WYNONNA EARP – Episode 207 – Everybody Knows – SPOILERS ⁓

Black Badge stored The Widows in a crate for nearly a century and never got around to finding out just who or what they are. The Widows have located and broken two of three mystical seals hidden in Purgatory, and only they know what will happen when they find and break the third.

Dolls (Shamier Anderson) and Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) don’t know the Gardner sisters are The Widows, but they suspect the Gardners are up to something and pay them a visit. Wynonna wounded one Widow in the right shoulder with Peacemaker, so she grabs Beth’s shoulder but gets no reaction.

After Wynonna leaves, Widow Mercedes (Dani Kind) shows the Widow Beth (Meghan Heffern) her wounded shoulder and says “it will heal eventually”. Tucker Gardner was also wounded by Peacemaker in “Whiskey Lullaby” (episode 2.6). Describing Clootie as one of two people who knew how to find the third seal, Widow Mercedes tosses the head into the fireplace. “We need to work fast,” she says, “keep Wynonna and that gun away until we find the last seal. And then our love burns bright and true.”

Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley) has translated the inscription on a fragment of one of the broken seals from Phoenician as “Let thee rise.” Phoenician is a language that was not spoken later than the first century B.C.E.

Concerned for Wynonna’s health and the health of the baby, Doc (Tim Rozon) and Dolls fetch a Doctor from the city. Dr. Navalar (Imali Perera) asks for blood samples from both Wynonna and the father and suggests future examinations should happen at her office.

After the doctor leaves, Wynonna tells her sister that Doc might not be the baby’s father. She doesn’t tell Doc that, but Waverly inadvertently does that later on. Before that, she tasks Nicole (Kat Barrell) with looking after Wynonna for the rest of the day.

After the events of “Two-Faced Jack” (episode 1.8) Wynonna went binge-drinking at a strip club called Pussy Willows, where she had once worked. (Her stripper name was Aphrodite.) Jonas (Mark Ghanimé), the other paternal possibility, works there and he’s a revenant. Nicole and Wynonna go there with the idea of buying Jonas a drink and pilfering Jonah’s glass to collect a DNA sample, because if Jonas wasn’t the father there would be no need to mention any of this to Doc. Nicole gets drunk because Wynonna can’t. Before Wynonna shoots him, Jonas says: “A revenant breeding with a human? Unlikely, yeah, but rumour is, it’s happened before.”

Later, Wynonna tells Waverly “I have an ultrasound booked next week, but if my OBGYN is expecting samples, tough luck. She ain’t getting any. I already know the pre-existing conditions. On the one hand, revenant-itis. On the other, Wyatt Earp’s best friend. Farkakte.” and Waverly responds by telling Wynonna that she has doubts about her own parentage. “I don’t think I’m your sister,” she says, “or even an Earp at all.” Another Earp who might have been part revenant is Wynonna’s father Ward Earp, whose father was Edwin Earp and whose mother is never mentioned at all. This could explain why Ward was shot and killed by Peacemaker.

The last time Wynonna and Nicole got drunk together was in “Walking After Midnight” (episode 1.7).

A Spot of Trouble for Doc.

Marshall Bass Reeves (Adrian Holmes) is awakened by a messenger named Charlie who tells him Doc Holliday has been located. Reeves has been pursuing Holliday on an 1882 Colorado warrant for “seduction with intent to fornicate with the wife of the honourable Justice Stanley Parker, twice.” For this Doc has been sentenced to death. Meanwhile, Jeremy (Varun Saranga) has been trying to find an antidote to The Widows’ venom. After researching Black Badge files and with Doc and Dolls present to assist, he tries to do a binding spell and recites an invocation in Icelandic: “Eg binda pit vio okkar, svo verour pao ao vera” which, loosely translated, means “I bind myself to us, so we will be together”. The spell causes the three men to be physically bound together so when Reeves arrests Doc, the other two are compelled to come along.

It is by no means certain, but Widow Mercedes’ tossing of Constance Clootie’s head into the fireplace might have made Doc visible to Reeves and his deputy.

In real life, Bass Reeves was the first black deputy U.S. Marshall west of the Mississippi. In thirty-two years he made more than 3000 arrests, killed 14 people, all in self-defense, and was never wounded. He rode a silver-gray horse, usually wore a black hat (though there are photos of him wearing a white one), and gave out silver dollars as a calling card. According to Thaddeus Morgan of The History Channel, his adventures might have formed the basis for the fictional character The Lone Ranger. Reeves was hired as a deputy Marshall by Judge Isaac Charles Parker, and most of Bass’s work as a lawman happened in the Oklahoma and Arkansas territories presided over by Judge Parker and the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas.

1882 was a significant year for Wyatt Earp and for Doc Holliday. It was a year after the OK Corral, and the two were in Albuquerque, about 1000 kilometers from where Bass Reeves and Judge Isaac Parker lived, making interaction between Doc and that Judge’s wife improbable. 1882 was also the year Wyatt began living common law with his third wife, Josephine Marcus, whom he had met three years earlier in Tombstone. According to True West Magazine, it was suggested in a 1940 letter from former New Mexico governor Miguel Antonio Otero that Wyatt’s co-habitation with Josie started a quarrel with Holliday that eventually broke up their friendship.

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All 49 episodes of WYNONNA EARP can be streamed on TUBI, as can the 2024 film WYNONNA EARP: VENGEANCE.

WYNONNA EARP: TALES FROM PURGATORY, is available from Audible.com.

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** — Revised. Originally published on 25 July 2017