Previously on Wynonna Earp:
-Warrior Nuns
-Frog Barf
-Rachel Valdez: Private Investigator
-ROSITA!!!!!!!
Here we are back, once more, for the final time in 2020 with the midseason finale of Wynonna Earp. I am just going to jump right in because that was two major cliffhangers we had last week and I just need more Earp now!
We open with a little tiny ‘earlier’ scene leading up to where we ended with Jeremy (aka the writers) telling us to trust him/them, which we all do anyway, but here is a little recap for why we have to trust them. Nicole made a bad deal with Mam Clanton and started barfing frogs before she could tell them who, how, or why. Nicole, in a last-ditch attempt, recruited Jeremy and Nedley to perform an exorcism after handcuffing Waverly to the bed. Got it?
This scene explains exactly what Jeremy was going to do. With Nicole in a tin bathtub in Shortys filled with salted holy water and ice (think the ice bath in Stick It, I know I am!), they are going to drown Nicole and have a heart rate monitor to keep an eye on her vitals after she has stopped breathing. The best part? Nicole’s consciousness will leave her body and will move into a dead frog in a jar with a copper wire in it that’s hooked up to Nedley’s arm. While Jeremy is making sure that this all goes to plan, with nothing left to chance, Waverly runs into the bar, handcuff and bed railing still attached, to see Jeremy holding Nicole under the water to make sure she drowns.
The angel from my nightmare
It kind of goes without saying but Waverly is kind of pissed and hurt after seeing Nicole being held under the water and for being handcuffed in the Homestead. Before Waverly can cry though (and maybe kill Jeremy), the frog in the jar croaks back to life. Frog Nicole Lives! Waverly is slightly less than impressed though.
It seems like Mam Clanton has a frog in a jar of her own, and seeing that it is now dead, she grabs a newspaper clipping showing Waverly Gibson (yup Gibson, because while she was at Gus and Curtis’ house she was a Gibson) winning a sash as ‘Purgatory’s Nicest Person.’ It doesn’t look like we’ve seen the last of Billy Clanton as Mam calls him forth after slicing her hand open over the newspaper clip while Rachel watches on and sees her talking to herself. A little weird that she just has a newspaper clip of Waverly just laying around, but I guess she does have a vendetta against all Earps so she must just have a nasty couponing habit for a rainy day.
Back in Shorty’s, Jeremy is explaining his little exorcism party that he has going on to Waverly, saying that because they can’t get Mam out of the way, they can cleanse it from the curse-ee with a temporary drowning. Easy right? All they have to do is wait for the timer to run out and then they can start to revive her. It is up to Waverly to watch over Nicole Ribbit Haught.
Time to see how Wynonna and Doc are getting on with Rosita, who showed up last week at Steve’s Gulch in a red hot coat as the woman scorned that the Nun wants. Rosita thinks Wynonna is there to fulfil her promise to her, that she would be the last Revenant that she would kill. Wynonna is all for it and tries to get Doc’s gun, but he stops her before she can grab it. They try and ask her to leave the rocks nicely, but she can’t leave them. Rosita has been stuck there for a year or more (well I’d say 18 months, give or take some weeks and days) after a rumble shook throughout Earp land and a Revenant rounded up a hunting party to kill Rosita after she slept with his wife. She found her way to Steves Gulch, knowing that it hurts Revenants, and not being afraid of it, tried to seek safety there. But all the Revenants that were chasing her all disappeared, and she was left on the rock with Phil, the Revenant whose wife she slept with. She eventually kicked him off the rock after he decided to get a bit too grabby and he disappeared too. So all the revenants are gone except for Rosita, who with her several PHD’s knows that if she steps off of the rock then she will be gone as well. At least we know now why we haven’t seen any Rev Heads! Wynonna though realises that the rocks are built on Ammolite, the stuff that kept the Homestead safe from Revenants, so now that the curse is broken it must keep them safe, and she sends Doc off to find more of it to get Rosita off her island.
