‘Wynonna Earp’ is now synonymous with shameless, unprecedented fun and emotion—but one thing that drives its creator, writers and actors behind-the-scenes? Its absolutely fearless heart.

The Show: Wynonna Earp

The Network: Syfy

The Genre: Science Fiction, Drama, Western

The Challenge: Give a show four episodes with which to draw you in, impress you, challenge you, make you feel something deeply. Four episodes for the chance to find out if you care what happens to the characters you’re watching enough to become invested in the story. If after all that, it does none of those things for you? Then no biggie. You gave it a good shot and you can move on. But if you love it, you’ll be glad you stuck around.

The Premise: ‘Wynonna Earp’ kicks down the front door of its second season. Courtesy of Wynonna Earp (Melanie Scrofano), a descendent of the legendary Wyatt Earp, we’re treated to a rollicking tale of gun-twirling demon-bashing. Accompanied by her sister Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley), Doc Holliday (Tim Rozon), Officer Nicole Haught (Katherine Barrell) and Agent Dolls (Shamier Anderson) Wynonna follows up the haunting events of season one in a shaky Purgatory. ‘Wynonna Earp’ also stars Kate Drummond, Greg Lawson, Tamara Duarte, Dani Kind and Varun Saranga.

We don’t just holla up into Purgatory: we power slide right back into some slick one-liners and badass action sequences of its second season.

We’re no stranger to ‘Wynonna Earp’ and the fact that Emily Andras owns a storage box containing just quips and sarcastic bird-flips. But truly, ‘Wynonna Earp’ is genuinely special in so many ways. Andras obviously has fun with it, and it shows–but more importantly, it gives opportunity for a kickass woman to write a kickass lead lady. And this kickass lead lady is allowed all her imperfections because guess what? The woman behind it all knows what she’s doing. Oh, and she knows what a woman–a feisty one at that–is like, too. So goodbye, viewers who may be expecting some white male’s dream of a perfect heroine. Hello, viewers who are fans of the rugged picture of complexity Scrofano paints as Wynonna. Heart-breaking, sexy, badass, fun—these are all words that have become a staple when describing ‘Wynonna Earp’.

In the first four episodes we pick up where we left off in season one. Yet as we introduce new faces and answer old questions, we’re still faced with new questions that look to plague us for the entirety of the new season. And we love it.

The directors—namely Ron Murphy—are back to ensure we’re treated with a feast for the eyes. Emily Andras’ opening script is as sensationally soul-stealing as they come. With rapid-firing one-liners, an insane plot to squeeze into one episode, a feisty fight scene with Rachel Skarsten guest-starring, the fourth episode takes the crown for the best episode of the four.

RELATED l ‘Wynonna Earp’ [2×04] Review: “She Ain’t Right”

We also get this:

Wynonna: [As she points Peacemaker at a monster] “We haven’t formally met. I’m Wynonna. Wynonna Earp.”

If anyone (including Bond) didn’t punch the air triumphantly at that, and the way Melanie Scrofano’s lip curled menacingly as she delivered the line with such sass it blew everyone’s television screens, go sit in a dark corner and think about your life choices. We’ve said it so many times: ‘Wynonna Earp’ is not perfect. It isn’t the next ‘The Night Manager’.

But is it balls-deep in fun? Do you regularly ask yourself whether you prefer Katherine Barrell’s braid or her sexy-cut short hair? Is Waverly dancing in a cheerleader uniform the best thing to happen to TV-land in a long time? Do you wish you could twizzle Peacemaker around in your hand whilst rocking Scrofano’s tight pants?

Emily Andras’ ‘Wynonna Earp’ is the prime example of why we need more women writing female characters. She is ready to burst with sarcastic quips and hilarious scenarios. Impressively, she built a world of connections in season one so that when season two came, we’d be captivated by any pairing sharing scenes together. And that’s why ‘Wynonna Earp’ works so well. There’s huge talk of its lovely LGBTQ representation in WayHaught. But arguably, more importantly, female representation.

So welcome back, ‘Wynonna Earp’. The world missed you.

We’re joined by excellent new cast members, but the intimacy of the cast bonds remain the same.

You could think about new cast members and think negatively of that. “But everyone was so fantastic in season one!” you could scream. After four delicious episodes, you could also scream: “Everyone was so fantastic in episodes one to four!”

Bumping Agent Lucado’s role was a clever choice. Kate Drummond’s impeccable comedic timing works well with Melanie Scrofano’s quaint comebacks. ‘Orphan Black‘ alumni Kevin Hanchard as the Black Badge’s big bad boss is another brilliant score. Canadian casts can now officially say “kiss my backside” to everyone else, and they can say it proudly.

