Wynonna Earp Recap 2.4

Previously on Wynonna Earp: Waverly was a cheerleader and is also a demon but those things are not related, Lucado used to be a big deal with Black Badge but now she doesn’t even get her own parking space and she is not happy about it, Doc and Rosita are cooking up bathtub lizard gin for Agent Dolls who will NEVER come back to Purgatory, and Agent Dolls has come back to Purgatory.

It’s a very cold, very early morning at the homestead, and Waverly Earp is slo-mo strutting through the yard in her nightgown, knife in hand and black eyes searching for shiny bits to add to her collection. She finds them in the form of Dolls’ dog tags, and then Wynonna finds her and gives her a coat and is worried and confused, which is also how Waverly is feeling. Sleepwalking, she guesses. It’s not true but it might as well be; she’s exhausted. They head inside, and Dolls watches them go from the barn in that nightmare way like Drew Barrymore in Scream where help is so close but you can’t make them hear you.

Don’t talk to me before coffee o’clock.

Elsewhere, a plot is beginning. A businessman walks into a diner or a pool hall or a business I have never heard of and steals a croissant. Another businessman and a woman come in after him and pick a fight with him about a briefcase. He’s Black Badge, and I guess has never seen a movie because he’s like “LOL You can’t take my briefcase because it is cuffed to my hand, an impossible dilemma!” So obviously they cut off his hand and take the briefcase because they actually have seen movies and/or they have rudimentary problem solving skills.

Jeremy and the Earp sisters are at Black Badge doing their favorite hobby of taking wild guesses at what that whole ritual sacrifice/broken seal thing from episode two is about when Lucado comes in and is like “Great news! Somebody stole a briefcase from a Black Badge agent and this is my chance to become popular again!” Wynonna thinks that popularity is overrated and Black Badge should keep better track of their possessions, but is otherwise not interested. Waverly, on the other hand, hasn’t worn a disguise for a few episodes now and is eager to prove herself to Lucado and Wynonna and herself. Wynonna isn’t feeling this plan, but “She’ll have backup,” Lucado says, and “Look at my ‘please’ face,” Waverly says, and so Wynonna agrees to let her do it.

You won’t regret this, boss. Also, your earrings are shiny do you mind if I eat them?

Wynonna heads over to the Sheriff’s Office proper to talk to Nicole, who I am sorry to say is STILL WEARING KHAKIS. She apologizes for getting a bit mean about Nicole’s Waverly concerns and tells her that she’s noticing things too. She tells her about the sleepwalking and the volunteering for dangerous jobs. Nicole is like “I am worried about all of those things, but also about how I am supposed to eat my lunch now that every piece of cutlery has been stolen from this kitchen.” Wynonna, wearing the jacket she had lent Waverly that morning, pulls Waverly’s Sleepwalking Knife out of the pocket and they realize that Waverly is the culprit, which is another weird thing to be worried about, but for now that takes a back seat to Wynonna finding Dolls’ dog tags in her other pocket.

She books it back to the homestead and finds Dolls in the barn looking pretty feral. He throws her around a little until she pulls Peacemaker on him and he calms for a second and tells her to go before he loses control, but she ignores that advice and knocks him out instead.

Everybody on this show is so pretty even when they are monsters. Except for Tucker.

Waverly is on her mission, which is to sneak into a club called BaDing BaDing and pretend to be applying for a job so she can steal the briefcase. She picks the lock to get in and thanks Youtube for the assist, but there is no way in hell that Waverly Earp hadn’t already learned to pick locks by her tenth birthday so I respectfully reject this line. Waverly wants a code for Lucado to send in backup, and suggests the very subtle phrase “Tacos are tasty,” to which Lucado is just like “Yeah fine whatever. But the briefcase though.” She tells Waverly to check every single everything until she finds it, but before Waverly can check any anything, that demon lady from the beginning of the episode– who we will call Cujo because that is what everybody else call her–finds her and just assumes she is there to sing. Waverly goes black eyes and is like “I WAS BORN TO SING AND ALSO TO DESTROY.”