Rachel doesn’t seem to be having any luck with her investigating. Sheriff Not Haught finds her running out of a barn she was not invited in to while on the phone and not so kindly escorts her with her hands behind her back.
Nicole is ok though, relatively speaking with her temperature stable, but the sand isn’t going fast enough for Waverly. With part one complete without any hiccups, it is time to start the reversal incantation and to revive her, but it seems Mam Clanton is something that Jeremy did not account for as the doors burst open with a huge gust of wind, which is never a good sign. Waverly ends up with a ‘C’ rock in her hand and everyone is on high alert because you don’t have to live in Purgatory to know that is a bad sign. It isn’t long before Billy appears out of nowhere and Waverly screams her lungs out.
While Waverly is being chased around Shortys by Billy the Reaper that no-one else can see, Nedley realises that when he stood up, he knocked over the jar with Frog Nicole in it and now it is empty, as well as the bucket of frogs Jeremy left on the stairs that Billy knocked over on his way in. Now it is a game of which frog is Frog Nicole out of all of the frogs jumping around the bar. Jeremy pleads with her to stay in the frog, but seeing Waverly’s distress, what else is Nicole to do but to frog hop out of there and use her spirit form to throw Billy into the basement ready for Waverly to slam the door shut behind him.
Doc has found some Ammolite to create a path for Rosita to get off of the island, but not before we have a little heart to heart over the curse being broken and Rosita trying to baby snatch Alice before she was even born. Time for some character growth as Doc realises that all Rosita was trying to do was survive. Well, he did put her in that position anyway by bringing her to Purgatory to work on Dolls’ drugs so he did put her in the way of the curse to begin with, but Doc is now the bigger man who is looking for peace in his life and has forgiven Rosita. What a redemption arc for Doc! Rosita doesn’t trust Wynonna and demands a pinky swear, which Wynonna immediately makes fun of. We never belittle the pinky swear Wynonna! It is the most sacred bond of them all! Even my niece knows this when I make her pinky swear that she’ll be good and go to bed before three more episodes of PJ Masks. Rosita, now able to move off the rock, can now be found by the Nuns and they send a transporter for them. Doc though pulls off one of the best dick jokes that I have ever heard with ‘Richard and the twins’ which is just sheer perfection, and I’ve heard a lot of dick jokes around the name Richard what with it being a family name and all. Its’ ‘Beam her up Scotty!’ time and Wynonna and Rosita disappear leaving Doc to take a call from Sheriff Not Haught.
Now that the escaped frogs have been captured, it is time to find out which one is Nicole. We know that she is not in there, but Waverly, Jeremy and Nedley don’t. Time for Waverly to pull a Princess and the Frog on this and start smooching some frogs. It’s not something that Nicole is into seeing as she is looking on in her ghostly form, and that ghostly form looks amazing! She has somehow gotten hold of a silver sparkly dress with thin straps and her hair is all slicked back. Kat Barrell is ready for her Emmy now, but Nicole is less than impressed with it. She tries to tell everyone that she is not in the frog but of course no one hears her.
Wynonna and Rosita have arrived safely with their escort in time for Wynonna to make her trade for Peacemaker. The head nun seems to have other ideas as she watches over the two bickering, and realising there is more to them than meets the eyes, she shouts KISS KISS KISS! Well, maybe not exactly in those words as she tells them they have to battle to the death, but we all know that’s what she really meant, right? Wynonna doesn’t want a Battle Royale, but Rosita instantly jumps on her back and tries a chokehold with all the nuns cheering on like this is Summerslam!
Wynonna manages to throw her off and they circle each other with Wynonna saying that she is trying to keep her word and not hurt Rosita, but realises that if she needs to go through Rosita to get Peacemaker, then she will. They pull a ‘hold my shit’ moment with Rosita taking out her hoops before the real fighting can begin. They are quite evenly matched with neither of them getting the upper hand until Rosita takes off her boot and chucks it in Wynonna’s direction before rushing her.
