Wynonna Earp Recap 2.12: All Things Go

Previously on Wynonna Earp: Waverly’s parentage is uncertain and she might be half revenant, Wynonna’s baby’s parentage is uncertain and it might be half revenant, Bobo is back and has teamed up with the Widows to raise the Demon Clootie, There was this whole other timeline with no Wynonna where all the straight people died but now that’s over with, Nicole is married I guess but that is stupid, Mercedes’ face is melting, Nobody appreciates Rosita enough, Fire, Brimstone, Hell on Earth, and Wynonna is having a baby like right now.

We open where we left off last week, with Bobo and the Widows wandering around a hayfield not noticing any Earps even though the place is crawling with them. For instance, here comes Waverly. Her hair is still blown out by last week’s big gay explosion, but her shotgun appears to be fully intact. And they don’t notice her until she is well within shotgunning distance. Post a lookout, noobs. Waverly is like “Bobo Del Ray! Apocalypses are not behavior befitting of my dad!” He just licks her gun, and then steals her gun, and you know what I’m beginning to think he’s not really her father after all. And then there’s a gunshot, and it’s the scariest moment in the episode because Waverly does a little jump and I was afraid she was shot. But nah, it’s just the other Earp that these clowns let get the drop on them. Wynonna takes a couple shots at Bobo, but the Widows are strong enough now to protect him, and they make a hasty getaway. And across town, Demon Clootie lifts one wet-toilet-papery looking hand up out of the ground. Here we go!

After the credits, which are so short and perfect and which I will miss an awful lot between now and next season, we find Wynonna and Waverly lying in the grass having a good quiet character moment. Waverly kind of apologizes for the whole witch bargain thing, and Wynonna kind of forgives her, and mostly they are just two sisters hanging onto each other in the face of some big bad stuff. It’s beautiful and I love them.

If I lay here, if I just… lay here?

But they can’t stay down forever; it’s time to game plan. First step: make sure their dead friends are not actually dead anymore.

They hoof it back to the homestead, where Jeremy and Nicole are still holding down the fort. Dolls shows up at the same time they do. He woke up in a body bag but shook it off admirably quickly. It’s pretty important to note here that everybody seems to have complete memory of the alternate, Wynonna-less, timeline. Wynonna gives everybody the rundown on the whole Demon Awakening and also on the by-the-way-I’m-in-labor. And listen, friends, this is a season finale so I am feeling all sentimental like it’s graduation day or something, and I’m just noticing so many things that I love, and I’m gonna call them when I see them. Like, in this scene, it’s mostly just Wynonna talking and it’s straight exposition, but everybody’s reaction shots are so cute and good. And there’s just no question that these people will follow Wynonna into whatever hell is coming, be it the demon or the childbirth variety. And I am right there with them.

Another great thing is that even though maybe one hour has passed since last week’s events, Mercedes is somehow looking even more scraggly than ever. I love her, even when she is a rotting horror. She’s with Bobo and Beth at the abandoned mine where Bobo hid Clootie’s coffin. Beth is pretty insufferable about the whole thing, to be honest. She would not be my choice for an eternal sister-wife. Mercedes agrees with me. She is so over Beth’s bullshit, and honestly isn’t even that interested in her demon husband anymore. Maybe because when they dig him up he’s a weak old toilet paper mummy who needs to eat Wynonna’s baby before he can even, like, sit up. I don’t know. But regardless of her reason, and high on Wynonna-inspired girl power, Mercedes chops off Clootie’s arm to steal his ring (what is it with rings on this show, like, damn), slaps Beth in her sycophantic face, and disappears, caving the mine in on top of Beth and Bobo in her wake. She exits the mine and puts the ring on and is reborn as Mercedes the White. Still evil, but a lot less gangrenous and now with new and improved cleavage. Nice.

Possibly the most aggressive cleavage in television history.

So, this is one of those episodes where the good guys have plans but they don’t really tell us those plans until the action is happening? There are a lot of beats that happen mostly in nods and assurances and vague references to that-thing-we-talked-about-off-camera. So that’s what’s going on in the Earp kitchen right now. For now, here is what we know: Jeremy’s groin is pretty sure Doc is still alive, so Dolls is going out looking for him. Peacemaker and the Purgatory Fair commemorative plate seem to have an affinity for each other, and Wynonna has a big idea about that that we are not yet privy to. And Nicole has a job to do for Wynonna that neither Waverly not we are allowed to know about yet.

