WYNONNA EARP – Season 3 Episodes 1&2 – SPOILERS

A busload of vampires comes to Purgatory to celebrate the resurrection of Bulshar, and runs into Sheriff Nedley’s speed trap. (They aren’t pulled over. They just stop in front of the Sheriff’s cruiser.) Nedley (Greg Lawson) quickly falls prey to their glamour spell and invites them into town. Did the Sheriff’s invitation give them free entry into every building in Purgatory, or just the Ghost River Triangle? (No one else grants them permission to enter, but they do.) What would have happened if Nedley hadn’t spent the night searching for speeders on the highway? Without Nedley’s invitation, would the bus have been unable to enter the Triangle?

The vampires kill sixteen people at Pussy Willows as the club was preparing to open. The way the bodies are laid out (and the runes carved in some of them) triggers a memory in Deputy Haught (Kat Barrell). She tells Wynonna: “Black Badge Division’s been tracking these massacres since the 1920s. They call it the Cult of Bulshar.” This makes Wynonna immediately suspicious, and Nicole continues: “It’s not like that. When I first heard the name Bulshar — when Faux Mercedes said it right before you shot the widows — it twigged something in me, like I’d heard it before. So I asked Dolls, and he gave me some old BBD files.” Later, Nicole begins to suspect that she might have once been involved with the Cult and suppressed the memory.

One of the newly-arrived vamps captures Doc and ties him to a stripper pole in the bus. Before he escapes, Doc recognizes her, and calls her “Contessa”. She is probably Big Nose Kate, Doc’s common-law wife from the old days (before he was trapped in the well). Kate was originally from Hungary (as is Lord Bondicus, another of the vampires who came to town), and by some accounts was descended from Hungarian royalty. The encounter with Kate seems to reinvigorate Holliday. Wynonna had earlier told Waverly, “He [Doc] won’t touch me unless we’re training. And he won’t talk to me unless he’s angry.” After his encounter with Kate, Doc spontaneously kisses Wynonna, who is pleased but wonders what’s gotten into him.

Wynonna crashes her truck because of a trap set by a revenant forced to hunt humans for food, because the game he usually traps has fled the local forest. (It is possible that Bulshar’s return has frightened the animals, or has climate change driven them away?) After the accident, Wynonna finds herself clinging to the side of a cliff. She summons memories of her mother to help her survive, and, because of this, the mystery of Wynonna Earp’s birthday may have been solved. In this exchange between Wynonna and her mother (which took place entirely inside Wynonna’s head) we get an excellent clue:

WYNONNA: “It was my birthday.”

MICHELLE: “Sorry, what was?”

WYNONNA: “The last time you took me camping. It was the weekend of my birthday, and I wanted to go see the Pixies.”

MICHELLE: “Hah. You wanted to see Hanson.”

WYNONNA: “Yeah, that’s right. And you thought taking me into the woods with a packet of dehydrated chili was a much better idea.”

MICHELLE: “And then I forgot the bowls and we had to eat the damned thing with our hands.”

WYNONNA: “I was so pissed. I should’ve put down that damn Gameboy. If I’d known…”

MICHELLE: “Yeah, if you’d known I’d be gone a couple of days later.”

Hanson was big in 1998. If Wynonna was seriously considering going to see Hanson, the only time that band played anywhere within driving distance (assuming that Purgatory is somewhere in the general vicinity of Calgary, Alberta) would have been when they played the Key Arena in Seattle on Tuesday, 21 July of that year. That’s not on a weekend, but the 1100 kilometer drive would likely have taken at least two days, so they would have needed to leave on the weekend to get there. Also, 21 July 2016 was just slightly after the full moon, and we already know that there was a full moon on Wynonna’s 27th birthday (W.E. Episode 1.1). On the basis of this information, Wynonna’s birthday must be either 18 or 19 July.

**The Wynonna Earp Wikia gives her birthday as 12 September, but in 2016 the moon was not full on that date, and the nearest Hanson concert was on 11 September 1998, and some 3800 kilometers away in Albany, New York.

Michelle’s last name is Gibson, so if she married Ward, she either did not take his name, or did not use it. (She is the sister of Gus, who is currently caring for baby Alice at some unknown location.) A poster on display at Pussy Willows, a place Wynonna’s mother frequented when it was called the County Line Bar (before it became a strip club) indicates that Michelle Gibson was a major attraction at the 1996 Purgatory Fair rodeo.

After Waverly is rescued from the cannibalistic revenant who kidnapped her, Wynonna, Doc, and Nicole attempt to retrieve Peacemaker from where Wynonna left it (at the bottom of the cliff). They are attacked by a demon with unusual powers. Dolls intervenes to save them, but dies in the process.

Here’s part of what showrunner Emily Andras said to The TV Junkies about Shamier Anderson’s departure from the show: “There are absolutely no hard feelings and the truth is Shamier is an extraordinary talent. Hollywood is calling and has been for a couple years now…We felt like he gave us an extra year to tell more of Dolls’ story and we felt like this was the best course of action to make everyone happy…I gave him the option of how he wanted to leave. It was extremely important to Shamier personally that he have Dolls go out as he lived, which is a hero. It almost makes me cry talking about it. He really wanted Dolls to be remembered as someone who sacrificed for the rest of the team. I was kind of impressed and flattered that that was so important to him versus just being written off or just leaving for something. He wanted a big finish so we were determined to give him that.”

NOTES

Rachel Skarsten (Eliza in “Steel Bars and Stone Walls“) has joined THE SWELL, a passionate group of public figures and celebrities committed to promoting the mission of SeaLegacy, a group of photographers and filmmakers working to build a healthy future for our oceans through visual storytelling. SeaLegacy uses photography to contrast the beauty and productivity of protected parts of the ocean, with the look of areas that are under threat. The organization was launched in 2014 by photographers Cristina Mittermeier and Paul Nicklen. In a YouTube video, Skarsten said: “I have been blessed to call many bodies of water my home…The place I feel most at peace in is the water and all the living creatures inside it are being threatened, and I want to do something about it.”

Shamier Anderson (Xavier Dolls) will be Antonio in the crime thriller DESTROYER, about Los Angeles Police Detective Erin Bell (Nicole Kidman), who, as a s a young cop, went undercover with a cult/gang in the California desert with disastrous results. Years later, the leader of that cult resurfaces, forcing Bell into an investigation of the remaining gang members and her own history with them. Tatiana Maslany is also in the cast. Directed by Karyn Kusama, DESTROYER will be released in The Netherlands on 18 April 2019 . A US release date has not yet been announced.

Anderson is also David Mack in CITY OF LIES (originally titled LAbyrinth), about an investigation into the murders of rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. The film stars Johnny Depp as a disgraced detective unable to crack the case, and Forest Whitaker as a journalist who teams up with him. A trailer is available on YouTube. CITY OF LIES will be released in the US on 7 September .

Reamonn Joshee (Stevie in “I Hope You Dance“) will be Henry in the horror feature TRUE FICTION, the story of a lonely librarian (Sarah Alicia Garcia) who aspires to being a writer, and gets her big break when she is hand-picked to assist her hero, reclusive author Caleb Conrad (John Cassini). She is whisked away to Conrad’s remote estate, where she finds that her one and only task is to be a subject of a controlled psychological experiment in fear that will serve as the basis for Conrad’s next novel. After a while, she begins to suspect that her boss is a serial killer. Written and directed by Braden Croft, TRUE FICTION completed filming in Calgary in February and should be released later this year.