Waverly, having now finished her make-out session with all the Kermits, has realised that Nicole is not in any of the frogs and is looking for a sign. Nicole hasn’t had enough time to read her ‘Handbook for the Recently Deceased’, but has managed to figure out that if she sticks her hands through the light switch, then it frazzles enough to allow her to morse code the shit out of it to spell ‘NOT IN FROG’ and then ‘BASEMENT’ and finally ‘DUH’ to Jeremy second-guessing her plan. Baseball bat in hand with a gun-toting Nedley in tow, Waverly goes down to the basement, but Billy isn’t playing nice, leading to Nicole having to push him back again and ask what they did to him. He can respond to her, so possession it is! Waverly demands to know what happened and that she needs to know right this second otherwise she’ll get angry! Waverly, eat a vegan Snickers, you are not you when you are hungry.
The main event is still on at the nunnery Wynona is getting a little fed up of all the chanting and games from the nuns, and the head nun is getting a little bored that it’s taking too long and demons out on them for a split second. Demons in a nunnery! I did not have that on my bingo card for this episode! Wynonna distracts half of the nuns with a Hemsworth in shorts and Rosita distracts the other half with a Xena reboot before they run off (thrown boot retrieved of course) to find Peacemaker.
It looks like Nicole has found a podcast on how to ghost someone and can come to the front now to answer Waverly’s questions. She waited for so long for her family to come home, and she gave up hope that they would, so she made a deal with the Swamp Witch to make sure that they did. The job is only half done to break Nicole’s curse as Mam has to die as well. That leaves Waverly no choice but to kiss Nicole’s dead hand, grab her jacket and Annabelle (a gun because of course the Earp’s have named their guns like they are pets) and head off to kill Mam before Nicole dies. Permanently.
Escaping the Warrior Nuns who are much too obsessed with the WWE, Wynonna and Rosita end up back in the armoury and call a truce with Wynonna revealing that the Clanton’s are back in town.
Seems like Sheriff Not Haught dragged Rachel down to the cop shop, but he isn’t booking her. Instead, he is outside with Cleo who is trying to convince him to kill Rachel. Doc has Rachel’s back though and she is allowed to leave with him, but not before Holt has a conversation with Doc. Holt has taken Doc’s words in the Glory Hole to heart and is tired of the feud between the Clantons and the Earp/Holliday clan based on something that happened almost 150 years ago. Doc has changed. He is willing to put it all aside, and it seems Holt is too because all he wants is a nice life in his good job where he can take one of the waitresses from the diner out on a date. Is that too much for the Sheriff Not Haught to ask for? It shows real growth from Doc in that he wants a more peaceful life, and in Holt wanting a normal life where he doesn’t have to worry that one of the Earps (Doc included) will shoot him in the back. They agree to take it to their respective clans and to put it to them to make peace
Still not able to find Peacemaker, the nuns’ start-up a Requiem before they start breaking down the door. Wynonna takes that as her sign to start calling out Peacemaker. Her work isn’t done, despite the curse being broken. She still has demons to take care of and evil to eradicate, but that is not all. She is the girl with the big ass gun, and a hero to boot! The nuns have finally battered their way through the door, but Peacemaker, still in sword form, has made her decision and she starts glowing like there are Orcs around before flying over to Wynonna. With blue and orange flame, the colours she flares when killing, she turns back into Wynonna’s beloved gun. The head nun though isn’t done and finally feels the need to introduce herself to us. It turns out she is Medea! Get ready for my deep dive where I can finally put all my years of self-study of Greek Mythology to use!