Back at Shorty’s, Wynonna has somehow managed to get Dolls over there and into the basement. Doc says they need more help, and they should get Jeremy, but Wynonna still doesn’t trust him. Then Dolls wakes up enough to tell Wynonna that he saw Waverly in the barn and she had “a look in her eyes,” which is a pretty mundane way of saying that her eyes were entirely black and dripping black smoky goo, but I guess Dolls has never been a man of many words. And that, her worry about Waverly sends her off to find Jeremy. I like how this scene shows the hierarchy of Wynonna’s caring, which is that she cares about everybody very much and is constantly balancing helping people with risking hurting other people, but sometimes there is no room left for balancing. She’ll risk her own life to help Dolls, but not everybody else’s. But she will risk everything for Waverly.

Heyyy! Mercedes is alive! Alive and eating bacon like she’s never tasted it before and even less interested in the concerns of mere mortals than usual and… oh. I realize now that “alive” may have been a tad optimistic. Tucker notices that she’s acting strange and asks where their sister Beth is, to which Mercedes replies that she is “putting on her face”, and after the last we saw of Mercedes last week and her curious behavior now I am inclined to believe that she is being very literal. Tucker stomps out of the house because yet again a woman has acted in a way that he doesn’t like or understand, and then we hear screaming from somewhere else in the house and I am guessing that has something to do with Beth’s face.

PUTTING ON HER FACE! See what I… you know what. Just have some bacon.

Wynonna finds Jeremy and tries to get Waverly’s location out of him but he is more interested in gossiping about Lucado’s waning pull with Black Badge and also with sniffing Wynonna’s coat. He recognizes the smell of lizard juice and starts ripping her coat off, and it goes up in flames as soon as it hits the floor. No, Jeremy is not a Pyromancer, he just knows enough about these chemicals to know they don’t get along with polyester. He quickly deduces that they are cooking for Dolls and wants to help because Dolls knows about “that thing that happened to my mom” and also he helped Jeremy do a pull up one time. He tells Wynonna where Waverly is, and Wynonna tells him where the lab is, and they scatter to their respective plotlines.

At the BaDing BaDing, Waverly is onstage and starts singing a song that has only one line in it which is about breaking boys and smoking girls, just over and over again forever. She sees the briefcase and tries to seduce the businessman from the beginning of the episode, who from here on out I am calling Handman because it suits him a couple different ways. He is smart enough to know that this is not a real song so he just leaves. Waverly follows him out, after having performed only the one song with the one line in it, and I really hope she doesn’t expect to be paid for this appearance. Lucado is way more impressed than Handman, though, smiling like “The pipes on this broad!” Waverly follows the briefcase and tells Lucado she thinks Handman is trying to sell it. Lucado for some reason asks “A buyer? Who?” and Waverly is like “The fuck do I know, everybody just looks like a businessman.” The deal goes down like I understand deals generally do. Handman opens with “Oddly, this thing you are willing to pay a lot of money for was hard to get.” Which is a lie, like, that dude put up the bare minimum of a fight, but whatever. He asks for more money. The buyer is like “I will double your fee.” Then Handman is like “I demand that you triple it!” Then the buyer is like “Well, I demand that I QUADRUPLE it!” Finally Handman is like “You can’t fool me. If you are willing to quadruple it, it must be too awesome to sell!” and shoots him dead right next to where Waverly is hiding and frantically whispering “TACOS ARE TASTY TACOS ARE TASTY.”

Pipes that go all the way to the floor.

Wynonna finds Lucado staked out in her truck and figures out that there was never any backup because Lucado Regina Georg-ed herself out of the Black Badge Mean Girls so hard that she has no access to anything anymore. This mission was supposed to be the thing that gets her back on top. Wynonna, correctly, whacks her one right in the kisser for putting Waverly in danger, and goes in to do some rescuing.

She finds Waverly in the hallway near the dead man and asks “Did you do that?” Waverly is a little hurt by that question and by the fact that Wynonna has just blown her cover because she didn’t believe Waverly could handle it alone. Except that Waverly legit just asked for backup, and as much as I love her I think she is over-estimating her ability to charm her way out of this one. Handman seems immune to cuteness. He ties Wynonna and Waverly to chairs and asks them what’s in the case and what do the initials EE stand for? They don’t know, so he for some reason leaves them alone for a while. Kind of like in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, Waverly takes this “we’re both tied to chairs and in mortal danger” moment to have an emotional conversation with Wynonna where she tells her that she knows everybody thinks she’s acting weird and she knows she IS acting weird, and that by the way she touched a “perfect pool of shiny goo” that one time and maybe that has something to do with it? Wynonna tells her that she has her back and will help her deal with whatever is going on with her, but first they need to call Doc for help and get the heck out of there. Because nobody took their phones before they tied them up, so I guess maybe Handman and Cujo haven’t seen any movies after all?

