WYNONNA EARP – Episode 211 – Gone as a Girl Can Get – SPOILERS ⁓

Written by Alexandra Zarowny, this is the most quotable episode of the show, and it starts with a bang. “Strike a Match” by Zayde Wolf plays in the background as Nicole (Kat Barrell) and Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley) fight their way through a crowd of rioting revenants on the Earp Homestead. Inside the barn they find Jeremy. Waverly says: “I know how to get her back. I just hope it’s not too late”. Seconds later, the barn erupts in a fiery explosion and the rest of the episode is one long flashback.

To the residents of Purgatory, it seems as though Wynonna Earp was never born. This illusion was caused by the Marzaniok, a demon Wynonna imprisoned in a hockey trophy (see “Gonna Getcha Good”, episode 203) to fulfill the wish of Gretta Perley (Rachael Ancheril), aka The Iron Witch.

In this artificial timeline, Doc (Tim Rozon) still managed to escape from the well. He assembled a gang headquartered at the former Earp Homstead (now called “Holliday Haus”) and became the local crime boss. Other things are changed by Wynonna’s absence. Sheriff Nedley died in 2015; and Mattie Perley was killed by the Jack of Knives, not Constance Clootie. The radio in the Sheriff’s Office has changed to a Strauss flip-clock radio from the ’70s. In “Let’s Pretend We’re Strangers” (episode 205) it was an Admiral YH451 stereo receiver from the 1960s.

Doc is immune to the illusion because he was touching the trophy when Gretta made her wish. To convince Jeremy (Varun Saranga) of the situation’s unreality, he points out holes in Jeremy’s memories, and tells the Black Badge Agent: “I know who you are…You’re a vegetarian with ethics of steel that still reads Doctor Strange comic books at night because he wants to be a hero.”

Waverly Gibson is planning to change her name to Earp and marry Perry Crofte (Patrick Kwok-Choon). Waverly and Nicole are still in love, but Waverly is only subconsciously aware of that. This is nicely illustrated by a scene where Waverly (with Robyn Dell’Unto‘s song “Common” playing in the background) brings Nicole lunch (chicken salad sandwich with extra pickles).

Perry tells Waverly he had a PI investigate the deaths of Ward and Willa Earp, and that the man responsible for killing them is a patient at St. Jude’s hospital and has been asking for her. After telling Perry that “knowing something about me before me is a total invasion of my privacy”, she visits the man, who turns out to be Bobo Del Rey (Michael Eklund).

Not all revenants remember Wynonna, but Bobo does. The spell concealing Wynonna’s existence is “flimsy”, he tells Waverly, but she does not remember.

Doc and Dolls (Shamier Anderson) kill each other in a shootout as Shorty’s. As he lies dying, Doc suggests that Waverly should look up the Iron Witch, so Waverly calls Nicole. “This Iron Witch. Do you know who that might be?” Waverly asks, and Nicole says maybe, then volunteers to “blow off work and sort of pass by” the Iron Witch’s house. Waverly tells the Sheriff: “You always smell like vanilla dip donuts. They’re my favourite.”

When they arrive at Gretta’s house, the witch explains that she got exactly what she wished for, but not what she wanted. “Mattie’s still dead,” she explains.“I just wanted to change the past. The entire timeline. But wishes are literal. I wished your sister gone and the universe erased her entirely.” She further explains that the illusion is a Glamour spell. Gretta has developed a spell to briefly and temporarily reverse it. “Peel zurück esta falsche welt, in und die anderen”, she chants, which loosely translated means “Peel back the false world – yours and the others'”. They remember Wynonna, who was “insanely protective” and had “hair like a mare with a Hollywood stylist”.

Nicole and Waverly head to St. Jude’s, and Waverly helps Bobo escape.

Meanwhile, The Widow Beth (Meghan Heffern) has broken The Widow Mercedes (Dani Kind) out of jail and the two of them are trying to resurrect their demon husband, Bulshar Clootie. They’re having trouble with that because when Bobo was “Diggin’ Up Bones” in episode 105, he found Clootie’s coffin and moved it. Bobo, who has power over metals, breaks the third seal for The Widows and tells them where he put the coffin.

In the barn, which is surrounded by revenants, Waverly figures things out. First she makes a call to Perry, of which we only hear her side. “Hi Per,” she says. “Yeah. Sure, raspberry cream sounds great. Listen, I can’t really talk. I’m in a barn wired to explode. Also, I think I’m gay. Call you later?” Then she remembers that Gretta said that destroying the trophy (which was stolen by Doc’s gang years ago and is currently stored in the barn) by fire would break the spell. She asks Jeremy, who (believing that Black Badge was projecting the illusion from the barn) had rigged the place to explode, what the effect of the detonation would be. “Your basic fire and brimstone,” he tells her.

WAVERLY: “I know how to get her back. Dying may be our only chance of living. Who’s in?”
NICOLE: “Where you go, I go.”

Breaking the spell releases energy because all three in the barn look like flash powder blew up in their faces, but the damage is only cosmetic. In fact, no one who dies in this episode stays dead after the spell is lifted. But the third seal remains broken. Officer Lonnie (Chris Casson), the guy who messed up the report on Mrs. Grandeur‘s missing pug, remains with the Sheriff’s Department, and will next appear in “Blood Red and Going Down” (episode 301).

Once the spell is ended, Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) wakes in the middle of a field. The glamour may have given her amnesia, or possibly the delusion that she was someone else. She sees Bobo and The Widows walk by, considers going after them, but does not.

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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.