Medea is a legit Demi-Goddess! Her father is King Aeëtes and her aunt is Circe (recognise the name Circe?) Well Circe is the BAMF from Homers Odyssey who lured sailors to her island with her singing while weaving on a loom and then turns them all into pigs. That’s Medea’s aunt! Their father? The Titan sun god Helios. Her mother could be Hecate. Who is Hecate? The goddess of sorcery. Their mother could also be Perse, which is who most accounts go with. Perse’s parents were the Titan god Oceanus, the God of the Rivers, and his sister Tethys. This makes her a Nymph. The offspring of two gods make them a God. The offspring of a God and a mortal makes the offspring a Demigod. Easy right? But it’s not so easy with a Nymph so I guess that makes King Aeëtes a Demi-god? So now we know that either way, Medea’s father was from Gods. Now back to Medea and her mother, Idyia. Idyia is another one of the Oceanids. Who are they? Well, we know one. Perse. So that makes her the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys as well, meaning she is also a Nymph and technically Aeëtes’ aunt (if we go by popular lineage). Greek mythology am I right? So Medea is literally from Gods. And if we go with Hecate being Aeëtes’ mother, then that makes him a full God. Then, with Medea’s mother being a Nymph, that would make her a Demi-God. Why would she be the woman scorned though?
So for this, we need to look at the story of Jason and the Argonauts (and my brain is mush after mythological family trees so I’m going to make the next part simple). Jason arrived looking for the Golden Fleece in King Aeëtes kingdom. He gave him some tasks to complete: plough a field with fire-breathing oxen, sow the field with the teeth of a dragon and then fight and kill the dragon that guarded the fleece in Ares’ garden. Men are apparently useless in mythology because Medea (seemingly in love with Jason due to Hera and Persephone’s influence) gave him a potion to fend off the fire, and when the dragon teeth sprouted an army, told him to throw a rock so they’d kill each other. Medea and Jason then left the king and sailed away with Medea killing her brother in the process. They then had between one and fourteen kids (in one version anyway) before Jason abandoned her for someone else and then her kids were killed ‘accidentally’. Another version says she poisoned her hubby’s mistress and then killed two of her kids. It is then said she went to Athens, found someone else and had a kid with him before she was looked over for her new mans long lost son and displacing her son as the heir. Then she went back to her fathers’ kingdom, killed her uncle who was now king and gave it back to her father. Talk about a woman scorned! My point with all this is that Wynonna basically killed a Demi-God with Peacemaker and that is HUGE! If you follow me on Twitter then you have already read this deep dive (maybe), but I love this deep dive and Greek Mythology so much I had to put it all in here as well. I am the editor, I’ll do what I want!
Deep dive over. With Medea gone, it seems like the other nuns have all come to their senses and have pledged allegiance to Wynonna!
Now sprung from jail, Doc manages to get her to Charlene but Rachels little excursion to Magpie Ranch has helped in some way for Doc. She reveals that Mam was dripping blood on rocks and talking about Waverly. Oh, and she also thinks that they killed Billy.
With the nuns now freed from Medea’s spell, they are now the little Alien toys from the claw machine in Toy Story and start shouting ‘You saved our lives, we are eternally grateful’ and want Wynonna to ‘cleanse’ them. Wynonna wants to set them all free to taint themselves as much as they want, but they cannot leave without feeling pain. Rosita then recognises some of the nuns. I guess she is forgiven for not recognising them previously, what with them having their own Nun Fight Club by the altar and trying to kill them. Turns out some of the nuns are also some of Wyatt Earp’s victims. Wynonna then finally asks Rosita how she became a Revenant, and much the same as these women, she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and caught in the crossfire. Wynonna promises to find a way to free them, but Rosita is happy to stay and make her own little Warrior Nun order here in Purgatory, with Alma by her side. Rosita can’t let Wynonna leave without the final closure to her story. Why did Rosita want to steal baby Alice? It wasn’t just for insurance, it turns out Margo-Jean ‘Mam’ Clanton wanted the next Earp Heir. I’m sad that it seems like this chapter for Rosita is now over, but I am happy that we did get closure to her story arc in that she is not the villain some fans see her as. Sure she made some bad decisions, but haven’t all of the characters in this show made a bad choice to survive? None of the main characters are good or evil, they are just people trying to live to the next day and to protect the ones they love so they will be there also. I hope we do get to see Rosita again though, she was a good friend to Waverly and Wynonna, even if she didn’t see it at the time.
