" Season 3

When "Reservation Dogs" showrunner Sterlin Harjo announced that Season 3 would be the last, many fans expressed their sadness to see it go. This amazing show had only begun two years before, and you can't blame viewers for wanting it to go on forever, yet all good things must come to an end sometime. If anything, the knowledge that "Reservation Dogs" is ending makes its final season more valuable, because it means that viewers will enjoy every moment they get to spend with these characters while they can. 

Season 3 of "Reservation Dogs" has some pretty powerful themes about community and how to cope with trauma, which we will explore below. The show may be over, but that doesn't mean fans won't be left with any lingering questions. Like, how come William Knifeman (Dallas Goldtooth) never gives a straight answer? And what's the deal with the nuns who speak in a nonsense language? And most importantly, are aliens real? Join us as we dive into, and explain, the ending of "Reservation Dogs" Season 3.

The Reservation Dogs travel to California together to scatter the ashes of their late friend Daniel (Dalton Cramer). The group successfully fulfills Daniel's wishes, but they become stranded in Los Angeles after somebody steals their car. Luckily, their auntie Teenie (Tamara Podemski) finds them and brings them home. Along the way, Elora (Devery Jacobs) learns that her father is not dead like she previously thought, but instead alive and well — he simply didn't bother reaching out to his daughter. Meanwhile, Bear (D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) gets separated from the others on the way home and meets a lonely old man named Maximus (Graham Greene).

Once the Rez Dogs — including Bear — return, Elora decides she wants to attend college, even if it means being far from home. Likewise, Bear's mom Rita (Sarah Podemski) decides to accept a promising job offer in Oklahoma City. Cheese (Lane Factor), the youngest of the group, fears the gang is drifting apart, but the elders in his community assure him that the four can still remain close.

Medicine man Fixico (Richard Ray Whitman) senses he is going to die soon yet wants to pass his wisdom to the next generation, so Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) begins training under him. Viewers also learn that Fixico knew Maximus when they were teenagers, but Maximus was ostracized by the community because of his rivalry with Fixico — that and because Maximus claims he's seen aliens, which he calls the "Star People."

Towards the end of Season 3, Fixico suffers from a heart attack. Realizing there isn't much time left for Fixico to make amends with Maximus, Willie Jack rallies the Rez Dogs to bust Maximus out of the psychiatric hospital where he is receiving treatment. However, it turns out Maximus is quite comfortable at the facility, and in any event, he still wants nothing to do with Fixico, whom he has been feuding with since he was a teenager. Yet, when Willie Jack shares how she wishes she had more time with Daniel, she manages to convince Maximus to visit Fixico's deathbed.

Meanwhile, Elora has decided to go to college, but she hasn't told Bear yet because she's afraid he will feel like she's abandoning him again. She also visits her father Rick (Ethan Hawke) — at first only to get him to sign some papers so she can get into college — but he convinces her to stay a little longer, and gradually she warms up to him. By the end of the last episode, Elora tells Bear about her plans to attend school, and he is happy for her.

After Fixico dies, the entire community — including Maximus — comes together for his funeral. Willie Jack struggles with the feeling that she can't possibly fill Fixico's shoes, especially since he barely taught her anything before his death. Yet she discovers that perhaps she already has what it takes to be a medicine woman.

By the end of the first episode of Season 3, Bear has finally let go of his dad Punkin (Sten Joddi). While in California, Bear drops by his dad's place, but it turns out the place belongs to one of his dad's many ex-girlfriends. Bear asks this woman to pass along a message to his dad, but this time he is no longer craving his father's approval. Instead, he leaves behind the medallion he once bought to please his dad, along with a note that reads, "For once, I get to decide how you disappear. Have a good life Dad."

Although Bear has left his father behind, he still casts a shadow over him for the rest of the season. Two episodes later, Bear crosses paths with the mysterious Deer Lady (played gracefully by actress Kaniehtiio Horn, who may look familiar to fans). According to legend, Deer Lady goes around punishing bad men, and Bear starts to wonder if maybe he did something wrong. Even after Deer Lady assures Bear she is not here to kill him, he still can't seem to shake the uneasy feeling that he'll be next. By the end of the episode, viewers learn why Deer Lady has appeared to him: Bear is afraid he is already starting to follow in his dad's footsteps. Luckily, Deer Lady puts those fears to rest, telling him, "Don't you worry about becoming your dad ... Your mama made sure of that."

When Bear first meets Maximus in Episode 2, it appears that Maximus is losing his grip on reality as he becomes consumed by conspiracies, plastering his walls with tinfoil, and keeping a greenhouse full of eggplants to appease the Star People. Yet, as you learn more about Maximus, you can't help but wonder if maybe he is onto something. After all, the world of "Reservation Dogs" is inhabited by Deer Lady and a spirit named William Knifeman who died at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, so why not Star People as well?