Though we have our doubts about Dani Kind’s Mercedes and the rest of her creepy Addams family, we have such faith in Emily Andras and the cast that we can’t really pin it as a proper fault. Development will ensue, that’s for sure. And though we’re not terribly convinced of the way that storyline looks to be heading, we’ll give it a chance.

RELATED l ‘Wynonna Earp’ [2×01] Roundtable

Lastly, Varun Saranga and Tamara Duarte steal the show as our newbie front-runners. They are perhaps the ying and yang of newcomers, too. One is an over-excited, jumpy tech nerd who obviously dotes on Dungeons & Dragons. The other is a drug-cooking peach who makes Jesse Pinkman look like noodle-soup. When she drinks too much tequila her barf likely consists of one-liners.

However that doesn’t stop Scrofano from wrenching your heart out (our room literally looks like a crime scene ala episode three slash voluntary organ ripping) every damn week. Backing her up is the ever reliable Rozon who plays Doc with a changed, sweet heaviness to his character, and Anderson as the tortured Dolls. There’s also the dynamic duo of ‘WayHaught’, whose scenes continue to steal the show. It’s comprised of Provost-Chalkley, who has That Jaw-dropping Scene in every episode and Barrell, who completely storms the show this season. Especially in episode three.

Top-notch casts win every time. So therefore they win; ‘Wynonna Earp’ wins; we all win.

We pick up where we left off in the season one finale, but ‘Wynonna Earp’ does briefly fall back into the procedural trap of ‘Revenant of the Week’.

Where we’d previously criticised ‘Wynonna Earp’ in season one for its procedural chop-chop, it did recur in the second season. Albeit briefly. There was a dreaded sense of “oh, it’s headed back to the baddie of the week territory” upon viewing, and to be frank, episode two could’ve passed for filler episodes.

However, with the bookends of episodes one and four providing us with a steady staple of plot and finger-lickin’ fun, it’s hard to criticise ‘Wynonna Earp’ for being a demon-infested version of CSI. It’s much more than that. And it’s quite clear Andras and her writing team are still finding their footing. Nonetheless, their efforts do work. We get arcs like Waverly’s demonic possession, Wynonna’s constant guilt over Willa, Dolls’ prison break and some way hot WayHaught relationship drama.

RELATED l Season One Verdict: ‘Wynonna Earp’

Honestly, we don’t want ‘Wynonna Earp’ to always fall back into the boring procedural hunt of ‘Revenant a week’. Sure, it kept us afloat with endless witty one-liners, drolly delivered by Melanie Scrofano. And that made it fun. That’s important: and maybe we don’t want it to lose its occasional Stupid Earl (oh Carl) every once in a while. Like its almost-sister show ‘Killjoys‘, what we love about ‘Wynonna Earp’ is its incessant self-deprecation and mosh-pit fun. Also, ‘Killjoys’ isn’t free from its “case of the week” structure either. Why we compare these two shows so often is because they’re so similar. They’re both on Syfy; they’re both out-of-this-world nuts, and they’re both inexplicably, shamelessly fun.

But what ‘Wynonna Earp’ proved last season was that it excelled far beyond just procedural dollop. It was a blistering rollercoaster but it had a sturdy, spiky backbone of a story. And a fledgling mythos.

Andras and her writing team have proved they’re much better than everyone expected. So why not showboat a bit? Exploit their guns shamelessly? Andras and the cast are obviously proud of their work–and we’d agree. These four episodes knocked season one’s first four out of the park, so hold onto your seats for the rest!

Quite frankly, we couldn’t care less for poncey Emmy nominations for Most Profound Stare into the Distance. We want demon-bashing. Donut-eating, top-shelf ass heroines. Let’s feast into something real; something from deep within the heart—and that, ladies and gentlemen, is ‘Wynonna Earp’.

This story isn’t just about hunting and killing demons: it never was. It’s about family ties, outsider intrusions, conspiracies and so much more.

One of the best things about ‘Wynonna Earp’ is that it’s written by a woman. It’s a female-centric story written by a kickass, witty, funny Emily Andras. Like Wynonna, it doesn’t give much care to its reputation or any poncey standards set by snobby television award panels. Instead, Emily Andras is a real woman. She understands what real women are, and she knows how to write a character. She also knows how to write real relationships. It seems absolutely stupid, but it’s essential.

Without Andras as the head writer, ‘Wynonna Earp’ would be an entirely different show. In our season one reviews, we’ve always stressed that the sisterhood Wynonna and Waverly display was hands-down our favourite relationship on the show. One year later, we haven’t changed our hands. Furthermore, our love for the sisterly duo has only deepened, as they tackle more and more complex and darker themes this year.

Ugliness and truth is brought to the forefront of every single character. Thus their imperfections are blistering as we watch them, and we fall more in love with them because of that. It’s Wynonna who sums up best what the show is about. Firstly, it’s about imperfection. Secondly, it’s about recognising it and shoving your middle finger at it–because guess what–heroines don’t have size zero waists and doddle about at their men’s whim. This heroine doesn’t want to be your heroine, but she’ll do it because she likes doughnuts and twizzles her gun like a badass.

