Reservation Dogs Director Danis Goulet Reveals The Biggest Challenge Of Filming Deer Lady's Horrifying Origin Story
William Knifeman isn't the only spirit lurking around the res.
In Episode 3 of Reservation Dogs' third and final season, we finally learned the heartbreaking backstory to one of the show's most mysterious characters. After meeting one afternoon in a diner, Deer Lady (Kaniehtiio Horn) is the one who eventually helps Bear find his way home. But along the way, we're privy to the woman's childhood backstory, which chronicled her abduction and abuse while being forced to live at a religious boarding school.
After her best friend is pulled from his bed kicking and screaming, the young Deer Lady makes a run for it in the middle of the night, accepting help from a glowing-eyed deer to escape her prison walls. Back in the present, Deer Lady finds the kids' captor and pays him a visit. She stabs him in the back with antlers and leaves him bleeding out, the ultimate revenge for her dearly departed friend (and many others) who was "killed by human wolves," as his grave indicates.
"How do you introduce such a dark history that really happened to children, that includes depictions of the violence against children?" says director Danis Goulet when asked about the episode's biggest challenge. "How do you show that in a way that tells the truth and does justice to their experience, but also doesn't take things too far so that the audience is able to stay with it? I think that was the hardest thing that was weighing heavily throughout all of it.
"We took a bit of extra time to strike the balance, to feel that it was in the right place because I think we were quite aware of it as we were shooting, even the blocking and the angles that we were using," she adds. "We weren't trying to hit it really hard or be egregious with the violence in any way, but really show it as a casual everyday violence that is just life in this space."
In Native culture, the Deer Woman is a spirit that is sometimes associated with love and fertility. But for those who harm women or children, the spirit becomes murderous and vengeful, often trampling men to death with her sturdy deer legs.
In the Rez Dogs' world, Horn's Deer Lady is a force to be reckoned with. We first saw her in Season 1's Big flashbacks (Episode 5's "Come and Get Your Love"). After saving the day during a convenience story robbery (and young Big's major TP problem), she appears to the boy at his grandmother's funeral, telling him to "be good, fight evil." If he behaves, she says, he won't ever get on her bad side. We see her again in Season 2's "This Is Where the Plot Thickens" when Big accidentally ingests some hallucinogens and sees her in a vision.
Horn is as striking as ever as Deer Lady heads out to seek justice for her friend. There's an aura to her performance. One that exudes strength, confidence and sheer "don't F with me" attitude.
"She's such a force," says Goulet. "We had conversations about how to play certain moments or what we thought was happening or what she was channeling through the episode and things like that. But she's just absolutely brilliant.
"The diner day was such a joy to shoot," she adds. "[Deer Lady] goes through so many shades. She's unpredictable. She's playful, mysterious, dangerous. But this episode really shows a different side of her. She comes off in this tough, badass babe that totally takes command of any space that she's in. Who doesn't love a character like that? But then to give her so much more dimension by going back into her past and seeing the formation of her and what shaped her into that, I found it really powerful for her to show such vulnerability. There's a moment where she stands on the porch before she walks into the house of the man she's been looking for. It was like she was almost in this childlike space. To have the opportunity to work with her through all of that, I just was blown away by what she was able to do."
Thoughts on Episode 3? We want to hear 'em! Sound off by dropping a comment below.