Wynonna and Waverly go to Gretta the Iron Witch’s house to scold her about wishing Wynonna out of existence, and also to do whatever it is they want to do with the plate. Gretta makes some good faces and some bad excuses before telling them that the plate is a shield. Wynonna is like “Yeah I don’t really play defense,” and says that what she’s looking for is a missile. So Gretta melts it down into a single bullet (it’s got traces of Ammolite, the same metal that keeps the Earp homestead safe from demons.) While they’re waiting for Gretta to finish, Wynonna and Waverly have a conversation about how much they love each other, if not in so many words. Waverly apologizes again for her part in everything, and Wynonna forgives her on account of it having been for somebody she loves. Waverly tells her that Nicole is married, and Wynonna is like “Counterpoint: So what. She loves you.” And Waverly tells her she’s not really her sister, and Wynonna just says “Like hell you’re not.” (I’m confused though, does she have two entirely different parents? I guess I had been thinking they had the same mother, it was just the Earpness that was in question.) Once they have the bullet, they rush out of there heading for home, because Wynonna’s labor is progressing quickly.

What’s a little curse between friends, you know? Who among us isn’t at least a little bit cursed?

Dolls finds Doc standing on the lip of the well, doing a soliloquy about his own mortality like he’s been doing lately. Dolls, ever the pragmatist, breaks it down as follows: “Sorry we killed each other. Sorry your ring is broken. I can feel your angst from here, but you need to table it. Wynonna is alive, she’s having the baby, and you need to help her shoot things.” It’s enough to shake Doc back to reality. Give him a gun and something to point it at and he’s in his element. Maybe he and Wynonna do belong together. Anyway. Doc runs home to tend to Wynonna’s increasingly urgent “code: pot of gold”, while Dolls takes his car to go kidnap that doctor again to help with the birth.

At Black Badge there’s a cute Jeremy and Nicole bonding moment happening as Jeremy is figuring out where Clootie is buried. He says he stuck around after Black Badge cut him loose because he gets to be a weirdo here without anybody really thinking he’s a weirdo. And Nicole tells him he’s family, which I loved because that means that Nicole finally really believes that she herself is part of the family too. It’s good. But it doesn’t last. Mercedes shows up looking magnificent and gives them a big ol’ huff and puff of venom breath.

Can somebody please explain the boob vent in Nicole’s shirt?

Waverly and Wynonna are speeding down that one piece of Main Street where everything happens, so it should come as no surprise when something happens. That something is Mercedes, radiantly evil standing in the road surrounded by immobilized bodies (Nicole and Jeremy, included.) I’m gonna be honest and say I don’t really understand the situation here. I thought that when Mercedes cut off Clootie’s hand and stole his ring she was stealing his power and replacing him as the big bad? But now she’s back on that he-is-awake-but-not-yet-risen stuff, and Wynonna is the last piece of the puzzle, and I just don’t know what her deal is. (And also, because it will probably be important to know this at some point, apparently Clootie’s true demon name is Bulshar. Because it would be too easy for things to just have one name for me to keep track of.)

Beth shows up and they do kind of a duelling evil thing. Mercedes is like “Shoot Beth, we can kill my husband together!” Which, I’m just so sure, Face Thief. Beth is pretty straightforward though: shoot Mercedes instead, or else she’ll kill Waverly. And then Doc strolls up, and it’s a party now, everybody’s invited. This next part is very silly but you know what everybody needs a win so I’ll take it. Doc puts on a big show about shooting Wynonna and her shooting him and it’s such absolute nonsense that everybody in the scene even is like “Clearly you are not actually going to do a murder suicide, stop being so dramatic,” and then they both shoot their guns at the same time and Doc’s bullet cuts Wynonna’s in two and each half of the bullet takes out a Widow. They melt into bugs, and Mercedes’ stolen ring falls onto the pavement. Two down. No magic bullets left, though.

Can we just pretend this happy moment is the end of the episode?

The gang, including Nicole and Jeremy who I guess recovered from the poison when the Widows evaporated, regroup in the street. Wynonna isn’t gonna make it back to the homestead to give birth, so they take her into Shorty’s as the next best place. Wynonna tells Jeremy she’s glad he stayed in Purgatory, and tells Rosita she’s so sorry about how she treated her when she found out she was a revenant, and everybody gets their marching orders. Doc and Jeremy head out to the mine to check up on Clootie, and Nicole heads out to do what Wynonna tasked her with, ‘”the only thing she could.” And Waverly stays at Shorty’s with Rosita to help with the birth.

Dolls is still on his doctor-fetching errand, but folks are just all about blocking the roads today. This time it’s My-Least-Favorite-Character-of-the-Season-Besides-Tucker, Ewan the fire chief. He’s brought the whole cult with him. They’ve murdered the doctor, and would ideally like to murder everybody who knows about the baby. Also, they want to steal the baby to raise it “right”, which is just not going to happen. There’s some back and forth and Ewan is his usual smarmy fart-smell of a human except actively evil now, and finally Dolls does the thing we’ve been waiting for all season. He goes full dragon on these terrible firemen who have proven time and time again that the thing they are least capable of fighting is, ironically, fire. Hopefully we will never have to think about them again. And anyway, it’s a small town, I bet Nicole can pull double duty as a Sheriff’s Deputy and a Fire Chief.

