Wynonna Earp Sets the Bar For Season Finales with “I Walk the Line” 

[Warning: Spoilers for the finale, obviously. Go watch and then come back!]

There’s something spookily prescient about Emily Andras’s ability to answer fan questions before the fans even existed. Wynonna Earp wrapped principal photography months before the first episode ever aired, but with scary precision, Andras pre-mapped the telltale points we’d want more of, and then, in the season finale, buttoned up all the lingering questions while bringing our heroine full circle to where it all started–she’s once again the rightful heir to Peacemaker, and this time, she got there the hard way.

In the first check box of “what does it all mean?” Nicole Haught is hilariously, and finally, read into Black Badge division when Doc just unspools on her what Revenants are and who he is, and she responds with a relieved, grateful “THANK YOU!” And then Dolls has no choice but to welcome her to their ranks.

In checkbox number 2, we confirmed that she is not a Revenant, which hadn’t crossed my mind but did cross others, when Willa shoots her (right after Waverly declares to Wynonna that she loves her). Because this show is genius, Nicole lives, but when she drops, bloodless, to the ground, Wynonna immediately grouses that if she’s a Revenant…only to find out that she’s wearing Kevlar. Then Wynonna leaves her and Waverly for a hot, or Haught, minute before they get back to business.

Dolls and Doc are on their own after Nicole is sidelined, and Doc is piqued enough by Dolls’ pharma candy store inside his gun safe that he pockets a couple of vials and the gun. Dolls tells him it’s to keep certain parts of him alive and certain parts dead, and that’s as far as we go with the explanation, but after Dolls is shot, Doc loads him up with the wrong vial, or too much of the right one–it’s unclear–and Dolls goes full lizard eyes and decimates the Revenant goon squad at Shorty’s.

Doc is impressed, but not exactly alarmed. They don’t explain it to Wynonna, but Wynonna does get a pep-ish talk from Doc about Wyatt and a dog he loved and Wynonna firmly tells him he will not be allowed to put Willa down.

Willa’s outed as “she came back wrong” pretty quickly into the episode after Waverly steals away with Peacemaker in her mondo purse (and I genuinely want to know if wardrobe went purse shopping with the gun to size it out) and then gets herself kidnapped by Nedley’s daughter. Wynonna frantically goes home and strips off her fancy dress to find whacked-out Pete looking to hand her off to Bobo for the anecdote.

Then Willa shows up and suggests killing him, plus she’s hyperfocused on Peacemaker because she needs it to cross the Triangle with Bobo. Wynonna peeved that Willa’s more preoccupied with finding the gun than their sister. She doesn’t really twig to why until later at the station when Waverly slides Peacemaker over to her, and away from Willa, who threatens to shoot Nicole, and then does any way when she gets what she wants.

Wynonna and Waverly agree something has to be done, but separately, so she leaves Wynonna to go talk to Bobo, after Nedley helpfully gets them through the crowd. Waverly finds him at the tree house and confronts him about manipulating and seducing a child and he makes the case that he did love her, he saved her because he told everyone she was dead, and he never laid a hand on her (while she was a minor, I think is the unsaid thing), but then The Stone Witch wiped her mind right before her 27th birthday.

That was the whole orchestration about the bones–a trade for Willa’s whereabouts. They don’t ever tie out whether Lou knew that his “Eve” was Willa. Bobo tells her he always kept an eye on her too, and then when she’s quietly resigned to the fact that she’s not the heir, he drops this bomb on her, “You’re not even an Earp.” WHAT??  Then he reunites with Willa and off they go, and we don’t see Waverly again til the very end. I’ll get to that.

Over at the edge of the Triangle, the happy couple tries to walk through (their first attempt was arrested because of the gun swap, which Bobo found out when he he’s stricken as soon as they crossed). Doc and Wynonna catch up, kicking off with gunfire, and then a grenade. Willa leaves a fallen Bobo to run through the gate without him, but with Peacemaker, and Wynonna tries to reason with her, but still points her gun at her.

Behind Willa, on the other side of the wall, the sky grows dark and the ground starts to shake. Willa says Bobo wasn’t the only one who visited her and made promises in the dark (Um, SHUDDER). Doc takes aim at Bobo and Boo says it’s not him, it’s “the old one” that he wants.

Willa tells Wynonna she learned that death isn’t so bad, that it would be a release for all of them from the curse–she did this for all of them. Wynonna is heartbroken, but Willa’s pretty set on this being her fate, and levels the Peacemaker at her sister but it won’t fire. And then a shot does ring out, and it catches Willa. “See, you can never really go home again,” is her sad response.

Wynonna looks back toward Doc, who asks the just-arrived Dolls if he got a clean shot, and he says no, it wasn’t clean. Then Willa is scooped up by a massive serpent who rises up out of the dirt. It wraps around and around her and Wynonna is freaking out and Willa is realizing she’s made a terrible mistake.

Wynonna runs through the gates toward her sister as Doc yells for her to stop. She grabs Peacemaker when Willa drops it, and aims it at her sister, who I think nods her permission to do it. “Make your peace.” The gun glows blue instead of orangy red, and Wynonna shoots Willa in the head.

She turns back toward the gates and starts off running and slides through with the serpent tracking her overhead. She makes it, and his head is cut off as the triangle buffer closes again. Doc races up to grab her and make sure she is OK as a still-hurt Dolls starts to falter. She leans into Doc as he holds her.

