Howdy and welcome to Wynonna Earp recaps! I knew from the pilot that this quintessentially SyFy, female-led show would be right up my alley, but then to make things better, showrunner Emily Andras said this show will be “hella gay” (and since she was involved in Lost Girl I had no reason to doubt her). Sure enough, the second episode showed great queer promise.
First, some background on what went down in the pilot. Wynonna Earp, descendant of the infamous Wyatt Earp, returns to her hometown, aptly named Purgatory. And Wynonna-oh, let me tell you about Wynonna. She’s like if Jessica Jones was on a Joss Whedon show. But also so much more. She’s sass, she’s fierce, her soul is broken but her heart is strong. And she wears the hell out of a leather jacket.
In Purgatory, everyone Wyatt Earp killed is back from the dead, as demons called Revenants, and only Wyatt’s heir can kill them. And only Wyatt’s gun, Peacemaker. When Wynonna was 12, her older sister Willa was taken, and when the Revenants tried to take their father, Wynonna shot Peacemaker but accidentally shot dear old dad. Wynonna’s younger sister, Waverly, is still living in Purgatory and is the day to Wynonna’s night. The shiny happy ball of pink sunshine to Wynonna’s dark and stormy rain cloud. And kind of looks like she could be a Bellisario. A man named Detective Dolls rolls into town around the same time as Wynonna and recruits her to be part of the Black Badge Division, an agency dedicated to vanquishing demons. And if Waverly is sunshine and Wynonna is a hurricane, Dolls is a dry Southern day. Tumbleweed weather.
This week’s episode begins with Wynonna on her first mission with Dolls. She tries to explain to him that only Peacemaker can kill Revenants, but he makes her take a handgun instead. He tells her not to blow it, and she makes a blow job joke that made ME spit take, but didn’t affect Dolls at all. Unlike him, I always appreciate a mind that lives in the gutter.
When she goes into the bar where some Revenants are hanging out and tries to sound all official for a minute, but ends up shouting, “Crazy chick with a gun!”
Wynonna shoots a couple of Revenants, causing people to rush out of the bar in a panic. Dolls is pissed that she wasn’t discreet about it, but discreet isn’t exactly in Wynonna’s vocabulary. She’s unfazed by his annoyance; she’s mostly just pleased she proved her point: only Peacemaker can kill Revenants.
Dolls takes her to a gun range and even though she knows none of these weapons will work on the Revenants, she enjoys playing with them. He tells her the history of the Black Badge Division, though she’s disappointed when she finds out the Roosevelt that started it wasn’t Eleanor.
The dynamic between these two is pretty great. You might call her grumpy until you meet Dolls, and then she seems downright cheerful. She sasses him all the livelong day, and he has yet to even smirk at her. But luckily that doesn’t stop her.
Wynonna wants to warn the citizens of Purgatory that there are demons afoot, but Dolls whips out a picture of Sunnydale and says that’s what happens when a whole town knows that demons exist. (Okay, fine, it was a city in New Mexico that was bombed to contain the information. Same difference.)
One character that has popped up is creepy cowboy who goes by Henry (for now…). He lives in a trailer right by the Revenants’ homestead and likes to bug them. He plays cards with them for a while until finally he gets an audience with their boss. They basically cowboy walk around in circles but with their words. Hank talks like he did something to Wyatt and the boss wants to know what the Earps are up to, so if Henry helps him, he’ll help Henry get revenge. It’s all very cryptic.
Meanwhile, Wynonna and Waverly meet up for dinner with their aunt at the bar where Waverly lives and works. Wynonna shows Waverly some pictures she drew when she was little, including one of her imaginary friend, and they remember the good old days before they were forced to grow up too fast.
These two are pretty adorable, for the record. Six years is a big gap, and 21 to 27 is even bigger, but they’re getting on just fine. Now that they’re not shooting at each other. Waverly has some lingering issues with her big sister-mostly abandonment issues-but it doesn’t stop her from welcoming her back with the smile she’s so well-known for around town.
Waverly starts to make her case for being part of the Black Badge Division with her sister when a Revenant whose teeth are filed down to points like Christopher Walken in Sleepy Hollow busts in. (Teeth that have haunted my nightmares for years and instilled in me a fear of cowbell.) Wynonna immediately stands in front of her baby sister.
The Revenant spots Peacemaker on the bar and he and Wynonna both go for it at the same time. The Revenant gets it first, but as soon as he touches it, it burns him, and he falls to the ground. Wynonna grabs Peacemaker and shoots the Revenant right in the head, sending him right back to hell where he belongs.
The next morning, Waverly is cleaning up the bar when a rogue beer tap explodes and sprays her all over. Just then a very lovely lady police officer walks in joking about a wet T-shirt contest. She introduces herself as Nicole Haught and asks for a cappuccino. Waverly is a little caught off guard and tells her they’re not open yet, but Haught says that she doesn’t like to wait for what she wants. Waverly laughs and is kind of nervous but asks Haught to turn around so she can take off her wet tank top. She ends up getting stuck, though, because it’s always when you’re trying to be smooth that awkward situations flare up, and she has to ask the officer for help. Waverly starts to make a joke about how if Nicole were a guy things would be awkward, but when she realizes, Nicole is looking at her with a wolfish grin she realizes it might be awkward anyway.
Waverly says she owes her one and Nicole says she can buy her a coffee. It’s so smooth. I can’t even. Waverly stutters and is flustered but can’t stop smiling. She blurts out that she’s in a relationship with a boy-a man! But Nicole just laughs. She says she’s been there, it’s the worst. But she promises she’s going to take her up on that coffee and leaves her card behind.
