Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Wynonna Earp: Season 3, Episode 8: Waiting Forever for You




We actually have Wynonna and Jeremy spending social time! Playing pool and Wynonna being very very distracting by describing how she once gave birth on that pool table. Which was likely messy

As Jeremy says, this is probably why no-one plays with them. They also talk love life with Jeremy worried about getting close to Robin with all the death in their lives with Wynonna advising him to just embrace it while he has it. But in comes Charlie and Wynonna tries to avoid him because she’s been ghosting him - Jeremy throws her to the wolves and attracts his attention before running away.

There is Awkwardness but Charlie and Wynonna are now back on. This includes a date in Purgatory’s fanciest restaurant. A diner. With breadsticks and knives that look like swords (this is Wynonna’s definition of classy and she and Charley are just really cute). Wynonna has a lot of self-depreciation and doubt because of the Earp curse but Charlie is clear he’s ready to run into the fire of her life for her. Even if he isn’t fully aware of the supernatural yet,

Jeremy and Robin are invited to a big gay dinner by Waverley and Nicole which sounds like a very fun night out and Jeremy and Robin are excited talking about it except… Doc

Kate tried to leave Doc a captured human to eat… and Doc angrily refuses because he doesn’t belong to her, isn’t her’s and can do his own hunting. She’s super sad because he was her’s once. She also worried because her tarot woo-woo tells her that Bulshar knows she’s there.

Doc probably should have listened far more to Kate because he goes into the woods and attacks… Robin

Yes, I thought Robin was dead. But no, Doc controls himself and takes the heavily bleeding Robin to Jeremy

Amazingly Jeremy doesn’t see “I bit your boyfriend but managed not to kill him” to be a plus and demands Doc leave. Knowing he’s a vampire, Jeremy understands Wynonna’s break up. Jeremy is not happy. He hasn’t got to bite his boyfriend yet

He goes to interrupt Wynonna’s date to explain what just happened - so she and Charlie decide to shelve dinner in exchange for some staking action while Jeremy and Robin go to the Big Gay Dinner.

Staking action doesn’t mean Doc - oh Charlie uses a holy water soaked whip to trap Doc in his bar, so he won’t interfere while Wynonna goes to see Kate. They argue a lot about who is the most special person to Wynonna when they’re interrupted...

Bulshar has also been up and about - and has raised his wife Constance. She’s a burned, dismembered zombie, but she has been brought back from death and freed from the salt flats.

She now gatecrashes Doc and Charlie. Charlie duly freaks out at the sight of the blackened zombie - and frees Doc so he can use his sudden super strength to knock Constance down (waaaait, I thought vampires in this didn’t have super strength). They plan to drop her in the well where all inconvenient people are abandoned on this show. I hope no-one is drinking from this well. While they bicker, Constance escapes and steals Doc’s car - which was her car originally

They try to follow her on foot but Doc’s bloodlust overwhelms him: Charlie has to knock him out to save himself from being eaten and Doc co-operates

This involves lots of guns pointing at each other because it’s time for a dramatic confrontation with lots of snark and with Kate being super snarky and fun. And Wynonna accusing Kate of magically seducing Doc while Kate retorts that she cannot be blamed for Doc’s choices (and how sexist it is). She decides to explain her past in a series of nifty flashbacks


So, firstly Kate is Hungarian nobility and she came to the US, as a human, to escape her creepy uncle who is clearly a vampire. Except her parents died on arrival and she was left to rely on her tarot reading skills to get by

Until she ran into Bulshar and his then-wife Constance (the Stone Witch) who wanted her help finding something. She refuses - not can’t, won’t. And when Bulshar insists, Doc joins his gun to hers in insisting that Bulshar back down.

So begins their relationship (including him stealing some of her cards). Except after some time and she tries to say she loves him and he doesn’t respond - and she expresses how much she really really wants to set down some roots and build a home while Doc is happy to keep on moving and drinking from town to town. She decides to go back to Europe… just as Doc is beginning to cough up blood.

Wynonna accuses her of abandoning Doc in his time of need but Kate points out he was hardly alone. Earp was there. They start posturing with guns and knives (which is hilarious)

But they’re interrupted…

Yes it’s Constance again! Kate and Wynonna abandon their grudges to drive her out.