My beautiful righteous Pokemon.

Wynonna is laid up on the pool table, begging for whiskey, and we finally learn the bones of what Nicole’s job is. Waverly tells Wynonna she’s not much for tradition, and Wynonna says the baby won’t get a chance to learn that. Nicole is taking Baby Earp outside the Ghost River Triangle to keep it safe. Waverly is like “I understand, but why didn’t you ask me?” And Wynonna tells her she wasn’t sure if Waverly can cross the boundary. She knows she might be half revenant, and she doesn’t care. Man, this episode. They keep giving us these beautiful affirming scenes and then smashing them to pieces along with my heart, and, this time, Waverly’s beautiful face. It’s Rosita. My true love. She has betrayed us all. She knocks Waverly out, tosses Peacemaker out of reach, and it’s horrible and I’m so upset about this. She’s always on the outside, Wynonna used her like a lab rat, even Doc keeps her at arm’s length. She’s doomed and rejected and she never really deserved to be a revenant in the first place.

I don’t love this development. Not only because I do love Rosita, but because I don’t fully buy it the way it’s written. It seems like this is meant to be a recent turn, the result of how Wynonna treated her during the Nicole crisis and of what she saw in the alternate timeline. It’s more interesting when you take in her back story, which is not dissimilar to Bobo’s in that she was an innocent person caught in Wyatt Earp’s line of fire. It’s that intriguing (but dangerous) line of questioning: how many times can you call somebody a monster before they start to believe it? But, I just don’t really understand her goal here, besides taking the baby and leaving Wynonna to the revenants. Like I don’t know what her win-state is with this plan? She says the baby is “currency”, but I don’t know how she could ever hope to cash it in? And she asks Wynonna for “safe passage,” but you know what would have been the easiest way to get that? Being the person who helps Wynonna deliver her baby safely without pulling an ultimate treachery! Mostly though, I’m just so sad. I love Rosita and I want everybody else to love her too.

So maybe I am biased, but I think she regrets her actions at least a little even while she’s doing them. I think Wynonna’s quick apology was enough to slap her back to decency and know this is wrong, but by that point it was too late to turn back. It’s a whole big ugly good scene that is more heartbreaking because you can tell by the way they are talking to each other that they do know each other, that there is a bond there and it’s breaking forever. Wynonna begs her to at least let Waverly go, but Waverly isn’t waiting around for mercy. She’s up on her feet, with Peacemaker in her hands. She tries to shoot Rosita but the gun won’t obey her. Wynonna is encouraging her and telling her she’s an Earp in every way that ought to count, telling her she’s the best of us, and Rosita panics and punches Wynonna in the face and immediately looks horrified at herself. Rosita knows she’s making her last stand. She smashes a bottle, like when she saved Waverly from Tucker except the opposite this time, and tells Waverly “For the record, I really liked you,” and she means it, but it’s too late. Peacemaker is glowing in Waverly’s hands, blue this time instead of fiery orange, and when Waverly pulls the trigger, it obeys. But Rosita doesn’t die. Her eyes glow red, and then they fade, and then she runs down into the basement and that’s the last we see of her. My guess (my hope against hope?) is that the shot made her human again? There have been multiple references to Waverly’s “purity” this season, and blue is kind of a cleansing color, and I want something vaguely happy to come out of this, so at least until I’m proven wrong next season, this is what I’m sticking with.

I hate everything happening here because I love everyone happening here.

Out at the mine, things aren’t going much better. Doc finds Bobo, hair freshly bleached by his new best friend Clootie/Bulshar. His wives are dead, but it’s not a big deal because Bobo promised him Waverly as a replacement wife, and what is it with dudes thinking they can trade Waverly like a commodity? Have they never met her? Good Sweet Jeremy tries to be a hero by shooting Bobo with his gun that does not look like a real gun, but Bobo deflects the bullet and pins Doc’s hand to the wall with his own throwing knife because of his Magneto powers. He also tells us that Jeremy is full of metal so he’s gonna throw him around, and his little gun too, but Jeremy has been reading my comments about how weird his gun looks and confirms that actually it’s made of plastic. He shoots Bobo, and I think that what I thought was a forcefield last week is actually an energy field shot by the weird gun? It throws Bobo off balance enough to give Doc time to free his hand and do some punching, and eventually he gets Bobo staked on some metal spikes, looking about as close to dead as a revenant can get through ordinary means.