Just goo? Nothing a little Black Badge decontamination shower can’t wash off, right?

At Shorty’s, Doc and Rosita are about to go ahead and inject Dolls with their pseudo-serum, but Jeremy comes running down the stairs saying “NONONONO” because they are using too much ammonia and also because that big a dose after being off the juice for this long could probably definitely be lethal. Doc puts some just-in-case shackles on Dolls and they have a good friendship flirt over how tough Dolls is and how in love they both are with Wynonna and how much they love and respect each other and, man, I just really believe so hard in all of the relationships on this show. I love these two and I love Wynonna and Waverly and Wynonna and Dolls and Doc and Waverly and of course Waverly and Nicole but also Nicole and Wynonna. Every character has a unique chemistry with every other character, and everybody has overlapping bonds and their own reasons for everything and this show is just such a beautiful ecosystem for these people.

Dolls tells Doc he was brought back to town by that mysterious old dude Juan Carlo from last season, who told him he has a job to do that’s not finished, and also that “something has broken.” As always, thank you Juan Carlo for being so clear and helpful. Rosita busts up this tender moment to tell Doc that Wynonna has been calling him for help basically forever so he might want to go be a hero right about now.

No, I love *you* more.

Back at the Sheriff’s Office, Nicole is reading through Tucker’s files, where we see he had a previous arrest for breaking and entering, when Tucker himself stops in to report his sisters for acting weird. Nicole is like “I would like to report you for acting repulsive.” He’s like “You know who else is acting weird? Your…friend.” And he’s overtly disgusting and vaguely threatening and Nicole honestly cannot figure out how to talk to him because he is a revolting monster of the patriarchy who has decided that he is a victim. He is Warren and Jonathan and Andrew combined but minus all of the decent parts of any of them, except Warren who had no decent parts at all.

Acting weird isn’t a crime, Tucker. UNLIKE YOUR SHIRT.

Handman comes back to visit his hostages and tells them that somehow his extreme briefcase-cracking technology has not been able to open this briefcase. He drags Waverly out of the chair and demands that they tell him what EE is and what the combination for the briefcase is. Wynonna is like “I SINCERELY DO NOT KNOW A SINGLE FUCKING THING ABOUT A BRIEFCASE,” which is not a satisfactory response, I guess. He locks Waverly’s wrist in a vice and pulls off a glove to reveal that he has some kind of bony scissors knife thing coming out of his palm like some kind of cursed Wolverine/Spider-man hybrid, and is like “DOES THIS JOG YOUR MEMORY?” The answer obviously is no, because they really don’t know anything, besides that Waverly guesses EE might be their grandfather Edwin Earp, but they still don’t know the combo to open it. Wynonna gets loose and tries to grab Peacemaker, but the Cujo pins her to the wall and she has no chance to look away before the Handman cuts Waverly’s hand right off, and it is UPSETTING. Wynonna is stunned for a second and then screams and Melanie Scrofano’s face is telling us so clearly that she’s already blaming herself for this somehow.

Okay just break my heart why don’t you.

Wynonna is full of big sister fury and is screaming about unleashing hell and Handman is still like “we already discussed how you have no backup, remember?” and I’m like “you already know they called somebody since then and put up guards because they do have backup now, remember?” And right on cue, Doc comes in guns blazing, maintaining something pretty close to a one hundred percent shots fired/kills ration. Dude would destroy at Big Buck Hunter is all I’m saying. Also, he finds himself a new hat, which he absolutely deserves and I am very happy for him. Wynonna pushes through her shock  and takes advantage of the confusion to beat down Cujo and free Waverly. They don’t make it far before Handman heads them off and for some reason shoots Cujo instead of them. Waverly boots him right in the crotch, and I guess demons, like the aliens on Supergirl, all have similar anatomy to humans. They hobble away, as fast as Wynonna can go with Waverly leaning on her, and leave the briefcase behind.