(And there’s more, but we’ll get there…)

Thank you, Emily Andras, for finally doing it. We said it last season and we’ll say it again: it’s about time we saw female-centric television written by a female. Kudos, kudos, kudos.

We wouldn’t call any ships ‘leaders’ in the LGBTQ TV community, but ‘WayHaught’ are tackling the sensitive topic of representation stunningly.

No, we’re not here to pit any ships against each other–that’d just be ridiculous.

But we’d never ignore the cruise-liner that is ‘WayHaught’. Beyond just a cracky, surface-level stunning ‘ship’, the relationship between Waverly and Nicole runs deep. It encounters awful homophobia—something we find despicable, yet encounter in real-life. ‘WayHaught’ are blessed with a certain level of innocence, and the connection between Provost-Chalkley and Barrell is palpable. They’re funny; heart-aching; sweet. In other words: they’re perfect for each other. You can tell they enjoy playing off each other simply by what we see exhibited on-screen.

But more-so than that, they offer some very important LGBTQ representation. It’s blasé in the sense that you suspect Andras shrugged it off and thought: “so what? It’s two women. Get over yourself“. But also, it’s treated with the utmost respect. With the outrage of ‘LGBT Fans Deserve Better’ and the #TooFemale fiasco, WayHaught is representation in the eye of storm. Albeit not representation for the sake of such trends, but representation irregardless of such trends.

RELATED l Follow TV After Dark for continual coverage on ‘Wynonna Earp’

And guess what? It’s allowed to be sexy and real. We get drop-dead gorgeous Darcy-slash-Nicole; we also get cheerleading legs-for-days (and, um, knicker-less) Waverly. Provost-Chalkley goes on to belt out a sultry number in a sultry dress. And where does it leave us? Between Barrell and Provost-Chalkley, the acting spectrum (that clearly included dancing and really good singing) is covered. It’s covered as thickly as you smear your Nutella on toast.

That’s a lot.

Furthermore, they don’t squabble over coming out, or sexuality, or any of the dead, dead and deader cliches we’re sick of. They argue about jobs and things heterosexual couples are allowed to be plagued with. Not ‘normal’ couples–because this is the new normal. ‘Wynonna Earp’ champions that. Andras, Barrell and Provost-Chalkley champion it. And it’s about time LGBTQ couples were treated the same as ‘normal’ couples.

This is a relationship written for women by a woman. It feels real; it is solidly played, and it is sensitively done. They’re one gorgeous pairing–made up of two gorgeous individuals. Bravo, ‘Wynonna Earp’. We shouldn’t have to say it in 2017, but bravo.

Final Verdict: ‘Wynonna Earp’ may be one of the most anticipated returns this year. Creator Emily Andras ensures that the fun sticks with the show as our addiction to the magnificent shard of fun grows, and we’re continually bashed by jaw-dropping surprises thrown our way.

“Wynonna’s not a ‘flowers and chocolate’ kind of girl,” Nedley says in the trailer, as we see clips of Wynonna bashing people about and wrecking staircases. That kind of sums the series up. Wynonna Earp is one of the pluckiest women in Purgatory, and ‘Wynonna Earp’ the show is one of the pluckiest shows on television right now.

Plucky? Yeah. Why not?

‘Wynonna Earp’ dares. A lot of other shows would likely shy away from having their heroine as a heavy-drinking, swearing, shameless ball-twister. But Emily Andras and her team excel in writing Melanie Scrofano’s Wynonna. You can choose role-models based on perfect projections of people, or you can slam a rugged, raw, real heroine on TV. And that’s what Andras did. Wynonna isn’t just going to kick out your front teeth and cry because it reminds her of when her dad kicked her mother’s front teeth in. She’ll just kick out your front teeth.

And that’s why ‘Wynonna Earp’ works. It’s why ‘Wynonna Earp’ has always worked. Wynonna, plus her posse of sidekicks (notably her dubiously cute sister Waverly) is just plain douchey at times. And it works. Waverly will tell you to “eat shit, shit-eater!” and Nicole will punch and then handcuff a handsome but idiotic-and-homophobic dude at a ball. Doc will tip his hat to a lady and drive off in a Pink Cadillac with the license plate ‘STONE COLD’.

This show is chock-full of cheese, gore and unapologetic idiocy. And we love every part of it. We don’t want pretence to sneak in. We don’t want broody glances off the top of hills. Quite simply, we want ‘Wynonna Earp’—dirt and all. And that is exactly what Emily Andras and her cast gives.

Four episodes? Hell yeah—give us the rest!

Catch WYNONNA EARP on Fridays 10/9c on Syfy.