Wynonna Earp Review [1×11]: “Landslide”

Wynonna Earp puts loyalty and family to the ultimate test, as the past continues to haunt the Earp sisters.

After a DNA test, Willa (Natalie Krill) was indeed revealed to be The Willa—much to the still-stunned Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano), Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley) and Gus (Natascha Girgis). As Wynonna and Waverly tried to re-introduce Willa back into the Earp life, Willa found herself smacked in the face with heavy realisation at the skills she’d mastered so young.

Meanwhile, the Revenants of the week were quite the harpies—cheekily (okay, and horrifically) preying on a man’s greatest weakness. Wreaking havoc (poor Stokes and his…geoduck) upon Purgatory, it was up to Dolls (Shamier Anderson) and Wynonna to investigate.

The ensuing action sequence was perhaps the most entertaining we’ve seen, in which Dolls and Wynonna took down the two harpy-Revenants in some smooth Strictly Come Dancing fashion. And Dolls was rewarded with quite the saviour—the right Earp—when Wynonna showed up to save him with a hammer, and:

Yo, Miss Congeniality! [wallops Revenant across the head] Nothing a face-lift won’t fix. [Slaps Dolls across the face] Wake up, Hugh Hefner. – Wynonna

Ungh…I taste strawberries. – Dolls

You smell like man-whore. – Wynonna

Whilst Doc (Tim Rozon) carried on his aimless runaway, coming across a good Samaritan who claimed that drifting was simply another word for running away—but when Doc dug into the toolbox, and found Wyatt’s Deputy badge, ‘Juan Carlos’ (Shaun Johnston) perhaps was not such a good Samaritan after all.

Willa (if she could survive a sambucca shot she could survive anything) lost control, shooting a Revenant at Shorty’s. In a mad dash back to the house, Dolls showed up and the house came under rapid fire from military folk. As Wynonna and Willa were in the barn, Dolls and Waverly defended the slaughter of gunfire laid upon the house with the clear winner of one-liners this episode:

Let’s go, bitches. Come on! – Dolls

And:

Ugh, you wanna get up in my kitchen? Eat shit, shit-eaters! – Waverly

With Willa and Wynonna storming the military assassins by surprise from the barn, a brave Waverly getting shot by those ‘shit-eaters’ and Willa chasing after a runaway militia-man, two bombshells were dropped: Dolls was the target of the assassination, not the Earps; and Bobo del Rey (Michael Eklund) just saved Willa’s life.

Willa’s shocking return was last week’s big-time bonanza—but three’s a crowd, and Waverly feels the brunt of it.

Willa’s return generated huge divide in the Earp household, and the youngest, Waverly, had been silently pushed—or perhaps pushed herself away—from the unique and enchanting sisterly closeness she’d formed with Wynonna upon her return. It wasn’t Willa’s fault, and nor was Wynonna insensitive to Waverly’s hurt here—it was simply that Waverly was so heart-breakingly quiet about the matter.

It happened in small chunks:

She hates us. – Wynonna

She doesn’t know us. Uhh…gotta go. Yeah, I said I’d see Nicole before the Poker Spectacular. – Waverly

…Are you and Nicole best friends now? – Wynonna

From Waverly, Wynonna’s closest confidante, not confident enough to tell Wynonna of Nicole after last week’s cliffhanger to the scene where Waverly snuck into the barn, a fly on the wall to Wynonna and Willow’s reminiscing.

