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“Wynonna Earp” recap (1.11): Chicks Dig Scars

*Trigger warning* In case you stumbled on this recap and haven’t seen the episode yet, because of the recent mass shooting in Orlando, I just wanted to give you a quick heads up that there are guns and shooting in this episode. But don’t worry, no one dies, unless you count Revenants being sucked back into hell.

Previously on Wynonna Earp, Wynonna found herself in a cult and saved a girl who went by Eve, who mysteriously was able to use Peacemaker, Doc tried to get the hell out of Purgatory, and Gus confirmed what we all had been wondering: Eve is actually Willa, back from the dead.

Willa is sleeping while Wynonna, Waverly and Gus watch over her, confused and a little overwhelmed.

I imagine it’s a lot to process, the big sister you thought was long dead strolling back into your life. They don’t want to tell anyone in the town just yet, especially since there’s still the slight possibility it’s not her; it’s not like her memory can confirm it. But Dolls shows up to stomp out that doubt with a DNA test. The guilt washes over Wynonna again, the feeling that they gave up on her, left her for dead, when she was still out there. Before she can drown in the thought of it, though, Willa wakes up with a gasp, but the nightmare doesn’t go away. She killed a man, and he got sucked into a fiery hole in the ground (Waverly Spencer Hastings her and informs her that actually she sent him to hell) and Wynonna comforts her the best way she knows how: giving her some booze and a very complicated and layered, “Welcome home.”

Somewhere across town, two guys break into a storage unit to release two women, and despite knowing they shouldn’t make eye contact, end up making eye contact and getting hypnotized and hella eaten.

At the homestead, Wynonna and Waverly take Willa to her old bedroom, hoping it will trigger some memories, and watch curiously as their big sister looks at the toys she left behind.

Willa finds a little eyeless teddy bear and Waverly snatches it out of her hand protectively, earning a scolding glance from Wynonna. Willa is a little concerned to find a switchblade in a jewelry box, but the Earps are anything but ordinary. She asks if she can take a shower, and takes off her nightgown right then and there before wandering to the bathroom, still a little dead behind the eyes.

Wynonna is like, “She hates us.” And I’m going to pause here for what won’t be the first or last time I say this: Melanie Scrofano’s face is so fucking expressive. You could see the little 12-year-old girl in her, hoping her big sister will deem her worthy to hang out with. But Waverly was only six when all this went down; for the most part, Wynonna is the only sister she’s ever had, and seeing that look in Wynonna’s eyes is too much for her, so she says she’s off to see Nicole before the Poker Spectacular. Wynonna asks if her and Nicole are best friends now, and Waverly stops and looks at her and considers her response but decides to go with no response at all. Also, Wynonna just got back to time and would like to know what the hell a Poker Spectacular is, even though I think the name is pretty telling.

One thing a Poker Spectacular is is annoying to Bobo. Which means I like it already. Some old dude (the judge, I believe) brings him some weird-looking gems that will surely be important later, and the Maneater Twins…cheer him up.

At Casa Earp, Wynonna and Gus talk about how insane this is, that Willa is back and alive and brainwashed. Gus remembers the day they found pieces of a bloody nightgown, six months after Willa disappeared. She remembers it was a Thursday because it was also the day Wynonna got kicked out of school for almost burning down her classroom. Wynonna gets that childlike glint in her eye when she pouts; her teacher called her project an aberration, but she had worked so hard on the little paper mache demons.

Wynonna is a little frustrated and wants to know how to get Willa’s memories back, and Willa appears with a suggestion… tell her the truth. The whole truth.

Meanwhile, the shady judge meets with a man named Mr. Stokes who has brought a suitcase of cash for the Poker Spectacular. Mr. Stokes goes to his hotel room and ends up getting his dick chomped off by the twins. Which I definitely found funnier than I should have.

Wynonna takes Willa and a bottle of booze out to the makeshift shooting range on their property and explains the whole Revenant deal. She cracks a joke and Willa is a little alarmed but Wynonna explain that if you don’t laugh in situations like this, you’ll lose your damn mind. Wynonna shoots a few things, coming such a long way since she first laid hands on Peacemaker, and says Willa was supposed to be the one doing all this. Willa takes Peacemaker and holds it up and has flashbacks of her father drunkenly dragging her teenage self out of bed to practice shooting. And just like that, Willa remembers her sisters. Remembers ‘Nona.

And remembers how to shoot that gun like a BOSS.

Dolls shows up to take Wynonna to the crime scene and Willa promises she’ll be fine on her own.

Okay, I’m going to give you a quick Doc update, and then not return to his thing til later, because as much as I love Doc, I love the Earp girls more, and he’s a little far away from them this week. Here’s the deal: Doc’s car breaks down and a gentleman shows up to help him. The man proves he’s not a Revenant, but he still keeps making references that imply he knows more about Doc than he’s letting on. Sure enough, Doc finds Wyatt’s burnt badge in the man’s toolbox. The man calls himself Juan Carlo and says that he’s invested in the Ghost River Triangle and that Wynonna Earp has four days before some ominous door opens. So Doc has two sets of choices: He can run away, or he can stand with Wynonna. And he can have the fanbelt to fix his car, or he can have Wyatt’s badge back. But we’ll check in on him later.

