“Holy War, Part 2,” the mid-season finale of Wynonna Earp Season 4 brought an unexpected surprise: no cliffhanger! Instead, the episode ended on the formal engagement of Nicole Haught and Waverly Earp. (Or was that Waverly Gibson? More on that below.)
The engagement allowed Earp to bid a temporarily farewell with a happy glow, as the show won’t be back until 2021 due to a temporary stoppage caused by Covid-19. But it also left us so many questions to answer.
Here are the five big ones:
1. What is Next For Wynonna?
Wynonna was reunited with one of her true loves, Peacemaker, in “Holy War Part 2,” “Come to Mama,” she said and so the magical weapons, the family legacy of the Earps, returned to her hand.
Wynonna put Peacemaker to use instantly, killing the demon head of the bloodthirsty nuns who guarded Peacemaker. She also lived up to her self-proclaimed label, “killer,” by shooting Holt in the back to seemingly ending the threat of the Clantons.
That’s the first time we’ve seen Wynonna shoot someone in the back, especially a human. Doc, who’d tried to make peace between the Earps and the Clantons, was appalled, leading to a tense, heartbreaking scene between Alice’s parents as Wynonna accepted her violence and Doc turned against it. Wynonna’s sorrow at the rift with Doc meant a combination of happy and sad tears for her at the Wayhaught engagement.
Was Wynonna right to shoot Holt in the back or was she reviving a curse from years past? More importantly, her action hinted at a dark path for our hero. She might have killed to protect Alice, who was a target of the Clantons but there was also anger as well. Nothing seems settled for our hero, not her purpose in life nor her relationship with Doc.
2. The WayHaught Wedding!
The clothes! The guests! Will there be frog party favors? Will Nicole wear the golden dress she inhabited as Ghost Nicole? What will the wedding crashers be like? (It’s Purgatory. There are guaranteed to be wedding crashers.)
3. Alternate Reality AKA Where Did “Waverly Gibson” Come From?
Three times in these first six episodes, Waverly Earp has been referred to as “Waverly Gibson,” the last in newspaper article shown in “Holy War, Part 2.” Gibson is, of course, the last name of Waverly and Wynonna’s mother, Michelle Gibson. But Waverly was always referred to as an Earp before, having been born long before their father’s death. Does “Gibson” indicate a different death for Ward Earp and thus a different reality?
Ma’am Earp, before her death at Waverly’s hands, said she’d sent a spell to those in Eden, forcing them to pick the door that ended up taking Doc, Wynonna, and Waverly to this reality. If the Clanton Matriarch choose the door, does that mean our crew went from heaven to hell? Or is this Eve’s doing?
There are other hints that reality is different, too, starting with the presence of the museum, and Doc’s memories of the OK Corral fight being different from this universe’s Wyatt. Doc says he had to clean up Wyatt’s messes all those years ago. But, in reality, Wyatt remained in the OK Corral shootout. Indeed, he was the single player in that gunfight to stand his ground and never move.
4. We Need An Explanation For Amom
Why are all the demons inhabiting Purgatory? The Ghost River Triangle seems as much a magical nexus as it always was, despite the end of the Earp curse. One wonders if this is Amon’s doing, as we know so little about the demon owner of the Glory Hole. He seemed to take an interest in bartering peace between Holt and Doc. Why? There’s so much we don’t know about this one.
5. Why Did Doc Have a Sudden Turn To Peace?
As much as I’ve loved this season, Doc’s turn away from violence needed a bit more room to be fully convincing. He is, after all, a vampire, a man who took on a violent curse to be able to protect his daughter eternally. There was no struggle with his vampiric blood lust this season–he seems to get along fine without feeding–but he went from making deals with Amon to deciding a peace must be brokered without too much foundation. He even bonded with Holt, whose first action when they arrived back in Purgatory was to allow Wynonna to be hanged.
Continued belowI like a Doc haunted by the violence he’s committed and how it caused a riff between him and Wynonna. I would have liked it a little better if there had been more room for this change in attitude to breathe.
Ma’am revealed that Nicole promised to bring her Doc as part of the unholy bargain, so the Clantons could shred everything about his life. “Holy War, Part 2” didn’t have time for this revelation to sink in but it will at some point? That might lead to yet another change in attitude.
There are other lingering other questions, such as the limits of Waverly’s angel power, the fate of Eve, what Cleo will do next once she finds out the Earps, collectively, killed her last family, if Billy can come back from being a Reaper, if Rosita can lead the cursed nuns to salvation, and, most of all, what did Ma’am mean when she said there were so many more of them?
It would be something if Michelle Gibson were revealed to be a descendant of the Clantons, meaning that Waverly and Wynonna are Clantons as well as Earps. I have a vague notion that we might also see a grown-up Alice in Purgatory in 2021, as there are all the elements available for a time-lost/magically grown up Earp Heir present.
Until 2021!