When she makes it over to Bobo, still on the ground, she levels Peacemaker at him and asks if he loved her. He begs her to kill him, and then Dolls’s boss shows up. Earlier, she finally admits she’s got a chip about him because of someone who died with him in Kandahar when he didn’t.

She tells Wynonna she can have what’s left of Bobo when they’re done with, and she takes Dolls, too, for treason, because he showed up to help Wynonna. She also drops the hint that they know the truth about whatever it is that she’s been hanging onto and hasn’t told anyone.

Afterward, Wynonna sits by the side of the road at the “Now Leaving Purgatory” sign, after it sounds pretty clearly like they’re about to crater the whole damn town. Juan Carlo comes to see her and tells her the Triangle keeps some things in and another, bigger, badder thing, out, and that they’ll be watching her. And then he ghosts away.

Bobo sits in the truck with Dolls and ask him what he did. When they get close to the edge of town, he stands up to meet the pain at the triangle crossing, telling Dolls “this one’s going to hurt.” Wynonna steps into the road behind the truck and levels Peacemaker at Bobo and shoots him. He smiles and goes down and down as a subdued Dolls can only watch. She turns back toward town, feeling his death maybe a little more than she expected.

Later, she, Doc, and Waverly walk in the poplar grove inside the gates and she says she’ll plant a tree there in the spring for her Willa. Doc asks if she’ll go get Dolls and she says he’s in a maximum security prison and he shot her sister, so, you bet your ass. Waverly walks on ahead and reaches down to check out the serpent goo. When she touches it, it soaks into her skin and her eyes and face change to black as thunder starts in the distance, alarming Doc and Wynonna. Waverly turns and walks back to them.

“Ready to go?”

“Sweetheart, I’m ready for anything!”

Then Waverly quickly pulls a gun and a shot rings out.

CREDITS!

That teeny tiny WTH at the end was the only thing I didn’t just adore, mostly because I’m still scarred by Fred/Illyria on Angel. I also think because the gun popped up super fast it might not be real. If it is, I expect Andras wouldn’t carry that on for very long.

I did love that Willa opened up all these emotional dams for her sisters, and now we have the tantalizing clue that Waverly has another daddy. Plus there have only been passing Mom references. What of that? For a half second I wondered if Bobo was her dad. I am glad that was not the case (unless it was??). Waverly has been so defined by her Earpness, so now what? She’s got demon goo and weird daddy blood.

Before he stopped by to see Wynonna, Juan Carlo also dropped in for a quick chat with Bobo, and I do wonder if he’s supposed to be an angel or an elder or an enforcer, or part of The Adjustment Bureau.

Dolls is like Jason Bourne after all, I guess, medicated to maintain a balance.

Back to Wynonna. I told y’all out of the gate that Melanie Scrofano was my girl, and she was astounding. I am so happy for her. She hit every note of an exquisitely crafted character who is a complete human being–beautiful, smart, flawed, vulnerable, invincible, angry, terrified, smitten, happy, sexual, and protective–we saw ALL of it move across her amazing face, and fill her shoulders when she strutted higher or sank a little lower. Just extraordinary work.

I love that Wynonna had to be the one to release Willa, literally and emotionally, from all of her demons, and maybe somewhere in there, release a few of her own because she had it in her power to give her peace and did so. I’m perfectly OK that Willa died. I think peeling back the onion on all the terrible things her life had been would have taken the show somewhere much, much darker. And we sadly live in the world where that happens, so I don’t think we needed it here. I’d love them to have Natalie Krill wander back in as a doppelgänger, though.

Losing Bobo as a big bad, and at the end of Wynonna’s gun, was also full circle because he’s the one she’s really been itching to kill. And yet when she finally did, it was an act of mercy, and she was weirdly sad to see him go.

We need a renewal, y’all. These 13 terrific hours of TV, with wonderfully woven winks and nods to the obvious tropes that plague lesser shows, was such a fabulous thing to watch, and be a part of as the fans created the most beautifully inclusive group of supporters online.

I loved the little touches that made it so smart, and the things I’d find when I rewatched episodes. Like when we found out at the end of “Bury Me with My Guns On” that Bobo bought Shorty’s, there was the tiniest nod tip earlier in the episode, in a jump cut from the scene of Bobo begging off of the bridge to take a call about a deal, to the sign out in front of Shorty’s. I loved those little connect the dots moments.

If you read me regularly (thank you!) you know how I feel about love geometry, so I I love that there’s no formal triangle in Wynonna, Doc, and Dolls. It’s more an open relationship in that both men have feelings for her, and her for them, but there’s no dick-waving about dibs in the finale, after Doc witnessed the Dolls/Wynonna kiss. Maybe later when they’re not trying to save the world, but I love that they avoided it for now, and even partnered up effectively, and hilariously. Over at Lost Girl, Andras handled a similar situation with the Dyson/Bo/Lauren relationship.

I love that this is a cast that’s really game for anything, whether it’s shooting, shooting the shit, or losing their shit (exhibit eleventy seven–the entire scene of Scrofano in her skivvies tonight), and that what could have easily been a one-note idea for a demon-killing girl with a big-ass gun became a heartfelt family drama, a love story, a sci-fi show, a horror show, and an empowering story of independent, strong, women who don’t shy from a worthy assist here and there, as well as a complete yarn about a demon-killing girl with a big ass gun.

Come back soon, Wynonna Earp. We need you. If you missed it, the season finale reairs at 2:31 am/1:31c tonight and will be online Saturday.

Thank you for spending the first season with us.

UPDATE: Renewed for 10 at SDCC and extended to 12 at NYCC!