Varmint Whiskey and Henry’s Tell
WYNONNA EARP – Episode 107 – Walking After Midnight – SPOILERS ⁓
Well past midnight and deep in the woods, John (Robert Nogier), a revenant thought dead after the motorcycle he was sitting on exploded in Purgatory (Episode 1.1), creeps up on the sleeping Doc Holliday (Tim Rozon) and puts a knife to his throat. Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) arrives in the nick of time and this time uses Peacemaker to make sure John dies She might have been keeping an eye on Doc, though she denies this. Doc explains he is sleeping in the woods to avoid the Earps, as his association with them is interfering with his pursuit of revenge against Constance Clootie (Rayisa Kondracki).
Mattie The Blacksmith (Rachael Ancheril) has spent the night sleeping in a chair surrounded by a ring of salt, and wakes up when she smells Clootie’s arrival. The witch knows Mattie’s name, and casts a spell to make her thirsty. “Hagyd hogy a torok porra,” Clootie intones in Hungarian. (Let the throat be as dust.) The witch uses a ladle of water to lure Mattie from her protective salt circle.
At the Sheriff’s office, Dolls (Shamier Anderson) and Wynonna are analysing the photo of the seven revenants who attacked the Earp homestead sixteen years earlier. Only one of the seven is still alive and his identity remains a mystery. Dolls notes that the man carried a cane, and Wynonna spots a carving of the Ace of Spades on its head. Then Dolls (surprisingly) offers to buy dinner.
He goes to pick up Chinese takeout and is intercepted by Black Badge Division agents who confiscate the food, and, after allowing him to phone Wynonna with a cryptic explanation, spirit him off to BBD HQ. There he is brought before Agent Lucado (Kate Drummond) who clearly doesn’t like him much and suggests he is about to be reassigned. “You speak Swedish, don’t you?” she inquires rhetorically.
Upset at Dolls’ disappearance, Wynonna brings a bottle of Varmint Whiskey to the Sheriff’s office and gets drunk with Sheriff’s Deputy Nicole Haught (Kat Barrell), who is also working late on a Saturday. Autopsy photos of recent murder victim Joyce Arbour (Nicole Chartrand) draw her attention and Wynonna says she needs to see the body.
Though both women work in law enforcement, neither recognizes Dr. Reggie (Ryan Belleville) when they encounter him at the morgue. Dr. Reggie seems helpful, and when the morgue’s security system alerts them to an intruder, the three leave the room to investigate. When they return, the corpse has wide-open blue eyes and a stylized playing card (a cross between the Jack of Spades and the Ace of Swords) stuffed in her mouth.
At the Earp homestead, Waverly hosts an engagement party for Stephanie Jones (Siobhan Williams), but only Steph and her friend Chrissie Nedley (Dana Christina) show up for it. Doc, who is now living in the Earp’s barn, brings firewood, and the four end up playing poker. After Steph gets dealt the Dead Man’s Hand (the hand held by Wild Bill Hickok when he was killed in 1876), a noise is heard, and Doc goes to the barn where he finds The Blacksmith. Mattie warns him of Constance Clootie’s approach and advises him to flee immediately and take the skull and Waverly with him, and Doc promises to do so. In return, the Blacksmith tells him how best to kill Clootie. Then she dies.
Doc reneges on his promise and waits in ambush for the witch.
Clootie arrives and casts a spell to reanimate the dead: “En vagyok a ko boszorkany. En vagyok a feltamadas. Hagyjuk ezeket, mint lesben feltamadni,” she chants in Hungarian, which loosely translates as: “I am the good witch. I am the risen one. Allow these to rise and attack.” The Stone Witch speaks at least two languages. In “Diggin’ Up Bones” (Episode 1.5), she cast a spell that temporarily paralyzed Doc, but she recited that one in Romanian: “Înca tu sunt piatrâ, mort fârâ (amor?) mângâia, tu somn.”
Realizing it was the only way to thwart the witch, Waverly destroys the skull, but before she does that, she and Clootie have a revealing conversation.
WAVERLY: “All I wanna know is why you trapped Doc, why you hate him.”
CLOOTIE: “Because he was loved by Wyatt Earp, and Wyatt Earp slaughtered my sons.”
WAVERLY: “No, if Wyatt killed them, then they would have resurrected like the other revenants.”
CLOOTIE: “Revenants are human, my boys were – are – something more.”
WAVERLY: “That explains the overbite.”
CLOOTIE: “There’s an evil in this world far greater than your revenants, Waverly Earp. It’s coming.”
She calls it an “evil” rather than a “power” and that might mean she does not entirely like the idea of its return.
Wynonna takes a shot at the witch, as does Doc. Clootie disappears and her car is seen driving away. After things settle down, Doc finds Waverly alone in the kitchen eating leftover pie, and attempts to apologize for putting everyone in danger, but Waverly waves off the apology and instead enlightens Doc as to his own motivation.
DOC: “I suppose this bears repeating to Wynonna.”
WAVERLY: “At least be man enough to tell her yourself. You do love her, after all.”
DOC: “Love? Well, that’s a bit rich.”
WAVERLY: “There. You wanted to know what your tell at poker is? Simple. You’re always, always lying.”
Maddie the Blacksmith’s words on how to kill Clootie were: “First, you need to collect what is of her flesh, hair, blood. Dipped in it, this gallows silk will lessen her powers. It will bind her. But you need to be patient when you hunt her. She’s vulnerable only in the time following the Witching Hour.”
The next morning, Doc finds the witch’s blood in the snow and collects some, along with the dagger she carried the previous night. He also finds he has a bullet wound that corresponds to where his bullet struck the witch. Then Haught’s empty squad car passes by slowly with both doors open, and the radio playing.
The 90 minutes TV special WYNONNA EARP: VENGEANCE can be streamed on TUBI.
All 49 episodes of WYNONNA EARP can be streamed on Netflix
** — Revised. Originally published on 18 May 2016