Willa goes to her room to talk to Waverly, who has a little box filled with mementos, including Willa’s death certificate. Waverly remembers a lot of tears, an empty coffin, and eating so many marshmallows she made herself sick. Willa says, “Gee, it must have been so hard for you,” in a tone of voice I do NOT appreciate her taking with Wave, and says, “You killed me,” as if they didn’t search for her for months and as if little six-year-old Waverly had anything to do with it. And then in a flash, Willa remembers the day she was taken. Waverly asks if she’s okay and Willa reaches out to put an arm on Waverly’s shoulder, but Waverly pulls away, tears in her eyes.

Willa asks if Waverly is scared of her, and I don’t think she’s scared in the sense that she thinks Willa will hurt her, physically. I think she’s scared of what Willa being back will mean for her and Wynonna. Willa, overwhelmed, runs off and Waverly runs after her, but her big sister gets away.

Dolls tries to brief Wynonna on how they’re tracking a gambler’s smartwatch to a warehouse because there was a lot of blood in his hotel room but Wynonna is understandably unfocused. Dolls promises her she’s the Earp he needs; she feels like an understudy, but he promises she is irreplaceable. Wynonna rolls her eyes, back to her normal self, and they head inside. Wynonna finds the twins chomping on the gambler’s body and one of them tries to hypnotize her, but she shakes it off pretty quickly, saying, “You’re not my type.” But she’s flattered anyway. The twins run off and Wynonna takes Stokes’ pulse, but he’s long gone.

The sister find Dolls and hypnotize him. With one kiss, they can instantly tell he’s powerful, that he’s holding back. They’re fighting over him when Wynonna comes by and slaps him out of it-literally. She kills one of the girls with Peacemaker and Dolls says he can probably lure the other one out with a tone of voice that earns him one of these:

Dolls does end up finding the other sister first and dances with her long enough to find out that she attacked this man as a favor to the judge. Dolls twirls her around right into Peacemaker’s path. Dolls is proud to have “double-teamed” the girl, and Wynonna suppresses the urge to giggle at his bad joke.

Then Waverly calls in a panic because Willa took off, so the girls meet up to find their sister once again. They decide to follow their Earpy instincts and check Shorty’s, and sure enough, Willa is there taking her first shots. They are unsurprised and unamused.

A dude at the bar is calling Willa peaches, and orders her more shots and they know this can’t end well. Wynonna takes a swig of a beer that isn’t hers, and Waverly gets out to get the jeep ready. Wynonna pulls Willa away from the guy at the bar, and Willa confronts her about killing their father. Willa says maybe their dad deserved it and says that Daddy Earp told Willa to stay calm like he knew the attack was going to happen. Wynonna can’t even begin to wrap her head around this when the dude from the bar call Wynonna and Willa whores and bitches because heaven forbid a dude not get what he wants, and before Wynonna can issue a classic quip, Willa pulls Peacemaker from Wynonna’s holster and sends him right to hell.

Wynonna yells at her, explaining that there are regular people in this bar, they can’t go around shooting Revenants, so they resort to good old fashioned fisticuffs until they run out to Waverly in the getaway car, all while the song sings a delightfully twangy song that ends on the words, “Run amuck.”

At the homestead, Willa is still amped from the fight (and probably the booze) and Dolls yells at her for shooting someone in Shorty’s. Wynonna tells him to lay off-she made the exact same mistake when she first got this gig-but Willa interrupts and tells Wynonna to stop following orders instead of her Earp instincts.

Torn between her sister and her boss, both making fairly good points, both people she cares about, Wynonna kicks some furniture and storms out. Willa goes after to have a sisterly chat, and Waverly watches them leave with a sadness draped over her like a cute sweater.

Willa finds Wynonna in the barn and apologizes for freaking out. She has all this anger that has been suppressed for years and years, and she lost control. Waverly tiptoes in and overhears her two older sisters sharing memories about gummy bear parades that she doesn’t share.

Willa says that it’s always been the two of them, and she’s back now, so Wynonna isn’t alone anymore. And I get why Willa feels that way; there are six years between Wynonna and Waverly, and only two or three between Wynonna and Willa. They grew up together, a friendship bond entangled in their sisterly one, with a shared baby sister. But Wynonna grew up with Waverly, and they have a bond of their own now, but instead of saying that she hasn’t been alone, instead of saying anything at all, Wynonna just hugs Willa, causing the eavesdropping Waverly to run back to the house.

One of Bobo’s henchmen shows him the video of the ruckus in the bar caused by the two Earp girls, but when he sees Willa’s face, he says there are now three Earp girls, and his eyes go red and fiery.

Meanwhile, outside the homestead, military men talk about a target and a clean sweep as they pull on their gear and agree to leave no witnesses.

