50 Fun Facts About Reservation Dogs

Who co-created Reservation Dogs with Taika Waititi?

Sterlin Harjo and Waititi dreamed the show up over late-night tea, but the New Zealander then stepped back. 'It's not my place to make this show,' he said: the stories, and the town, were his partner's.

In which US state do the Rez Dogs live?

Oklahoma is the co-creator's home: he was born and raised there, and many storylines come from his own childhood. The whole first season was shot in the state too, which no scripted series had done before.

On which streaming service did Reservation Dogs premiere in 2021?

Hulu got it through 'FX on Hulu', the 2020 arrangement that sent some FX-made series straight to the streaming service. The first episodes arrived on 9 August, the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples.

Why did Reservation Dogs end after its third season?

Creator's choice: he announced it himself, writing that the third-season finale was the perfect series finale. He later said he had wanted to end the show when it felt right, and would never want anyone to tell him to stop.

Where do the Rez Dogs dream of moving to?

California was the dream of their friend Daniel, who died a year before the story starts. The gang steals and schemes to pay for the trip, and when they finally go it is to reach, for him, the ocean he never saw.

Who plays Bear Smallhill?

D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai was one of the last two actors up for Bear. The show kept the other one too: Dalton Cramer became Daniel, the friend whose death the gang is still mourning.

Which actress plays Elora Danan Postoak?

Devery Jacobs did not stay in front of the camera: she joined the writers' room for season 2, co-wrote episodes, and in the final season directed one herself.

Elora Danan is named after a character from which 1988 fantasy film?

Willow is the Ron Howard fantasy whose heroes protect a baby named Elora Danan. In the pilot, the man buying the gang's loot hears her name and at once asks whether she was named after that baby.

What is Willie Jack's full first name?

Wilhelmina Jacqueline Sampson is the full name behind 'Willie Jack'. The boyish nickname fits: the part was first written for a boy and reworked once its actress was cast.

Who plays Willie Jack?

Paulina Alexis first auditioned to play Elora. The showrunner asked her to read for Willie Jack as well because he thought she would be funny in it, and she got that part instead.

What is the name of Bear's spirit guide?

William Knifeman first appears when Bear faints under a volley of paintballs, and keeps turning up with rambling advice on being a warrior. The actor behind him, Dallas Goldtooth, joined the show's writers' room in season 2.

At which battle does Bear's spirit guide claim he died?

Little Bighorn, he says, though he never got to fight there: his horse stumbled in a hole and rolled over on him before he reached the action.

Who plays Officer Big, the superstitious lighthorseman?

Zahn McClarnon plays Big as a soft-hearted tribal cop, patient with petty crooks and wary of bad omens. Season 2 shows what haunts him: he blames himself for the death of Elora's mother.

Which actor plays Uncle Brownie, Elora's hermit uncle?

Gary Farmer's Brownie is a local legend for flattening an entire bar in one fight, yet he now lives alone in the woods. When a tornado bears down on the town, he is the one who rides out to turn it away.

What is the name of the rival teen gang led by Jackie?

NDN Mafia announce themselves by claiming the Rez Dogs' street as their turf. The feud softens, though: their leader Jackie, a city kid who wants out, ends up hitting the road with Elora.

What is the stage name of Bear's estranged rapper father?

Punkin Lusty is known for a novelty rap about greasy frybread. Booked to play the clinic's diabetes-awareness feast, he phones Bear on the day with a story about a cancelled flight and never shows.

Kenny Boy, who keeps insisting he is Native, owns what local business?

A salvage yard, where the gang sells what it steals. When they later break in to take back a car, he catches them and, to their shock, simply lets them take it.

Who plays Dr. Kang, the physician at the tribal clinic?

Bobby Lee plays Dr. Kang as a doctor with his mind elsewhere: patching Bear up after a beating, he uses the visit to ask whether the boy's mother, who works at the clinic, has remarried.

Which mythical being does Kaniehtiio Horn play?