Waverly watches her leave with one of those smiles that is totally involuntary and totally pure.
Waverly picks up the card and sees it says Officer Haught, and laughs at how appropriate the name is.
Considering Waverly’s boyfriend tried to seduce Wynonna in the first episode, I think it’s safe to say that even Waverly can already tell Officer Haught would be quite the upgrade.
Once the bar opens, Henry tries to pay with a gold coin, but the owner is giving him a hard time. Waverly intervenes and thinks he’s just a Wyatt Earp superfan because of his cheesy drawl and old-timey Western garb. She starts to tell him she’s an Earp but thinks better of it mid-sentence and says she’s an Earper too, a big fan. She tells him she has a good feeling about him, and that she’s an excellent judge of character, but he mutters under his breath that she sure isn’t. Though her instincts told her not to admit she was an Earp, so I don’t think she’s as naive as he thinks.
At the police station, where Dolls has fully taken over, Wynonna is explaining how Peacemaker works when Officer Haught brings in a box addressed to him. She introduces herself, and instead of introducing himself back, he scolds her for coming in without knocking and says next time she does it she’ll be charged with treason. Wynonna tells him to give her a break because she did knock first of all and second of all calm down jeez.
Wynonna heads over to Waverly’s place, but finds Henry rifling around instead of her sister.
She shoots him, but he shoots her back and runs away, so fast he surprises her.
Across town, the Revenant boss tells Henry he’s going to enlist someone to kill the heir and needs Henry go help and bring him Peacemaker. The man he’s going to enlist is less of a man, actually; he’s Killer Miller, a man who supposedly killed Jesse James but has been reduced to a shadow assassin here in Purgatory. He’s activated by a blood sacrifice, so Henry and a Revenant named Levi go to do just that.
Since Henry is still human, he uses his own blood to sacrifice, but one bit no one told him was that in order to send the shadow assassin after someone, you have to give him one of their belongings. All Henry has on him is a book he stole from Waverly’s apartment, so that’s who he sends Killer Miller after.
Waverly meets Wynonna at their old house, and they tell Dolls about the night the Revenants cut their family in half. He says that since they had been safe before that night, there must have been something keeping them that way, and has them search the house for something strange and occultish while he goes to test a piece of a wind chime he found.
While they’re looking, the lights go out, and the sky goes dark, suddenly and unnaturally. Dolls calls Wynonna and tells her that they should be looking for a talisman, and when Dolls realizes it’s dark where they are but not where he is, he says he’s on his way.
The girls go outside to wait for Dolls by a fire and when Wynonna tells Waverly they’re looking for a talisman, she has a flashback to her imaginary friend Bobo and remembers burying something with them. But now she’s wondering if Bobo was imaginary at all.
The fire suddenly goes out, and Wynonna makes Waverly go inside and hide. They recognize the shadowman as one of the Revenants who took their father and sister, and Waverly refuses to hide. She calls him a “shit ticket” and whips out her rifle.
Waverly tells Wynonna she knows where the talisman is buried, and the girls run to the pet cemetery on their property. (As a city girl who had mostly fish growing up, I find the concept of a pet cemetery highly disturbing.) The shadow creeps up on them, and Wynonna tries to shoot him but is rewarded only by the ding of metal on metal. Waverly knows that this must mean it’s Killer Miller because she’s done her homework. So Wynonna makes sure to shoot him real good including right in the head to end him for good. Saying, “Lights out, bitch,” while she does because who doesn’t love a good final pun. Buffy would be proud.
The sky brightens up again and Levi the Revenant comes out with an axe. Dolls takes the axe from him no problem and tells Wynonna to finish him off, but Wy wants to send him crawling home with a message. She tells him to tell his boss that she’s coming for them, especially the ones who took her family. Levi says she can’t take on The Seven, she’s just a girl. Wynonna says she’s THE girl and he’d do best not to forget it.
Waverly finally finds what she’s been digging for and throws the talisman over the property line. As soon as she does, Levi goes flying off the property with it, sending Waverly (and me) into a fit of giggles. She tries to get the others to see the hilarity of it but her Stoic Sister and Detective Deadpan give her nothing.
Wynonna asks Dolls if he’d really level Purgatory if they found out about the demons, but he assures her that he tried to stop what happened in New Mexico. He tells her not to worry about and to get to making her old house a home again.
Waverly is happy as a clam because she’s going to be a Black Badge consultant, and the sisters are moving in together. She’s excited to redo everything and is hoping to add lots of pink, to which Wynonna holds up her gun in response.
They’re watching Henry fix the mailbox, debating his character. Waverly’s apt to trust him, but Wynonna has a bad feeling in her bones about him. Waverly teases her, asking if he’s a little old for Wynonna, and she retorts by threatening to make her little sister Black Badge mascot instead.
Things take a serious turn when Waverly admits that she had blamed Wynonna for what happened the night their father died, but the truth is she was partly to blame. Wynonna blames nobody but her not-so-imaginary friend, though, and plans to make him pay.
Besides, it’s not like a name like Bobo has her shaking in her stylish yet affordable boots.
At Camp Revenant, the boss says Henry has proven himself worthy to hang out with them, and just has to seal the deal by dragging Levi across the town line. When he does, Levi burns like a vampire in the sun, screaming and crying all the while. The boss says he’ll let The Seven deal with killing Wyatt Earp’s heir, and that they have to focus on getting freedom. He offers Henry the woman who made him what he is as revenge, and he shakes the boss’s hand in agreement, calling him Bobo.
How are you liking Wynonna Earp so far? Do you think Officer Haught will sweep Waverly off her feet? Please put your pun hats on and start thinking of Haught-related hashtags we can use. #HaughtLife, for example.