After teleporting to Shortys, Wynonna finds Jeremy checking Nicole’s temperature and Nedley incantating the reverse incantation. A quick catch up later with Jeremy tossing the marked rock at Wynonna and she is off to see the Swamp Witch, the evil Swamp Witch of Magpie Ranch. (Yeah that doesn’t seem to have the same kind of ring to it as the Wizard of Oz does).
Waverly had a head start on Wynonna and managed to get to the Ranch before her and finds the sacrifice barn and the jar with the dead frog in it. She instantly notices that it is out of place and has to fix it before moving further in. Mam though knows she is there and sneaks in behind her saying that Waverly is not her Amazon delivery (something I am finding even funnier than it is during this rewatch because I literally had to take a break to get my own Amazon delivery from the front door). Mam starts soliloquising about the deal and how it is because of her that they got out of the garden, yadda yadda yadda before we finally get to the part where she explains what the trade was in the deal. Mam gets them out of the garden by showing Doc the way, and Nicole delivers Doc to her when they get back. No-one cares about the O.K. Corral anymore, well no one except Margo-Jean, who wants Doc to destroy him, everything that he is, and everything he loves. Our ‘Brave Little Toaster’ is not having any of that though and smites her basic bitch ass for refusing to save Nicole and saying she’ll find someone else. I probably would have done the same but maybe it’s best to not make the half-angel angry Mam, we all know they can get a little angry at times.
With both of them dead though, the frog curse is broken and Nedley’s reverse incantation works. Regular Nicole is back! She knows she messed up big time with that deal, but Jeremy puts her mind at ease by basically saying that they are all Stronger Together. Sure Nicole did a bad thing, that doesn’t make her a bad person, same as what they have all done to survive does not make them bad people. Is anyone else seeing a trend with this episode and this season so far?
Sheriff Holt has arrived back at the ranch followed by Wynonna with the news that what she did has worked and it has saved Nicole. But their super sister reunion hug time is interrupted by Holt coming out of the barn with his gun pointed at the pair of them for murdering Margo-Jean Clanton. She tells Wynonna to make her peace (Hey that’s her line!) But before either of them can get a shot out, Doc shoots at the sky and asks them both to stand down. He still wants peace between the two clans, but Holt is now the heir of their curse. Doc lowers his and Wynonna’s weapons and tries to get them to work it out like they had agreed, big news and a surprise to our Earp sisters who Doc has not seen since this deal. A friendly hand and the offer of a drink has Holt lowering his weapon and turning to go inside with his once enemy.
Wynonna doesn’t let him go far though and shoots him in the back with Peacemaker. The one thing Holt did not want. Remember how he didn’t want to have to watch over his shoulder in case an Earp shot him in the back? I can’t be the only one upset that he will not get to go on his date with the woman from the diner. I was really starting to like Holt and maintained the thought throughout that he would be the one who would break the Clanton curse and bring peace to the two clans. I know he tried, and he came so damn close, and that breaks my heart. I know I didn’t like him much to begin with, but he grew on me and I’m sad we’ll never get to see what could have been a great partnership between Doc and Holt. Doc and Waverly seem just as shocked as I was when Wynonna acted without honour and shot him with his back turned when he had no way of defending himself.
Who had another heart-wrenching porch scene with Wynonna and Doc on their bingo card? Because you just won the jackpot! Wynonna joins Doc outside and calls her out on her actions, saying there was no honour in what she did. Wynonna tries to justify it saying she has had more important things like surviving on her mind than honour. I do get that, everything thus far in this season has been about doing what you have to to survive. Doc knows that. He also wants to be better and live to a higher code than he and Wynonna have been previously. She likes him because he is broken like she is, but he wants to be fixed. He also knows that everything that has happened to Wynonna, and also to him (excepting the deal with the Stone Witch) has been because of Wyatt Earp, who is less of the hero than we all imagined him to be. Doc all but calls him a coward who started fights and ran away, leaving Doc to finish them. Fights like the O.K. Corral. Wynonna doesn’t run away though, she runs towards the danger and takes care of her own mistakes and messes. She sinks one final nail in the coffin by revealing to Doc that the Clanton’s wanted Alice before heading inside at Waverly’s request who wants everyone there.