Deer Lady, a beautiful woman with deer hooves, punishes bad men. Season 3 shows why: as a child she fled a brutal boarding school, was saved in the woods by a deer, and has gone after abusers ever since.

Which actress guest stars as Hokti, Daniel's imprisoned mother?

Lily Gladstone plays Hokti as a medicine woman gone bitter in prison, nagged by a chatty ancestor's ghost. When she finally prays with Willie Jack, a crowd of ancestral spirits gathers round them.

Which comedian plays Elora's driving instructor and former basketball coach in Reservation Dogs?

Bill Burr plays Garrett Bobson, who abandons her fourth try at the test to chase a hunch, pulls a gun from his boot and ends up needing her as a getaway driver. Then he tells her how her mother died.

Who plays Gene, the head of the group home Cheese is sent to?

Marc Maron's Gene runs the home as his own therapy session: he marches the kids through 'recovery' circles although none of them is an addict, because the recovery in question is his.

What leaves the Rez Dogs stranded when they finally reach the coast in the season 2 finale?

Their car is stolen while they eat, with their money and Daniel's letter inside. A robed stranger known as White Jesus, played by Incubus singer Brandon Boyd, then leads them on foot toward the beach.

Which actor plays Rick, Elora's long-absent father?

Ethan Hawke's Rick last saw Elora on her first birthday. She tracks him down only for the paperwork her college aid needs, but he produces the photo he kept from that day and tells her she has three half-siblings.

Reservation Dogs is set, and was mostly filmed, on the reservation of which tribal nation?

The Muscogee Nation, whose capital, Okmulgee, stood in for the fictional town of Okern. The co-creator has Muscogee heritage himself, and the songs at a deathbed in season 2 are sung in the nation's language.

Which Native sketch comedy group had all its members work on Reservation Dogs?

The 1491s named themselves for the last year before Columbus arrived. Between them the five members wrote, directed, produced and acted on the show, one of them as Bear's spirit guide.

What later FX series by the co-creator is set in the same universe?

The Lowdown, a noir about a self-styled 'truthstorian', opens with a handover: Willie Jack herself strolls past its hero and gives him a nod, a cameo shot only because the actress happened to be in town.

Which award went to Reservation Dogs' first and last seasons?

Peabody Awards went to the first season and again to the third, whose citation praised the power of Indigenous storytelling. The Emmys were less kind: five nominations over the run and not one win.

Reservation Dogs' last season was Emmy-nominated in which series category?

Comedy: its Outstanding Comedy Series nomination came only for the third and final season, after the main categories had passed over the first two. It lost to Hacks.

In the pilot, what do the Rez Dogs steal and sell to fund their escape?

A delivery truck, loaded with snack chips. The thrill fades fast: over a meal the kids overhear the driver saying the theft cost him his job and his wife has left him, and Bear shrinks into his seat.

In Reservation Dogs, what do Elora and Willie Jack sell outside the clinic while Bear is being treated?

Meat pies, sold from a folding table to top up the gang's getaway fund. Business is not helped when Elora goes inside complaining of stomach pains and the receptionist announces that the sick girl is the one selling them.

Which season 1 episode of Reservation Dogs is a two-hander for Willie Jack and her father in the woods?

Hunting sends the pair after Chunk, a buck they have unfinished business with. It is her father's first time out since Daniel died a year earlier, and the day ends with him holding her while she cries for her cousin.

In Reservation Dogs' second season, why does Willie Jack believe she has cursed the gang?

She gave away a rival's hair: Jackie's, handed to a white man in a bar who offered to curse her with it. When everything then goes wrong, Brownie blames her 'bad medicine', and the cure is a ceremony at the river.

Which Reservation Dogs episode gathers the community at the deathbed of Elora's grandmother?

Mabel is named for the grandmother herself, whose house fills with people praying, singing and cooking. Bear's spirit guide turns up as well, eating the plate left out as an offering while he waits to escort her to 'orientation'.

In 'Wide Net', where do the Aunties go for their 'closest thing to a vacation'?