We were two peas, you and I. It’s always been you and I. – Willa

Yep. You’ll remember it. – Wynonna

It can be like it always was. And different too, in all the right ways. You’re not alone anymore. – Willa

Oh, it hurt. The beauty of the backing score was emulated heavily in Provost-Chalkley’s stunningly subtle performance. Hurt, and hapless to it, and trying to quell those very human feelings of jealousy and replacement—Waverly shoved them away for the sake of doing her duty: protecting a sister. Letting Wynonna and Willa rebuild their closeness. And it made you wonder: which sister was she doing this for? Willa…Or Wynonna? How will this impact Wynonna and Waverly’s incomparable relationship in the next episode, for it has clearly been—by miles—the best part of the show? With the obstacle being their own sister, it was heart-wrenching to think of because quite simply, it’s familial love dividing familial love. This was never about some man getting in the way of two sisters—and so Waverly’s actions next, will be interesting to see. As she was shot and injured in the climax of the episode, Wynonna immediately rushed to her aid whilst Willa raced off after the runaway military-man. Stubbornly, Wynonna stayed by Waverly’s side until inevitably, Waverly simply told her to go. Maybe it was to protect Willa; maybe it was because she knew Wynonna would choose Willa and she didn’t want to lose her agency in that decision-making process. Whatever it was, having three Earp sisters is an absolute triumph—but it was never going to be not bittersweet, and for that, I would say without a doubt Provost-Chalkley stole the show—by a Landslide.

Putting Wyatt on a pedestal and Bobo del Rey at the bottom…was that the right move?

We’d gotten glimpses of Wyatt’s besmirched honour in the episode ‘Two-Faced Jack’ when the Jack of Knives proclaimed Bobo and Wyatt as close friends; we suspected Bobo’s relationship with the Earps for some indescribable reason when the telekinetic Revenant didn’t just simply kill the Earp sisters before Wynonna’s skills with Peacemaker shot up exponentially. In this episode, via flashbacks, we saw glimpses of a stern and drinking (well, he was an Earp) Wyatt Earp, yanking a child Willa Earp out into the front yard at four o’clock in the morning for shooting practice when she had school the next day. And then we had this:

He told me we had nothing to worry about…to just stay calm. He knew the attack was coming, Wynonna. I don’t remember anything else, except that our daddy let those men into our house and tear us apart. – Willa

If our heads weren’t rolling at this point, in the climax of the episode when Willa was floored in the snow and about to be killed by one of the military assassins—her life was saved. Not by Wynonna, Dolls, Waverly, Gus, Doc…it was Bobo del Rey. And for all the questions we held regarding why Bobo hadn’t just simply conked the Earps out, there should’ve been questions flocking in too about Wyatt, ever since Jack the Knives’ slight giveaway. But for as engrossing as Scrofano is as the lead, perhaps we were too strong in our belief in Wyatt’s honour. With the ultimate baddie perhaps not quite being the ultimate baddie and the ultimate martyr not being such…what on earth is going to happen in the following episodes?! (And season two, Syfy).

As if Dolls couldn’t be more of a mystery entangled in an enigma, encased in a riddle and packed up in a jigsaw…

Though we didn’t get any glimpses of gecko-Dolls this episode, we now had government assassins sent specifically after him. What had happened since he found Whiskey Jim and held him hostage? Had the Black Badge Division’s morally charcoal work been busted and Dolls thus implicated?

This would be a good chance to give a Doc-like hat-tip of respect to Shamier Anderson this episode. Though Tim Rozon was missed, often, with Wynonna Earp in general, it feels as if episodes are balanced when there’s either less Dolls or less Doc per episode (except in which they teamed up, and Waverly’s screen-time lessened)—which presents a paradox. Both Dolls and Doc should work with equal screen-time each episode, but Wynonna Earp has been clever in the way they’ve distributed and built each story-line. And frankly, as brilliant as both those characters are, if we got a bit more Gus, and three badass Earp sisters—that’s a pretty damn good distribution.

But Dolls. Dolls had always been amusingly strait-laced to Wynonna’s ‘off-like-a-rocket’ bananas, and to contrast the pair together as a team meant to take down Revenants was a clever one. But as their relationship built (and ours with them), it became rapidly transparent that there was more to Dolls than we knew. It was always a mystery with him, yet what I wish to praise Mr. Anderson for was the sheer comedy he brought to Dolls over the past few episodes. In this, our Hugh Hefner himself found himself in quite the muddle (and on the end of a slap from Wynonna) as he fell to the harpy-Revenants’ charms, but in a idiotically hilarious but somewhat ingenious sequence as Dolls avoided all eye contact, he lured the second Revenant straight into the end of Wynonna’s Peacemaker. What a charmer.