Later in the season, however, it is revealed that the Star People are indeed in Maximus' head. Episode 5 shows Maximus in high school when he first glimpses the Star People, and none of his friends can see them. Although it's true that nobody else besides Bear can see William Knifeman, there is a reason for this. As the spirit of Cookie (Janae Collins) tells Rita, seeing spirits is an ability that runs in her family. There is no such explanation for why Maximus is the only one who can see the Star People. That, along with the recreational drugs in his system, makes it pretty clear that Maximus is hallucinating. Maximus himself admits it in Episode 8 when he implies that seeing the Star People is only a side effect of him forgetting to take his meds.

Episode 3 shows the backstory of Deer Lady. As a child, she was taken to a residential boarding school, where her instructors abused her and yelled at her in a nonsense language. You may be left wondering why the nuns don't speak English in this sequence. This is because, to Indigenous children who didn't speak English, their tormentors may as well have been speaking gibberish. "That's actually what Sterlin [Harjo] had written into the script," director Danis Goulet told Variety. She added that Harjo told her, "It's like the Charlie Brown teachers but scarier." The show's creators wanted to immerse viewers in the perspective of the Indigenous children, conveying the emotional truth if not the literal truth.

The director wanted to approach this episode through the lens of a horror film, to make the trauma just a little easier for audiences to swallow, without shying away from revealing the violence inflicted on Indigenous children. Goulet told The Hollywood Reporter that when she read the script she "immediately felt ... that residential schools are like a horror movie." For this episode, she drew heavily from 1970s horror movies, with their mixture of fantastical escapism and gritty realism. Of course, this wouldn't be the first time the show has drawn cinematic inspiration from classic '70s films.

Episode 5 of "Reservation Dogs" Season 3, follows a young Maximus (Isaac Arellanes) and Fixico (Josiah Wesley Jones) while they are in high school, and right away it's clear that there's bad blood between them. However, nobody seems to know exactly what drove these two cousins apart. Everyone assumes they're fighting over a girl, but this isn't the case.

So why do the two men hate each other? It's partly because Maximus feels like Fixico is acting holier-than-thou, now that he's earned the title of medicine man, but their rivalry also goes much deeper than that. "He's always had things," explains Maximus. "Everything has just been paved for him." Maximus is an orphan, while Fixico is lucky enough to still have both parents alive, and Maximus admits that he wouldn't mind that so much if Fixico at least appreciated all the privileges that he took for granted. Like many of the other characters in the show, Maximus longs for a simpler time, before he and Fixico grew apart. "When we were younger, we were just two sh*ta**es running around barefoot," says Maximus, and he feels like he can never go back to that. Of course, even when Fixico does make an effort to bridge the gap between them, Maximus pushes him away. It's not until Fixico is on his deathbed that the two reconcile.

While Rita is considering whether or not to accept her new job offer, the spirit of her friend Cookie pays her a visit. Cookie claims, "I'm just here visiting an old friend," referring to her daughter Elora. Ostensibly, her purpose is simply to use Rita to communicate with her daughter. Cookie can still watch Elora, but she needs a living person to ask the questions she always wanted to ask her daughter.

Yet that's not the only reason Cookie is there. As gratifying as it is for Cookie to catch up with her daughter, this interaction changes nothing. Elora will never know that her mother's spirit is watching, and Cookie will never get to speak to Elora directly. However, there is one way Cookie can still make a difference, and that is by helping Rita. She is here to remind Rita that life is short. "You should do something with y'all's lives while you still can," Cookie tells her. Knowing that Rita has just been offered a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity and that she is afraid to take it because it means leaving her hometown of Okern behind, Cookie urges Rita to seize the day, since she might not get another chance like this. Cookie regrets not spending more time with her daughter, and she doesn't want Rita to die with any regrets.

When Elora finally meets her dad, Rick, she doesn't want to let herself get attached to him. "I'm not looking for a dad," she declares, because her community filled the hole left by her father and she doesn't even feel his absence anymore. Meanwhile, Rick wants desperately to be needed by his daughter, and he keeps inventing reasons for Elora to stay a little longer.

Unlike Bear's dad, Rick turns out to be a pretty good father — just not to Elora. She is surprised to find that Rick has raised the kids he had with his second wife because he didn't want to botch his second chance to be a good parent. By the end of the episode, Elora is willing to let Rick introduce her to his kids and even let him hug her.

Elora also discovers she has something in common with her father. Rick admits, "I have a bad habit of running whenever anything gets hard," and Elora replies, "So that's where I get it." Elora has always felt a need to escape, and inspired by her father, she decides to learn from her mistakes. Rather than going off to college without telling Bear — repeating the way she bailed on him in Season 1 — she decides to finally break the habit. Before she leaves, she checks to make sure Bear will be okay after she's gone and promises to visit every weekend.