Oh golly. Here come the tears. Wynonna, with Waverly’s help, has given birth to a tiny perfect baby, with fingers and toes and all the things that aren’t real until they are real, and it’s already time to say goodbye. She says “I don’t want to. I didn’t realize how much I wouldn’t want to.” She says “You’re the coolest thing I ever did.” And Waverly says “Nicole is at the getaway car.” She promises to give Doc a moment with the baby before it’s gone. And she leaves Wynonna alone on a pool table, exhausted from childbirth, to face down an army of revenants all by herself. And maybe they know they’re the main characters of this television show, but if they don’t, I have to think they don’t necessarily expect to see each other ever again. But they are so brave and so good, and they are both of them the very best of us. I don’t really know what else to say about this scene, besides that if you’re not at least doing a brave not-crying face you either have no heart or maybe just have a healthier relationship with fictional characters than I do. Melanie Scrofano is the best thing happening on TV right now, at least while Tatiana Maslany is on vacation.

I am broken.

Nicole drives Waverly out to the boundary, and Waverly takes the baby and walks over the line, but nothing happens. No burning, no death, no nothing. They are both able to cross, which they theoretically would not be able to do if they had revenant blood (but who really knows if the rules would be the same for a half revenant?) Waverly takes this to mean that Doc is this baby’s father, and whoever her own father might be, he probably wasn’t a revenant. And Nicole is there right beside her. When the tension lifts, they joke about Nicole’s pending divorce, because they can. Because at least for this one moment right now, they are a true and steady thing. And I would like to congratulate both of them for surviving another entire season of television.

I know we’re having a moment right now, baby, but I’m very distracted by your boob vent.

Wynonna takes on the revenant army, and with the help of Dolls (who I think comes out of the basement door? Is there a secret passageway or something? What is the layout of this building?) makes short work of them. Honestly it looked easy compared to everything else in this episode. That’s a great big chunk of the curse broken all at once, right there.

Back at the mine, Jeremy is, well, he is something more that just a good sweet guy, it turns out. He gives Doc his hat, and, tells him that he needs to go meet the baby, and that “Wayhaught” are bringing it to the rendezvous point. He just knows it. He just knows a lot of things, And that’s why Black Badge wanted him in the first place. Doc thanks him, and leaves him guarding Bobo.

Waverly and Nicole get to the rendezvous just as a chopper lands. Good Guy Perry is taking the baby. If that seems like an odd choice, don’t worry, it absolutely would be, but actually Perry is taking the baby to Gus, Wynonna and Waverly’s aunt who left town in season 1. Doc gets there just in time to say hello and goodbye to his baby. “Dainty and delicate in blue.” A girl. And just like that, she’s gone. And I am a mess.

Not to spoil the mood, but there is very clearly not a baby in this blanket right now.

There are some little scenes here, it’s all winding down but they’re not done with us yet. Dolls and Wynonna come out of Shorty’s and see the helicopter fly away with the baby, safe and sound. Doc throws Bobo down the well and puts a lid on it this time (We get two pieces of information in this scene that seem important: Bobo is not Waverly’s father, but they are “kin”. And When Dolls killed Doc in the other timeline, he went to hell just like a revenant.)

Doc finds Wynonna out on the homestead, and they ask each other if they’re okay, and neither one answers. It’s a very very sad thing, these two people with an enormous shared void between them. That terrible intimacy of shared grief, there’s no privacy in it and you can only accept that bond or break it forever. For now, they let themselves be the same in it, and it hurts to look at. He asks her if the baby has a name, and she tells him. Alice Michelle. After each of their mothers. Another forever kind of bond. “A fitting tribute to those who have left.” But it’s never that simple, is it? Wynonna gives Doc a sad kiss, the only kind of kiss she can seem to get this season, and says “Mama Earp is still waiting.”

I am crying even just screenshotting these guys right now.

And then we have an ominous voiceover, and a musical callback to the beginning of the season. We see Waverly and Jeremy and Dolls laughing, and Nicole holding signed divorce papers in her squad car.  But she’s also holding Bulshar’s ring, and a dossier on The Cult of Bulshar, and she and Dolls make a scary kind of eye contact (I KNEW he knew more about this than he was letting on!) And I am WORRIED.

You guys better not be doing a treachery, my heart cannot take it.

Finally, we see Wynonna on her motorcycle, out past the boundary, way out in a whole other middle of nowhere. And that’s where Mama Earp is waiting.

And that’s where we leave it. With new secrets, and old family, and Clootie still coming. And the unanswered questions of Did Mercedes Grow Her Face Back and Is Rosita Still A Demon and Why Did They Waste Our Time With Nicole’s Hot Wife If They Were Just Going To Get A  Divorce Anyway. I love this show. See you next year.