Waverly brings Dolls some tea and asks why he’s so distracted. He mentions his mole and how important the Black Badge Division is to him, but Waverly knows. And she gets it, too, the feeling like you’re about to lose something, like everything’s about to change just when it was starting to get good. Dolls tells her it’s okay not to like Willa, and Waverly admits that she never knew Willa, so it feels a bit like a stranger is invading all she has left of the family, which isn’t all that much to begin with. Dolls promises her that a million Earps could emerge from the shadows, but none would be able to replace THE Waverly Earp, and calls her “Earp” like he calls Wynonna, bringing that trademark light back to her face.

That is until the shooting starts. The military men attack and everyone springs into action. Wynonna and Willa know that no one will expect them from the barn, so they grab some conveniently located weapons and head out into the snow like a couple of badasses.

Dolls tells Waverly to hide, but she’s pretty sick of that plan, so she grabs a sawed-off shotgun that was just stored under the kitchen table and tells the military men to, “Eat shit, shiteaters,” as she shoots them down.

She gets a few good shots in but then is hit so she drops to the ground.

When Wynonna and Willa get to the house, the first thing Wynonna does is call for Waverly. Waverly stumbles in, saying she got “a little bit shot” somehow still adorable in a life-or-death situation, and Wynonna runs to her immediately. Willa is shouting from the doorway that the military men are getting away, but Wynonna tells her to STFU because her baby sister is hurt. But Dolls says it’s just a graze and Waverly tells Wynonna to go after Willa, so she does.

Willa chases a military man off their land and is about to get shot by him when Bobo appears and magics the gun out of the man’s hand before bashing his head in with a rock. Wynonna runs up and sees a wild-eyed Bobo and Willa on the ground and points Peacemaker right at his mohawked head.

But Willa tackles her last minute, so it just skims his head. Wynonna asks if he hurt Willa but Willa insists that he saved her.

OKAY GUESS WHAT TIME IT IS, IT’S TIME FOR MY FAVORITE SCENE IN THE EPISODE. This scene is approximately 12 seconds long, but I’ve watched eleventy gazillion times because it’s perfect from start to finish and buckle up because I’m about to wax poetic about it.

So Wynonna is patching Waverly up in their kitchen, putting a bandage on her lil booboo, and Waverly asks if she’s going to have a scar.

Wynonna shrugs this off and says that dudes dig scars. Waverly says, “Do chicks?” And her face, you guys.

Her voice is so casual and controlled, but her eyes are searching her sister’s, you can practically feel her heart beating harder for the rush of having said it out loud, you can practically hear the words beneath the words, “Did you hear that? Do you see me?”

And at first Wynonna is confused by the statement-it’s a bit unexpected.

But then in a heartbeat of a moment, Wynonna’s face softens. Her eyes soften and settle on her sister. She sees her now.

And just like that, these two women have a lifetime of conversations with two words and a few facial expressions. Because coming out isn’t always baking a rainbow cake. Coming out isn’t even always saying the words. I came out to my parents and some of my closest friends by saying the words, because I needed to hear them myself. But after that first “coming out” wave, it became necessary to find new ways to do it, because it wasn’t this big deal anymore. Probably because I watch too much TV, I thought it had to be this big announcement, this grand gesture. But it always ended up being anticlimactic; I had instinctively only surrounded myself with the type of people who would love me no matter what. So I found new and subtle ways to come out. But I’ll never forget the first time I tried this. I was studying abroad for grad school, it was the last in a four-semester stint, so the group of us were pretty close. I was telling a story about someone I was sort of dating and was avoiding using pronouns, as I had become used to doing. But I was jetlagged and tired and eventually decided this was too much energy, so I just stopped fighting it. I dropped a “she” into the story and tried to act natural as I continued talking. Someone interrupted and said, “Did you say ‘she’?” and panic coursed through me as I nodded. Then she said, “Okay just checking, carry on,” and let me keep talking. That was the end of it. And I know it’s such a non-thing but the fact that it was a non-thing made it such a big thing, you know?

And that’s what this was for Waverly, she didn’t want to make it a huge thing, but she was too tired to keep hiding this part of herself from the person she loved the most in this world. Especially in the wake of something that almost killed her, almost killed all of them. It’s almost like instead of coming out of the closet, she just built a window and made it a new, useful room instead. Like a craft room or something. I don’t know, I’m not expressing myself well, but mostly what I mean is that this scene was so, so great and was obviously written by someone who gets it and the actors obviously understood its importance and it made me so happy to see something I can’t express into words (as proven by this paragraph) play out on screen.

Oh and for the record? Yes, Waverly. Chicks dig scars.

Dolls comes in and interrupts the sister bonding moment and says that it turns out he was the target, the Earps were just collateral damage. Willa comes in and demands to know everything they know about Bobo Del Rey.

Speaking of Bobo, he’s pretty pissed at the judge, who called the hit on Dolls. And to make up for it, Bobo demands the judge throw him a party? I guess we’ll learn more about that next week.

The episode ends with Doc getting out of his car, which has broken down again, to check the engine, and getting clunked over the head and dragged away, leaving his signature hat abandoned in the road.

What did you think of “Landslide”?

Here are some of our favorite #HaughtDamn tweets from this week:

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