Diversity is the need of the hour and female leads are all the rave, but three years ago on April 1, 2016, a little Syfy show that could, proved all of this is possible without caving into tokenism or internet backlash. When ‘Wynonna Earp’ premiered, it did so without massive advertising or any huge stars. What it did have was a lot of heart and the evident will to create stories their fans could relate to. With season 4 of the show just around the corner, we can definitely say it has achieved this.

The titular protagonist Wynonna Earp, played by Melanie Scrofano, is one of the best heroes to be portrayed on TV – male or female. She is tasked with a heroic job she did not ask for, and is pretty great at, but the demons of her past, present and what is to come in the future haunts her, leading her to take respite in alcohol and casual sex. She is loyal to a fault and will stop at nothing to protect her babydoll aka younger sister Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley).

Waverly is the lesbian, part-angel, half-sister of Wynonna, who struggles with self-worth quite a bit in the beginning of the series. Her journey of being angry at her loving sister for abandoning her and being in an unhappy, one-sided relationship with the f**kboi of Purgatory to finding her own identity and using her resourcefulness to help her team, while also finding the love of her life in Officer Nicole Haught (Katherine Barrell) is heartwarming.

Nicole and Waverly, the lesbian couple of the show, also make for the only two people in stable “traditional” relationship on 'Wynonna Earp’. They are not shunned, yet the narrow-mindedness of society is addressed. They are not cursed with horrible deaths (which is the norm in most supernatural shows featuring same sex couples), yet they brush death many times over, only to have their love grew stronger and tougher.

It is this loving, and respectable depiction of this lesbian couple and later, that of Jeremy (Varun Saranga) and Robin (Justin Kelly) that makes ‘Wynonna Earp’ a show the LGBT community has accepted as their own.

Feminism, meanwhile, is ingrained into the show. Wynonna, like all the other women on the show, does not blink before saying “my body, my rules” when questioned about her active sex life. From the very beginning of the show, she has had a number of sexual partners, none of whose names neither her nor us fans bothered learning.

At one point, both the leading men of ‘Wynonna Earp,’ - Dolls (Shamier Anderson) and Doc (Tim Rozon) - had a sorta kinda relationship with her. They were adversaries, because they did not trust each other and because both of them cared for Wynonna. Their misgivings about each other did not reach Wynonna, though, there was no petty p**sing war about who is better suited for her.

They knew Wynonna could make that decision on her own, and more importantly, they became brothers once they learned they could trust each other, respectfully giving space when the other would be with Wynonna.

Even in moments of Wynonna’s on self-doubts and embarrassment, they assured her she had nothing to apologize for. When Doc walked in on Dolls kissing Wynonna at the party in season 1, for example, she tried to explain how she would never have done it if she knew the former was alive, to which he said they had no reason to lie to each other and that she is allowed to kiss whoever she likes, so long as they want to kiss her as well.

Even when Wynonna got pregnant, and Dolls thought it was Doc’s child, he offered her his full support. He risked his life, as he always does, to save the baby. Meanwhile, when Doc found out that Wynonna was unsure if the baby was his or that of a revenant, he too offered to be there for her.

While she did not know it at the time, she had sex with a revenant – the same species she is cursed to keep sending to hell – and obviously it came with a lot of shame for her. However, she wanted to keep the potential father of her baby in the picture, but she had no qualms about shooting him with the peacemaker and sending him right back to hell as soon as he crossed a line.

We also saw Wynonna take the tough decision of giving her baby, Alice, up for adoption, despite how much it killed her to do so. She knew it would be the only way to protect her. The adoption of the part-immortal gunslinger and part-Earp heir would be relatable to anyone who has had to give their baby up for adoption.

As we impatiently await the premiere of ‘Wynonna Earp’ season 4, we found ourselves reminiscing about all the reasons that make this Syfy show the most bada**, diverse, sex-positive, feminist show of all time to be a cathartic experience. We cannot wait to see the different ways in which the showrunners continue to surprise us with this show in the seasons to come.

Disclaimer : The views expressed in this article belong to the writer and are not necessarily shared by MEAWW.