Season Two Verdict: ‘Wynonna Earp’ [Syfy]

‘Wynonna Earp’ seized the procedural nature of season 1A, ricocheted off our walls, screens, iPads—and created bolshy, unapologetic, sheer bonkers fun.

Season one served much as a laying ground for this production. Thrust, like Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) unwittingly, into a world of psycho-Revenants, a deputy-Sheriff (Katherine Barrell) whose only conviction on her card was looking too good. Younger sister Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley), the brains. The brawn in Shamier Anderson’s “sexy dragon” Dolls. And of course Tim Rozon’s tender performance as he struggles between parenthood and callous vengeance.

To say this season is about family is like declaring the President of the United States a lost cause. It’s glaringly obvious. Be it the family the gang have acquired, with excellent additions Varun Saranga and Tamara Duarte, this is all about ripping families apart. In preserving that, characters find their own relationships torn apart—even they thought they’d been doing the right thing.

RELATED l ‘Wynonna Earp’ Season Two Scene Stealer

With the boistering, unapologetic thunderclap of a first season rollicking onto our screens, it’s clear that whilst ‘Wynonna Earp’ has never let up pace, creator Emily Andras is one clever bunny.  A viewer may think the build-up of relationships and friendships may have felt too slow, or on the contrary, too quick. You can’t please everyone, we suppose.

But if there was one family—we’re including everyone; the real family—who could easily throw those doubts aside, it’s this lot.

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As much as Scrofano would likely want to smash a bottle of Jameson’s over our heads, we have to mention the elephant in the room: Melanie Scrofano kicking everyone’s ass whilst pregnant.

You’d be lying if you weren’t stunned by the way Andras & co managed to wedge in Scrofano’s ginormous belly-bump. So let’s not ignore the elephant in the room. Let’s embrace it. Why not? Wynonna’s kick-ass. So is Serena Williams. Come on. If Serena Williams can win a hard-court tournament, the most gruelling surface of them all, then who’s to say a woman cannot continue being at the pinnacle of their career? Just because they’ve got a bun in the oven?

Andras does an excellent job of balancing the light moments with the downright heartbreaking. It’s masterful. She’ll yank you from happiness straight to oblivion. And full kudos to Scrofano. Scrofano doesn’t need dialogue to act with. One look in her eyes tells everything. And you wouldn’t find that often.

Here’s a revolutionary idea: how about the Peacemaker-wielding badass gets to do her job whilst pregnant? Cankles are an issue, but her deduction skills, sometimes recklessness, determination to do the right thing. None of that goes away just because you’re now eating for two (three…?)

‘Wynonna Earp’ shows us that yes, there should be no good reason why you aren’t another worker’s equal. But beautifully, it shows us the loneliness, the desolation and the worry Wynonna genuinely has. The conflict is gold. And you’d all be liars if you said you didn’t cry at that scene.

Andras is something of a sadistic genius behind-the-camera. If there is someone out there who watched Wynonna giving her baby away without shedding a Niagara Falls of tears, then…man, you’re cold.

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Emily Andras had a difficult task: creating believable back-stories for our characters—all of them—and unravelling the ugliness each character harboured beneath their world-weary skin.

The prime example of this is not Wynonna Earp. She’s a self-proclaimed mess. She’ll drink a bottle of whisky on a Saturday night, priding herself as the town pariah. But whereas the first season was so heavily focused on the unravelling of Wynonna, it must’ve shocked anyone who remotely knew her when she stepped up to the mantle to end the Earp curse. For someone who made so many mistakes, and will undoubtedly carry on making them, Wynonna is the glue that holds this Scooby-gang together.

It’s in this explosive season two where things start to rear their ugly head. Dolls’ Charizard abilities seem to be somewhat controlled by him. But he possesses a certain ferocity; a feral nature, whenever he morphs into this gigantic fire-breathing piece of muscle.

As for Doc, his greatest fear is losing his immortality. Historically, Doc had been diagnosed with tuberculosis when he was a youth, forcing him to quit his dental endeavours. Waverly’s on the brink of losing it over her mystery father. Even Nicole, who is surely the most emotionally adjusted person ever, is evidently hiding something—perhaps in cohorts with Dolls.

This season was full of distrust, fraught decisions, mistakes, relationship stumbles…

But they come together in the end. The more exciting question, however: how many more secrets? What will the consequences be this time?

Plenty of fruit for season three, if you ask us…

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The tongue-in-cheek yet incredible raw performance Provost-Chalkley and Barrell give in their interpretation of #WayHaught may be something to be talked about years from now.

It’s easy to get excited over a same-sex couple on television, treated reverently by the writer. Because if you think about it: how many times in the history of television really offered the LGBTQ community that? A sense of hope? Escapism?

‘Wynonna Earp’ has its imperfections. Cheesiness. Downright stupidity. However, it’s also snarky as hell. Sometimes, it’s even snort-inducing. It depends on what you want for a television viewing experience. A thought-provoking CIA thriller? Or do you want a largely feminist badass sending douchebags to hell? Either way, the most important aspect of ‘Wynonna Earp’ is its heart. Because when big hearts bleed into the integrity of a production, you surely know you’ve hit the jackpot.

We doubt ‘Wynonna Earp’ set out with a goal of becoming the beacon of representation of all. But we’d be liars if we confessed that it wasn’t nice to see a dork fall head-over-heels with the irresistible cop in town who rocks even khakis. The sexual chemistry between them is almost immediate. And here we applaud Andras’ intuition in seeing those sparks, and doing something awesome with it.

Yet what had the opportunity to be surface-level has grown organically into the show’s core romantic storyline. And the best thing? Nobody cares. So long as the duo love each other, that’s all that matters.

It’s remarkable that even in a world infested by Revenants, Black Widows and that creepy Clootie fella, Waverly and Nicole are completely perfect and normal. Because let’s face it, how scandalous is a same-sex relationship compared to Bobo del Rey’s escape?

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Final Verdict: ‘Wynonna Earp’ is synonymous with nutcracking fun, but this year we saw the layers stripped back to everyone’s naked beauty, souls trodden down to their most vulnerable. And it paid off big time.

‘Wynonna Earp’ can’t really be discounted as a show that simply delivers you a good dose of awesome every week. This season was not perfect, but it was ambitious. It’s that drive that’s almost a relief. Emily Andras and her writing staff have clearly got some bases they’d like to cover by the time they get to the end season. Judging by the shady look Dolls and Nicole shared, there could be a whole world of mystery we’ve yet to unravel. Are Dolls and Nicole ahead of the game? Are they risking everything to save their loved ones? And what about that Mama Earp twist, huh?!

Would Doc be able to shed some light on who Mama Earp really was? The true character of Wyatt Earp? A hero, or an opportunist? We’ll let the historians debate that. But what charmed us most about season one was the notion that finally, the team was coming together. Now, with the slightest hints of secret fractures within the ranks, could something come to threaten them?

There are a thousand other questions we’d like to ask, and it’s only then we realise: “oh lord, we’re obsessed…”

Quite frankly, though? We couldn’t really care less.

Bring on 2018.

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