While all this is going on, Rosita and Jeremy are alone with Dolls in the lab, and she is flirting with him aggressively. He seems pretty terrified of her, because he is Jeremy, and also pretty uninterested in her advantages, because he is GAY. And then the entire world explodes because a show has two gay characters on it who are not gay with each other and that is impossible so I guess TV is over now, sorry. Just kidding. But remember that scene on Glee that time where Santana and Brittany and Kurt and Blaine and Sebastian were all in a scene together talking about Karofsky and it felt like such progress but now it’s like five years later and it’s still a total unicorn to have a gay dude and a queer woman on the same show? Everything is terrible! Except this show, which is very good and really SyFy please renew it ASAP we need it so badly right now.

Rosita, realizing that her flirting is not going to get her any science info out of Jeremy, tells him she really just wanted to coerce him into getting her a latte, which he interprets as friendly hazing and is adorably pretty pumped to be her errand boy. I really can’t read Rosita. She uses the now-empty lab situation as an opportunity to taunt Dolls with the lizard juice, saying “It might cure you but it might kill you”, and it feels like she’s being bad, but when he breaks his shackles and grabs the syringe from her she’s like “DON’T DON’T DON’T” which feels like maybe she was just fucking with him? I don’t know where she stands and I like it that way. Dolls injects himself and tells her to run before his forehead starts crackling like Peacemaker when it sees a demon.

Your Charmander has evolved!

Wynonna and Waverly make it approximately another ten meters before Handman stops them again, but Doc throws a knife right through his chest and that seems to be a little more effective than a kick to the nuts. Wynonna just says “He took her hand” and Doc rushes over to help her tie off the wound, and Wynonna goes to get her hand and Doc is like “Why? To bury it?” But they won’t need it anyway, because Waverly turns to Gooverly just long enough to grow back her hand, good as new thank you very much. Everybody tried to convince themselves that didn’t really just happen, but mostly they do not believe their own convincing. They drop Waverly off at the homestead and head over to Shorty’s for the final showdown of the hour.

Rosita is barricading the door to the basement with a slot machine when Wynonna and Doc show up. Was Shorty’s always a gambling hall or is that new? Anyway. Doc is like “I told you not to give him his medicine on an empty stomach!” and she’s like “It was an accident!” Wynonna doesn’t care how lizardy Dolls is, though. She moves the barricade and makes to go talk him back into being a human, but before she can open the door, Handman is back AGAIN. This time with a hostage Jeremy and two hostage lattes. This dude is OBSESSED with this dumb briefcase I am telling you. He lets Jeremy go in exchange for Peacemaker and the briefcase, but, to the surprise of nobody, Dolls comes through the door just in time to stop him. To the surprise of I think everybody, though, Dolls BREATHES ACTUAL FIRE AT HIM. He is no mere lizard, he is a dragon! And he is beautiful! Nobody really knows how to react to that, until Dolls starts laughing and Wynonna realizes he is fully himself and hugs him and is so happy to see him. He asks for water, and Doc brings him whiskey instead, and everybody is happy for a minute and boy oh boy they have earned it. But Extra Crispy Handman is on the floor like “Something is coming! You’ll never be ready!” And Wynonna is like “Blah blah blah, from beneath you it devours, I get it buddy” and shoots him to hell.

Happy family murder time.

Tucker goes home and tries to complain to Mercedes, but she’s like “Hush, you horrible toddler, want to see something cool?” like that time my mailman showed my a dead deer in his truck, but what she shows him is way grosser. It is her own faceless body, and Beth’s faceless body too (But they are moaning and seem to be in some hellish kind of still alive state so maybe we still have hope of getting Real Mercedes back someday?) Anyway they are like “We stole these faces because your pathetic toxic perverted beta masculinity is indeed the ultimate evil in this world and we would like to help you be even worse!” And he’s like “Okay, step one: steal me a girlfriend.” And they are like “Wow okay you really are already the worst huh?”

Finally. At the homestead. Wynonna tells Waverly that it is time they talk about this demon possession situation. And Waverly is like “Indeed it is.” But it’s not Waverly, it’s Gooverly, and she is tired of trying to control Waverly because she is strong and resilient and willful and she gets her hands chopped off which are a total pain to grow back. So she gives Wynonna a kiss and with that she hops into Wynonna’s body and oh boy this is going to be just the worst thing ever huh? Wynonna is not built to withstand this. But I’m so intrigued at where we stand, where our Big Bad is wearing a face, and our Big Good right now is herself only insofar as her face. And man oh man these are good faces.

This seems bad.