WYNONNA EARP – Episode 106 – Constant Cravings – SPOILERS ⁓

A backpacker (Kyle Durack) walks along a road outside of town listening to “Come On People” by Ben LaVain. He hears a noise, stops to investigate, and is dragged into the woods by something that moves too quickly to be identified.

Curtis MacCready, the uncle whose funeral was Wynonna’s reason for returning to Purgatory, left her a Harley-Davidson 1200 Stage One Screamin’ Eagle. Waverly inherited a note from Curtis containing a riddle, and when she solves it she finds another note designating her “keeper of the bones”, along with a skull in a box. After pausing to end her relationship with Hardy Champ (Dylan Koroll), Waverly follows the note’s instructions and visits The Blacksmith (Rachael Ancheril) who conducts a ceremony joining Waverly to the skull and inadvertently reveals its origin.

THE BLACKSMITH: “I ask the Earth to give up this ash. I ask the air to silence its name. I ask the water to cleanse this girl. I ask the fire to loosen its hold. Free from the tethers, purified by the elements, Waverly Earp, you are now open to receive this fragment of man into your life. Do you accept?”
WAVERLY: “I do. Wait. Did I just marry a skull?”
THE BLACKSMITH: “You are connected. You are as one. The Keeper of the Bones, and the Stone Witch’s Son. OK, what have I done? When I bonded Curtis to the skull, I didn’t know whose it was. It never told me. She’s going to be coming for me. I need protection. I need to find some salt.”

The Blacksmith’s full name is not revealed until “Gone As A Girl Can Get” (Episode 2.11).

At the sheriff’s office, Dolls (Shamier Anderson) trains Wynonna in close combat techniques and she manages to win a round. Afterward, Dolls notices that his hand is shaking, and he seems concerned about that. Wynonna celebrates by meeting Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley) for cheeseburgers at the local diner, which is run by Mama Olive (Valerie Planche).

Dolls has run out of whatever drug sustains him and his superiors are refusing to resupply him, but he still manages to help Wynonna find out what’s causing an uptick in missing persons reports. That turns out to be Mama Olive and her children Hetty Tate (Alex Paxton-Beesley) and Herman Tate (Jeffrey Olynek). All three are revenants because they were gunned down by Wyatt Earp, most likely during the winter of 1886-87, which was also known as “The Big Die-Up“.

1887 was the year Doc Holliday was supposed to have died, and the same year that Wyatt Earp rode to Purgatory and was cursed by the Sheriff there (see “The Blade” Episode 1.4). The Tates ran a hotel at the time, and survived the winter by eating their guests, causing Wyatt to take action. Hetty tells Wynonna that since then: “Each time an heir came of age, Mama would get ravenous and then murderous.”

This seems to imply that the Tates have been continuously alive since the death of Wyatt Earp 1n 1929. None of the subsequent Earp heirs managed to kill them, and whenever an Earp heir dies, Olive gets hungry and people are her favourite food. Her son Herman supplies her (and possibly the diner) with fresh meat.

Because Doc (Tim Rozon) gets no useful information about Constance Clootie (alias C C Stone) from Bobo Del Rey (Michael Eklund), he strikes a bargain with Dolls, who wants data on Bobo’s “otherworldly activities”. In the course of Doc’s investigations he locates the two skeletons Bobo is assembling in a construction shack, and is interrupted by Bethany (Sasha Barry), with whom he became intimately acquainted in “Keep the Home Fires Burning” (Episode 1..2).

After her advances are rebuffed, Bethany is forced to walk home, and accepts a ride from what appears to be a delivery van. (No such van is visible at the Tate’s ranch, so it might not be connected with them.) After Bethany climbs into the van, its windows are splattered with blood from the inside, creating the impression that Bethany was killed. She will appear again in “Two-Faced Jack” (Episode 1.8), so there may be more to Bethany than meets the eye.

Dolls meets an unidentified man at a park bench overlooking the city, and we get another indication of the sort of organization Black Badge Division is.

DOLLS: “Thanks. Was it any trouble?”
MAN: “Of course it was. Do you know what they’ll do to me if they find out I smuggled that from the lab? They track that shit like it’s plutonium.”
DOLLS: “Look, I just needed enouugh to tide me over, all right?”
MAN: “Whatever you did to get yourself cut off? Undo it. The people upstairs want results. Don’t call me again.”

Back at the office, Dolls injects himself with a blue liquid. A close-up of his eyes shows them changing into something lizard-like.

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Miscellaneous Info

Before this episode aired, Alexandra Zawrony, who wrote it, gave Greg David of TV-EH a hint of things to come. “I can say that The Stone Witch darkens the doorsteps of many characters,” Zawrony said. “She will become super-prominent this season. We will definitely see more of that pink Lincoln”.

Kyle Durack (ill-fated backpacker) has written three novels. ‘RAGE II: Shadows of Jekoras’, in which Professor Wiloh awakens an ancient evil, and ‘Monsters of RAGE’, which tells the story of a man with Cerebral Palsy who can change into ‘monsters’ of his own design. Both are available in paperback or Kindle edition from Amazon. (The first book, ‘RAGE’, appears to be out of print.)

Musical connection for this episode: “Constant Craving” by k.d. lang.

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

The 90 minutes TV special WYNONNA EARP: VENGEANCE can be streamed on TUBI.

All 49 episodes of WYNONNA EARP can be streamed on Netflix

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** — Revised. Originally published on 13 May 2016