An IHS conference: the Indian Health Service's yearly gathering draws Native people from all over the country, and the four friends treat it as a party. Bev wears other people's badges as trophies; back home, Bear throws a party of his own.

What stolen shipment is Big sent to investigate in 'This is Where the Plot Thickens'?

Catfish, taken from a local restaurant. Big would rather chase a Bigfoot sighting, and the trail, followed while he is accidentally high on a spiked soda, ends at robed white supremacists using the fish heads in a forest ritual.

In Reservation Dogs, what is the recluse Maximus waiting for at his remote compound?

The return of the star people, for whom he grows a greenhouse of eggplants. Nobody believed what he saw, so he was locked up and given shock treatment, which is why Bear's talk of visions gets under his skin.

Which film title is the 'House Made of Bongs' synopsis?

Dazed and Confused follows teenagers on the last day of school in 1976, and so does the episode: the show's elders, seen as students, see out that same school year at a party where they take LSD.

In the Reservation Dogs episode Elora's actress directed, whose spirit visits Rita?

Cookie, Elora's mother, who died when her daughter was small. Only Rita can see her, so in the episode, titled 'Wahoo!', she ends up relaying a dead friend's love to the girl Cookie never got to raise.

Whose funeral brings the community together in 'Dig', the finale of Reservation Dogs?

Old Man Fixico's grave is dug by the community itself, with shovels. He had begun teaching Willie Jack his medicine, so she is asked to break the ground, a job that usually falls to the men.

Who plays Bucky, the artist who sculpts with stolen copper, in Reservation Dogs?

Wes Studi made his name playing fearsome warriors such as Magua in The Last of the Mohicans, and received an honorary Oscar in 2019. Here he plays against all that, as a gentle small-town eccentric.

Which poet cameos in Reservation Dogs as the manager of the store where Elora works?

Joy Harjo was United States Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022, the first Native American to hold the post. The show gives her a much smaller office: boss of a convenience store, in one second-season episode.

Willie Jack's actress made her professional debut in which 2021 film?

Ghostbusters: Afterlife was shot in 2019, when she was 18, but sat on the shelf until late 2021. So her first professional job reached cinemas only after Reservation Dogs had already made her name.

Lane Factor, who plays Cheese in Reservation Dogs, went on to appear in which Steven Spielberg film?

The Fabelmans made him one of the Boy Scouts who help the young hero shoot his first movies. Not long before, he had been a schoolboy with a few local commercials behind him, cast as the youngest of the four Rez Dogs.

The co-creator of Reservation Dogs is a citizen of which tribal nation?

Seminole: he is a citizen of the Seminole Nation. The year after the show ended, the MacArthur Foundation gave him one of its fellowships, the awards better known as 'genius grants'.

Reservation Dogs' co-creator premiered his first feature, Four Sheets to the Wind, at which film festival in 2007?

Sundance, where its lead actress, Tamara Podemski, won a special jury prize. Fourteen years later he cast her again, as Teenie, Elora's aunt.

Dallas Goldtooth, who plays Bear's spirit guide, joined the 2016 Standing Rock camps against which pipeline?

Dakota Access: he was there as an organiser for the Indigenous Environmental Network, which his father leads, and he has campaigned against Keystone XL too. He later wrote for Reservation Dogs as well as acting in it.

The actress who plays Elora in Reservation Dogs earned a Canadian Screen Award nod for which 2013 film?

Rhymes for Young Ghouls cast her as Aila, a teenager on a 1970s reserve whose revenge plot plays out against the abuses of the residential school system. The part brought a best-actress nomination years before Reservation Dogs.

What symbol did Bear's actor wear at the 76th Primetime Emmys?

A red handprint, painted across his mouth, is the emblem of the campaign for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. He wore it with a black tuxedo on the night he was up for a lead-acting Emmy.

Big's actor plays Joe Leaphorn in which AMC series?

Dark Winds moved him from supporting parts, in shows such as Longmire and Westworld, to the lead, and he is an executive producer as well. The series adapts Tony Hillerman's novels about Navajo police.