Final Verdict: A mixing pot of the clearly most amusing Revenants of the week, genuine heart-ache at Waverly’s internal struggle (just when she’d found herself) and The Action Sequence of The Entire Season So Far, this was a landslide victory for Wynonna Earp.

This was a strange episode to review because it took all the formulas I had for Wynonna Earp and tossed them carelessly out of the window with a magnetic feast for the eyes. Co-written by James Hurst and Ramona Barckert, the one-liners may not have been hurtling at breakneck speed (though Waverly’s “eat shit, shit-eaters!” is officially the one-liner of the show now, surely)—this was a welcome steadying of pace. Nicely directed by Peter Stebbings, especially the scenes in the snowy outreaches of Wynonna Earp land with Doc and his new friend, surely Mr. Gavin Smith had extreme fun with the cinematography when Willa and Wynonna—in possibly the scene of the season—burst out of the barn in slow-motion bearing sub-machine guns and tore the militia apart.

(Oh, how I want to watch that scene forever).

The music composition, as ever, was excellent too—the slow crank of tension, the startling boom of revelation—but whilst largely absent from this episode, the choice of song to accompany it has always been something to be praised (hands up: which song starts with ‘wide eyes, and it’s midnight…?’). This episode, everything seemed to slowly slot into place for an undoubtedly crazy not-so-calm-before-the-finale and for the vision that creator Emily Andras has taken us through (a few aneurysms, lots of shouting and some screech-crying) oh it has been an unspeakable joy. My only criticism would be the quickness of Willa’s adaptation to her new home—and though understandable within the story—often it felt too quick. It was without a question she was skilled at shooting but all too quickly came the one-liners, the way she spoke—yet for a very minor negative, came a huge positive: Ms. Natalie Krill. And that, truly, is that.

Questions and comments

• Apparently, there’s a phenomenon circling around in which Willa talks of angels and demons and at the word ‘angel’, the viewer immediately yelp/cries/screeches “NICOLE HAUGHT!”—perhaps when season two inevitably happens, that shall be resolved.
• The Dolls-Waverly conversation was so sweet. Again, one must yell: “why does everyone have insatiable chemistry?!”
• Can there be an alternate universe musical episode ala ‘Buffy’? Yes, I’m still furious I didn’t know Ms. Provost-Chalkley was on the West End.
• I love the nature of how these particular Revenants, in a very sick way, lured their victims in this week. How do you feel about these geoducks, Waverly?
• An absence of Nicole Haught (she’s doing angelic things) always saddens the soul, but Natalie Krill’s time to shine (oh god, that submachine scene!!) took that pain away.
• Question-time: What is Bobo’s deal with the Earps? Why is he saving them instead of outright killing them?
• Will we ever get a Bobo flashback that tells us the true story of Wyatt Earp? Not some heroic gunslinger after all?
• Melanie Scrofano went hugely underappreciated in this review (but never in my heart…) but she was utterly brilliant in the way she conveyed her guilt at giving up their search for Willa.
• Doc attempting to be polite in asking Juan to help fix the car was endlessly amusing. Only Tim Rozon.
• Might I say how refreshing Waverly Earp is? She casually drops in what is obviously a date to Wynonna to this Poker…thing with Nicole. She casually asks if a scar’ll be attractive to chicks, too, when Wynonna offhandedly claims that guys will love it. Waverly has questioned and questioned, and she was not kidding when she took that leap of faith with Nicole.
• Again: when will gecko Dolls resurface, and hopefully, this time with answers? Any theories?

WYNONNA EARP airs Fridays 10l9c on Syfy