Throughout Season 3 of "Reservation Dogs," Bear looks to the spirit William Knifeman for some sage wisdom. Instead, Knifeman gives him a bunch of pseudo-spiritual mumbo-jumbo and talks about Bear's "man moon." Soon Bear grows frustrated that the spirit never seems to tell him anything helpful.

By the end of the season, however, it strikes Bear that maybe he doesn't need Knifeman to impart wisdom to him because he has known the answer all along. Rather than answering Bear's barrage of questions, the spirit flips the conversation on its head and asks Bear a question of his own: "What have you learned?" After considering it, Bear replies, "I learned that I don't got to be the only leader."

Ever since Season 1, Bear has always wanted to be a leader. Thanks to his absent father, Bear has felt obligated to be the man of the house. After Bear ventured to suggest he was the leader of the Rez Dogs in Season 1 — causing Elora and Willie Jack to laugh at him — Bear has struggled to be taken seriously. However, after working together with his friends and neighbors to organize Fixico's funeral, Bear finally recognizes his place, and it's not necessarily the leader. In the end, Bear accepts that he can simply be one member of a larger community, and that's enough.

After Fixico's death, Willie Jack is still mourning his loss and feeling like she can never be a medicine woman, so she goes to visit her aunt Hokti (Lily Gladstone) in prison.

In the most poignant speech involving a bag of chips that you will likely see on television, Hokti uses snacks from the prison vending machine to illustrate how Fixico can live on through the impact he left on his loved ones, and how that will ripple outward. Hokti adds that these bonds are especially strong in a Native community, hinting that European colonizers were jealous of those bonds. That's why they tore children like Deer Lady away from their families and placed them in boarding schools — they were trying to sever the kids from their community in order to break them.

Hokti reminds Willie Jack that it's the small gestures — like delivering groceries to members of the community — that make a medicine woman. And that's something that Willie Jack has already been doing. Hotki suggests there is no big secret to being a medicine woman, instead, it simply means taking care of the people in your community in whatever way you can. At first, Willie Jack isn't sure she can do it, but by the end of the season, she feels confident enough to say the closing words at Fixico's grave.

When Deer Lady is trapped at boarding school, her friend Koda (Michael Podemski-Bedard) helps her survive by showing her a way she can quietly rebel against her abusive instructors. "They can't stop you from smiling," he says. "And that's what we do. We smile." Later, Deer Lady gives this same advice to Bear, "Remember to keep smiling."

These words could easily be the motto of the entire series. "Reservation Dogs" deals with heavy topics such as suicide and Indigenous boarding schools, yet it's also wildly funny. In the course of a single episode, it can swing between a ridiculous heist planned from the back of a school bus to an old man hunched over his friend's deathbed.

More importantly, the series offers some insight into how to cope with trauma. Watching the characters in "Reservation Dogs" find humor in their situations may teach viewers a thing or two about healing. Koda gives Deer Lady hope in a place where there was none before. Meanwhile, Cookie chooses not to dwell on how she must watch her daughter grow up from afar, instead sharing fried catfish with Rita. Even a somber occasion like Fixico's funeral becomes a fun event that brings everyone in the community together. Who knew that digging a grave could be so entertaining and cathartic for everyone involved? "Reservation Dogs" reminds us that comedy can make tragedy a little more bearable.

Make no doubt about it, Season 3 of "Reservation Dogs" will definitely be the last, coming to a natural end rather than being canceled. Showrunner Sterlin Harjo simply decided that it would be a good place to end the series. The director told Indiewire, "I didn't ever want someone to tell me it's time to pack it up. I think it's better to drop the mic than to get the mic cord cut."

However, that's not to say fans won't ever get a chance to return to this world. "I do think that we have a world and a universe that will keep going," Harjo told Variety. Speaking to Indiewire, he added, "I could follow Big. Or what about the Deer Lady? There are so many stories that we could break off." If he did choose to do a spin-off about Deer Lady, Danis Goulet (who directed the episode about her) would be totally on board. Of course, fans may have to wait a while before they see any spin-off series. Harjo says his next project is not officially connected to the characters of "Reservation Dogs," though it does have a similar setting and vibe.

Regardless, Harjo likely won't be returning to these particular characters again. He wants to leave their futures up to the imagination of the audience. "There's something about being able to imagine where these characters go instead of me forcing it on people," he told Variety.

If you or anyone you know needs help with mental health, may be the victim of abuse, or is having suicidal thoughts, contact the relevant resources below:

• Contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

• Contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.

• If you or someone you know is dealing with spiritual abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

• Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.