Over to the big gay dinner party where things are getting weird. The Bulshar ring has again stalked Nicole leading to an absolutely perfect mistaken proposal from Waverley. Oh and Jeremy tells them Robin was bitten by a vampire - who is Doc. And Robin is overcome by freaky Bulshar woo-woo, talks about the roots talking to him, licks a potato and ends up kneeling half naked in the barn to try and hear what Bulshar is whispering to the roots.

That’s a lot of weirdness over dinner.

Robin snaps out of it and worries he’ll be seen as a freaky. So Waverley brings up her demonic posession, Nicole surviving a massacre by Bulshar cultists and Jeremy losing his parents at a young age and now having the psychic ability to tell when his friends are deeply afraid (wait wait wait wait what? What? Since when?)

They’re all duly mutually weird when, yes it’s Constance again!

She hacks around with a giant sword, manages to grab something of Doc’s before Waverley puts on Bulshar’s ring… which gives her super powers to drive her out. Nifty.

We have a reunion and Kate warns them that the ring is super ancient and powerful - and on Waverley’s finger it now has a new word in Arabic on it. The ring also won’t come off.

Kate and Wynonna find Constance and they’re both moved by pity - seeing what Constance, an old enemy of both of theirs, is reduced so completely. Wynonna points Peacemaker and Constance moves it to point at her head: as Kate notes that it’s no small thing to be able to choose your own end.

And I salute the respect they give to this enemy and acknowledgement that no-one deserves this

And they address the rest of Kate’s history: she left in the hope that Doc would follow her. She didn’t. And by the time she returned Constance had already made him immortal and hidden him where Kate wouldn’t find him. Of course, with a creepy uncle, she has her own source of immortality

So, no, she wasn’t a vampire for as long as she knew Doc - and she actually became a vampire to try and save him. They also realise that Constance stole the tarot cards containing Bulshar’s future… and think that since Wynonna is connected to him via the Earp curse so the same cards could be revealed using her

The end of this is Bulshar’s motive:

He wants to find the Garden of Eden

Which is in the Ghost River Triangle (despite it being like a permanent snow bank. Adam and Eve will be getting frost bite) and what the Triangle actually hides and protects

I’m not entirely sure what damage Bulshar could do in Eden or why Eden doesn’t have some better door guards but everyone is very worried about this. So, ominous.

Epilogues:
Doc wakes in a bar and Charlie hands him bagged blood giving him another option than eating people.

Wynonna and Doc have a Big Moment and he pledges Kate became a vampire for him, he became a vampire for Wynonna - so he will be there forever no matter what Wynonna needs - and whatever Alice needs forever and ever. Yes they’re back together again





So, this episode did a lot!

After 2 seasons of Jeremy being a stereotypical comic relief and utterly disposable, season 3 has finally decided to make him into an actual character rather than a punch line. With an actual relationship with actual kissing. Robin actually is having a role and not as a victim which I originally feared when he was Bulshared (and when he was bitten by Doc). They’re cute together. And we even had a one line back story with Jeremy and a hint of super powers. But it’s also the fact that Jeremy and Wynonna are spending social time together - they are friends! And then the big gay dinner (I’ve had more than a few awesome big gay BBQs) with all four of them being so fun and cute and awkward together. I want more of this, I want to see them working together more. Wynonna Earp has done amazing work with Nicole and Waverley being an awesome, cute, very very very fun couple and it’s wonderful to bring them and Jeremy and Robin together to treat Jeremy with some of the same respect

I also really really really like Kate and Wynonna. I was deeply unhappy with them becoming more hostile towards each other so vehemently. The increasing hostility towards each other was upsetting in a show which has so many great female relationship but also, with the sidelining of Jeremy and death of Dolls (and Charlie seemingly stepping into the Dolls shaped void), has some distinct reduction in meaningful POC inclusion. And today we had Kate, challenging a lot of assumptions about her past (like the idea of having Black European nobility - even if noble Europeans are peddling tarot readings seeking “freedom” is dubious - yes a lot more dubious than Black nobility), stepping up with some decent expansion of her history and with her and Wynonna building some really excellent levels of mutual respect

What ruins it is the strong implication she is leaving at the end of this episode because that’s a crying shame - especially since it renders her whole existence as a tool for Doc’s power and development as he chooses Wynonna above Kate after using her for her shiny power

I also quite like Charlie and Doc working together - I hate love triangles. But if they are going to happen I much prefer them having the odd snark but, again, developing a level of mutual respect and not turning everything into a dick measuring, antler butting contest,