Toasting the Exorcism of Nicole Rayleigh Haught, Jeremy has one too many drinks and brings up the one subject that Nicole was not able to discuss while cursed, the proposal. You know all those videos we see of one person getting down on one knee, and then their partner getting down on one knee as well and they both laugh and cry at how they both planned to propose in the same spot at the same time, usually when they are at Disney Land? Seems Nicole and Waverly have watched those as well as they have both planned a proposal for right here right now! Nicole starts, with their entire family around them looking on, but Waverly wants to be the one to do it and gets down on one knee. She looks to Wynonna with a smile on her face, who gives her a sad but proud smile back and asks ‘Nicole Haught, Will you marry me?’ So simple. So elegant. Nothing else needed, except an answer. It’s no ‘Well, duh’ that my friend said two weeks ago when she gave her answer, but it is a yes. We have toasts all around from Nedley and Jeremy, and a happy dance from Rachel, but Doc slowly leaves the room, leaving Wynonna in tatters at the same time with enough tears to fill a swimming pool while everyone is wrapped up in the new beginning for Nicole and Waverly who finally get to say ‘I love you, I love you too’.
My heart is currently in two places at one time. On the one hand, it is absolutely elated. I am so happy that Nicole and Waverly are now officially engaged (minus the baby carrots). It isn’t something that you get to see on TV that often, and is especially not something that you get to see without tragedy ensuing immediately after. On the other hand, my heart is absolutely devastated for Wynonna whose heart looks completely broken now that it seems she has lost Doc forever. That is one thing this show and the writers and the actors do so well. They can all make me feel way too many things at the one time and it is completely rude, and yet I am also the masochist who wants even more of it!
Let’s look at this season so far as a whole. We’ve had the garden and the BFF’s and sexy gay aunts and reapers and Clanton’s and a chilli cook-off…FOR FREEDOM! It has been an absolutely crazy ride with some of our favourites like Mercedes and Rosita coming back. What has this season taught us all so far? Well, my main take away from the first half of this season is that it is not our choices and actions that define us. We all make mistakes, we are all human and to err is to be human. It is what we do after that that makes us. It would have been easy for Rosita and Wynonna to have killed each other in this episode. It would have been easy for Holt to give in to the Clanton hatred and try at every opportunity to kill Doc rather than to try and make peace with him. It would have been easy for absolutely anyone in this season to give in to their mistakes and use that to justify being good or being bad. The point is that they all can do bad things, but does that make them evil? No. They are all human, or vampire or half-angel in some cases. They are all complex. They can all grow and learn and become a better version of themselves.
So where do I think that we will go from here then? Well, the season is almost finished filming, and the back half is due to be released next year. I’d imagine mid-late January based on when other shows start back. It is just speculation from me though. We did get a nice new teaser, which you can watch below:
For me, I really want them to play into the Greek Mythology aspect. There have now been too many references for me to think otherwise. Look at Season one, Episode one when Dolls said there was the ‘Occasional Greek Goddess’ aka Wynonna, whose stripper name is Aphrodite and who was also in Greece when she found out Uncle Curtis had died. Also, take a note from the comics for what the key does that she wears around her neck. I’m not going to spoil that one but please go read it if you feel so inclined.
I would also like to see more of Mercedes because she kind of disappeared a bit after episode three. What else? Maybe Rachel becoming ‘The Valdez’ from her story. I also think that Wynonna will not take this rejection well and will go on a bit of a spree like when she killed the last of the seven. I also really want to know what happened to Robin. Is he at home with his dad in whatever town they are living in now outside of the triangle looking after him? How often does Jeremy visit and are they even still together? I have so many more questions now than I did at the start of the season and I cannot wait for them to be answered next year.
That is it from me then for my Wynonna Earpcaps for this season so far. I really hope that you have all enjoyed reading them as much as I have enjoyed writing them on a Monday after staying up till 5 am to watch the episode live, and I hope that you all join us again next year for even more Earping!
-Written by Christine
fangirlden.com 